Burned By Obama

by Charles Gasparino - September 29th, 2009 - New York Post

In the depths of the financial crisis last year, people like Morgan Stanley's John Mack, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Greg Fleming (then of Merrill Lynch), JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein were telling everyone that candidate Barack Obama was a "moderate," and moderation was what this country needed.

What a difference a year makes. They won't admit it in public -- but in private conversations, the top guys on Wall Street are feeling burned.

The guy who seemed like such a steady voice -- vowing to curb runaway spending and restoring order to the banking system and the economy as a whole -- is instead so driven to achieve his big-government policy goals that he and his policy people are ignoring their own economic advisers on the severe economic costs that his agenda will cause.

What idiocy caused them to think this man was a moderate? Is this the kind of superficial investigation our financial leaders now tolerate? "He talks pretty" seems to be the total of their investigation before they proclaimed this marxist revolutionary a moderate. Certainly Obama has learned to cover his anger and hate with the wry grin which he uses constantly. Yet how can our great financial leaders have been so duped.

This is a very important article with some great wisdom. In his own comments on this article, Scott Johnson at Powerline says:

Here is a question to ponder. If Barack Obama had a fully free hand, what would he do? I suggest that we should pay close attention to developments over the last few years in Venezuela - for the direction in which Obama's proposals point is the one followed by Hugo Chavez. That he admires what Chavez has done is evident from the fact that he has lent Chavez a hand in his attempt to export the Venezuelan revolution to the Honduras.

Johnson has a great quote from Walter Lippmann on the urge by statists like Obama to "control" people. Click here and read the article for Lippmann's insights on how the various elements of the left rationalize their love of what others call tyranny.

I wonder just how long it will be before some of the economic advisers who feel burned by Obama's duplicity have the guts to stand up to him? Or does America no longer have leaders with guts? Is that out of fashion?