A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama was blasting Wall Street bonuses as “obscene” and criticizing recipients as “fat cats who are getting awarded for their failure.”
But in an interview with Bloomberg Business Week, Obama made it sound like he doesn’t “begrudge” the multi-million dollar bonuses collected by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon or Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Asked directly whether bonus payouts of $17 million to Dimon and $9 million to Blankfein were acceptable, Obama replied by praising both men as “savvy businessmen.” He went on to say, “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”
Recognizing how damaging the comments could be, the White House press team launched a full-fledged pushback, saying that Bloomberg took the remarks out of context. They also posted an entry on the White House blog to clarify the remarks, saying Obama doesn’t agree with the big bonuses and has been saying the same thing dating back to the 2008 campaign.
But Obama’s comments have angered activists and policy experts on the left who say Dimon or Blankfein are the kinds of Wall Street bankers who helped bring the financial system to its knees with risky practices – the very kinds of people Obama has targeted in his recent anti-bonus comments.
“He was being much tougher on the banks. He was recognizing that they are engaged in repeat reckless risk-taking,” of which their compensation practices are a reflection, said Simon Johnson, an economist at M.I.T. who testified favorably on the so-called “Volcker rule” to the Senate Banking Committee last week.
Now the president sounds like “doesn’t care, doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it. … It’s called flip-flopping.”
“[H]ow is it possible, at this late date, for Obama to be this clueless?” Paul Krugman, liberal economist and Nobel Laureate, wrote on his New York Times blog. - Politico Story
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