I have upset liberal circles for years now in saying that as President, Barack Obama failed his leadership calling–the one history needed most from his tenure–when in the aftermath of 2009, his administration failed to break up the banks and prosecute corporate executives for profiting from criminal activities that brought the world economy to its knees.
That failure remains a lasting legacy a decade later and counting. Rather than help move the world onto a more productive, stable path, the failures and actions of the Democrats –as well as Republicans– helped to usher in the even more lawless corporatocracy that plagues us today. And we are nowhere near done paying the price for all this.
This article connects the dots well, at last, see The Biggest Legacy of the Financial Crisis is the Trump Presidency:
[Giethner] and Obama saw the crisis primarily as a macroeconomic event that could be solved through a series of aggressive technical fixes. As they arranged the mergers, bailouts, and Fed lifelines that rescued corporations from Citigroup to General Motors to Goldman Sachs, they prided themselves on their ability to tune out the public’s justified anger at the greed and recklessness exhibited by financiers and mortgage lenders. This extended even to some clear-cut abuses of the public trust that occurred on their watch, such as when American International Group Inc.—by then a ward of the state—decided to hand out bonuses.
What was so surreal about this period was not Obama’s conviction that growth was a magical elixir that would set everything right. It was his belief that achieving it required him to protect, rather than punish, those who’d driven the economy into the ground. Summoning the chief executive officers of the major banks to the White House in the spring of 2009, Obama told them, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” Like flagellants, he and his economic team were willing to absorb the lashing that should rightfully have been directed at his Wall Street guests, in the belief that shielding them advanced a higher purpose.
Ten years after the crisis, it’s clear Obama was foolish to think public sentiment could be negated or held at bay.
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