Jackson Jambalaya

The American Spectator interviewed Fox Business News Editor Charlie Gasparino about the relationship between President Obama and Wall Street. Mr. Gasparino, who made his bones covering financial topics for years at CNBC, provides some interesting quotes that will probably bother both liberals and conservatives. Liberals because the big banks thrived after receiving bailouts from Bush and Obama. Conservatives because the heads of most of these big banks tend to have politics that could be called progressive in nature and true conservatives hate crony capitalism.

Some passages from the interview:

"What I've seen over the years is this seemingly bizarre anomaly of how Wall Street, which is allegedly the epicenter of capitalism, in reality thrived on something that is very anti-capitalist, which is Big Government. Crony capitalism. And these guys aren't doing it just to make money on fees selling government bonds to finance the deficit or government programs. The people at the top have political beliefs that are strongly aligned with progressivism."

" When they looked at Obama they saw a guy who went to their schools, who shared their manners, who didn't break their chops. Obama was just so personally charming that something like Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers didn't have any effect. They believed at heart Obama was a moderate who understood them. And it panned out. If you look at one line of work that's done very well under Obama it isn't construction, it isn't small business or entrepreneurship. It's all the big banks that started making a ton of money the minute they got bailed out, and all those bailout mechanisms Bush put in place have been carried over and doubled down on under Obama." Interview"

Mr. Gasparino recently published a new book, Bought and Paid for, the Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street. Mr. Gasparino's comments are not that surprising. The so-called financial reform bill didn't do much about the main reasons for the financial meltdown: leverage limits. In fact, Bill Clinton said at the much-ballyhooed press conference last week big banks should have more leverage than smaller banks. Obama bails out Citi, which should have collapsed. Where does Orzag go? Citi. Then there is Fannie and Freddie. Instead of including them in the financial reform bill, Obama gave them an unlimited line of credit on New Year's Eve last year. Did I mention the bill also had a major loophole for reporting derivatives contracts? Like I tell my friend Brian Johnson. All Obama did was take Bush's economic polices under Paulson-Bernanke-Geithner and inject them with steroids.