Please, Mr. President, Show Us Some Anger (Joe Rothstein's Commentary)

September 23, 2009

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNEWS.COM

Angry? Why should Americans be angry? Just because a handful of people made millions---and in some cases tens or hundreds of millions---playing at a financial casino while their greed and recklessness created a world economic catastrophe...which the rest of us have to pay to clean up.?

Angry? Because many of the very same companies we've bailed out are at it again, playing on the same gaming tables, while pocketing more huge salaries and bonuses?

Angry? Why should we be angry?

Just because up there bail outs, bonuses and high flying stock prices are the order of the day while down here the jobs are still disappearing, foreclosures and still tossing people out of their homes and businesses and the nation's debt is measured in ever more trillions?

A lot of angry people showed up at town hall meetings this summer. But a lot more angry people didn't. They were the public employees laid off or furloughed, the teachers who wound up with more crowded classrooms, the business people who couldn't get operating credit, the families desperate to have adequate health insurance at a fair price and who are counting to the President and Congress to come through for them.

We're hearing a lot from people who think government is "too intrusive" and spending too much. But there's another huge constituency out there----one that thinks the government ought to be spending more and doing more to energize the economy, to create jobs, to stop the bleeding in the mortgage markets and in local, state and federal agencies they count on for public service.

No matter how people view all of this, "It could have been worse" may be true, but it's not a winning argument.

Neither is it a winning argument that tens of millions of dollars have to be paid in salaries and bonuses to those who brought down the economy to retain "top talent."

Citigroup lost nearly $20 billion in 2008, took $50 billion or so in government loans and guarantees and then paid bonuses of more than $1 million to 738 of its employees. Now it's poised to pay out many more bonuses, including more than $100 million in bonuses to one of its commodities managers.

Angry? Why wouldn't most of us be angry?

And not just Americans. Wall Street brought down the economies of just about every nation in the world. At the G20 meetings in Pittsburgh this week the heads of most European countries are leaning hard on President Obama to make serious reforms in the way the U.S. financial system functions so they won't be vulnerable in the future to the unconscionable excesses we've seen in the past.

President Obama is often eloquent. He can be forceful. He can say all the right words with a rationality sorely lacking during the Bush years. But he seems to be missing the anger gene. And because of it, one of his major political problems at the moment is that he doesn't seem as angry at the bad guys as most of the rest of us are.

On the anniversary of Lehman's demise President Obama went to Wall Street and told the money men: "...hear my words: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall...We are calling on the financial industry to join us in a constructive effort to update the rules and regulatory structure to meet the challenges of this new century."

Good luck with that, Mr. President. The prospect that the guardians of financial power will work in harmony with the White House and Congress to fix what's ailing in the system are no more likely than expecting that the health insurance industry will help push health reform over the finish line.

The money men already are spending millions a week to kill off the president's plan for a new consumer financial product protection agency, and to resist creation of new "super cop" financial regulatory authority. In the next few days or weeks many of the same banks that took billions in tax dollars to survive will be passing out more million dollar bonuses----daring the president's "pay czar" and the Federal Reserve to stop them.

To defeat them will require a mobilization of the angry paired up with some good, old-fashioned, knuckle-breaking backroom political grit. It's irrational to think that being reasonable will topple the monuments of finance.

A lot of angry people want their pound of flesh, certainly. But even more, they want jobs, a stable home mortgage market, direct help to restart businesses and a certainty that the White House and Congress both understand their pain and are applying the right remedies to heal it.

So far, that assurance isn't there. On the contrary, there's a strong suspicion abroad that the big guys who got us into this mess are still running the show. Without an economic turnaround at street level, Americans will be convinced that their public leaders are either abetting the financially powerful or are powerless to fight them.

President Obama has presented rational, cogent arguments for the way things are, and he's laid out a reasonable road map for protecting us from future meltdowns.

But anger rides a different horse than rationality. And unless the President and the Democrats soon find a way capture that anger and ride it successfully to reform, they can expect to meet it coming straight at them, full force, in 2010.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)