The uproar in the GOP primaries about whether or not Mitt Romney and Bain Capital created as many jobs as he claims is really an attempt to paint Romney as a creature of Wall Street. The accepted political wisdom is that ties to Wall Street are toxic in 2012, so the closer Romney is to the street, the more he will be hurt. Meanwhile, as the press keeps reporting on the romney story, it has been almost completely silent about the close ties between Obama and Wall Street that have been growing closer. For example, how many of you know that Obama's new chief of staff was the Chief Operating Officer of the Citibank Alternative Investments unit in the years leading up to the crash. How many of you know that Jacob Lew, this new chief of staff, used that position to place major bets on the health of the housing industry, and that he was given bonuses well in excess of a million dollars for his efforts. Do not feel bad if you did not know this; these are facts that a virtually unreported.
When Mr. Daley was brought in a year ago to be the White House Chief of Staff, Obama touted Daley's ties to the business and financial community. In those days, Obama was not castigating the wealthy all the time. Now that Daley has been fired and Lew brought in to replace him, nothing is said of Lew's background with a bank that would have failed but for the federal bailout. Nothing is said of Lew's heavy involvement in investments in the housing/mortgage market. Nothing is said of Lew's ties to the financial community. And, the press takes its marching orders very seriously; it remains silent about this history.
The real truth is that Obama has much closer ties to Wall Street than Romney. Obama gets many times the amount of contributions that Romney has gotten from the financial community. Obama has many more folks working for him who actually worked on Wall Street. None of this fits the campaign narrative, however, so it just does not get coverage.
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