Wall Street -- the Obama drumbeat gets louder

The Democrats obviously think that they have found a new issue which will let them have an advantage over Republicans, namely: they are fighting Wall Street greed. Their plan is becoming clear. Thus, two weeks ago, the White House told Democrats like Blanche Lincoln to stop negotiating with Senate Republicans for a bipartisan bill to regulate financial institutions; the Democrats decided to do their own partisan bill. Then, obama stepped up his rhetoric against Wall Street. Then, in a supposed coincidence, the SEC files fraud charges against Goldman Sachs which, on their face, seem not to constitute fraud at all but rather 20-20 hindsight and unhappiness at the results of some trading. Now, we have today's leak that the SEC is investigating other investment banks for designing investments that were meant to fail. This generalization of the supposed wrong committed by Goldman actually goes way beyond the acts with which Goldman is actually charged. Goldman is supposed to have allowed the seller of the investment to speak to the selection agent for the bonds to suggest some which could be included in the final product. Since the selection agent is a subsidiary of the buyer of the majority of the investment, we also see that the buyer got a bigger say in the selection process than the seller. Still, Goldman did not, even according to the SEC, design the product to fail. It only let the seller participate in the selection process. For the media and with government leaks, however, niceties like accuracy and truth seem not to matter. Now, all of Wall Street designed rigged investments that were sure to fail so as to get money away from ignorant investors.

This subject is too complicated for most people to understand it. Indeed, it is perfectly designed for the demogogues of the Democrats to use it to bludgeon Wall Street. It leaves the Republicans with the choice of either going along to avoid being tarred with the Wall Street label or opposing the bill and end up looking like they are defending the rich. My guess is that we will soon see the Republicans go along with the bill. Strange isn't it that Wall Street gave the vast majority of its money to the Democrats? Nothing like having friends in high places!