Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.
The bankster class, awash in billions in bonus money, flaunts its unearned wealth, oblivious to the political harm their antics are inflicting on the “Indispensable Man” in the bank bailout, President Obama. The author believes “the president's intimate entanglements with the criminal banking class will be his undoing.”
The Inside Man on the Great Bank Heist
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Obama's bankster friends can be counted on to repeatedly embarrass the president.”
Detroit Congressman John Conyers worries that President Obama might be brought down by his failure to put forward and fight for a decent health care plan. Conyers may be right, but I think the president's intimate entanglements with the criminal banking class will be his undoing. No matter how many times Obama puts a scowl on his face and pretends to threaten the banksters for their latest transgressions against everyone else's economic security, the public will remember who got bailed out first and most under the outgoing George Bush and the incoming Barack Obama.
The bankers have no shame, and even less regard for how much their behavior harms the political fortunes of their friends in the White House and Congress. It seemed like only yesterday that we were told life as we know it would cease to exist if Wall Street was not gifted with the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. At the time most of the public, Democrats and Republicans, initially opposed the bailout, sensing it was a scam. George Bush could never have pulled it off – this, the greatest boondogle in human history. Republicans were screaming that a bailout meant instant socialism. Up stepped presidential candidate Obama, who sweet-talked the Democrats into pushing the bailout through Congress. For the banksters, Obama was the Indispensable Man.
“George Bush could never have pulled it off.”
So, how do they reward him? In uncivilized haste, nine banks that received $175 billion of the people's money turned around and gave more than $32 billion to their executives and high roller employees, as bonuses. It was left to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to cry foul, in a report entitled, “No Rhyme or Reason: The 'Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' Bank Bonus Culture.” Essentially, the report outlined how bank managers divvy up bilions of dollars among themselves and their top-gun dealmakers, whether the institutions are doing well or not – not to mention how well or badly the real economy is performing for real people.
Banking in 21 st century America is, in the end, exactly what most people suspected: a racket rigged for the benefit of the bankers, themselves. They had taken the people to the cleaners, fleeced the public, stolen them blind, and were now cashing in their billions in plain view of 300 million suckers.
Nobody can pull off that big a heist without an Inside Man. The guy who vouched for the thieves back in October of last year, who convinced all those Democrats in Congress that he'd make sure the banks were made accountable to the people once he was sworn in as president.
Obama's bankster friends, fearing nothing and no one, can be counted on to repeatedly embarrass the president with their felonious, anti-social behavior, in the depths of everybody else's economic crisis. At some point, it will become Obama's political crisis. The first black president will be even more widely perceived as the bankers president. Which is what he has always been.
In this week’s segment we discuss the need for self-defense against racist, white supremacist forces. But first we hear about efforts to Build and Fight through a solidarity economy, self-…
Our guest is Kali Akuno, co-founder and director of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi. He joins us from New York to discuss the Build and Fight Formula, its work with the Peoples Network…
Our guest is Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of One People’s Project. One People’s Project seeks to combat right wing, white supremacist groups and individuals by exposing their threat to the world.…
Fighting Trump’s racist attacks is obviously a necessity but that fight must include opposing the Black misleadership class and their collaboration.
“ U.S. imperialism…is making desperate efforts to consolidate its hegemonic system of domination. We cannot allow this to happen.”
