“If Wall Streeters are spoiled brats, they are spoiled brats with immense power and wealth at their disposal. And what they’re trying to do with that power and wealth right now is buy themselves not just policies that serve their interests, but immunity from criticism.” – Paul Krugman on the huge egos of Wall Street:
… let me take a moment to debunk a fairy tale that we’ve been hearing a lot from Wall Street and its reliable defenders — a tale in which the incredible damage runaway finance inflicted on the U.S. economy gets flushed down the memory hole, and financiers instead become the heroes who saved America.
Once upon a time, this fairy tale tells us, America was a land of lazy managers and slacker workers. Productivity languished, and American industry was fading away in the face of foreign competition.
Then square-jawed, tough-minded buyout kings like Mitt Romney and the fictional Gordon Gekko came to the rescue, imposing financial and work discipline. Sure, some people didn’t like it, and, sure, they made a lot of money for themselves along the way. But the result was a great economic revival, whose benefits trickled down to everyone.
You can see why Wall Street likes this story. But none of it — except the bit about the Gekkos and the Romneys making lots of money — is true.
They took our money and want to fabricate the back-story so we’ll worship them for taking it. Which is exactly why the banksters can’t stand Obama — not because his administration has been more difficult to work with than a Republican administration — it hasn’t, and not because they don’t deserve the country’s disapproval — they deserve that and so much more. However Wall Street ‘disdains’ Obama because he’s been ‘publicaly disrespectful’ to them. It’s all about their egos, again, and how they’re represented to the public at large:
“You have to understand, it is very personal. He raised money from us,” one executive at a top bank said. “Then he started calling us bad people. So forgive us for not wanting to buy him a drink after getting punched in the eye.”
Geisst and other observers see the animus differently. They see it as a product of Wall Street’s profound and persistent narcissistic disorder. Bankers with the disorder have an innate inability to handle even mild criticism coupled with an unshakable belief that whatever they do is the smartest and best possible thing.
But Geisst also suggested the shock and disdain is something of a pose, a feint to fight off greater re-regulation.
“Their best defense here has been incredulity,” he said. “Wall Street just pretends they don’t understand what all the fuss is about and can’t believe how they are being talked about and hope that their incredulity will translate into softer treatment, which is exactly what happened here.”
Christopher Whalen, investment banker, author and cofounder of Institutional Risk Analytics, said the distaste isn’t policy-related, it’s personal.
“Wall Street disdains Obama,” Whalen said. “Hate is too strong a term. Obama is publicly disrespectful, thus Wall Street complains.”
It would be almost funny, if it weren’t for the fact that these narcissistic non-self-aware children actually control the entire world. They’re just mad they can’t control what we think and especially that Obama isn’t as willing to read us the same bedtime stories as the GOP always is.
