Wall Street Doing Better Under Obama Than Eight Years Of Bush; But, Obama’s Not Good For Economy

There’s a running these within GOP circles that President Obama has to go. And why does he have to go? Well, other than the obvious motive which is to return power to the GOP, there is no other reason. Now, if the GOP were an honest bunch, they would tell us “regular folks” their motives.

Instead, through their propagandist machinations, they would have us believe that Obama is destroying America. Let them tell it, Obama created the recession, and is making it worse. And thus, the only qualified politicians to save America from peril, is the Grand Old Party. You know, the same obstructionists uninterested in job creation, eliminating loopholes or tax increases for the rich?

Now, while many of their supporters traverse and engage in outside of the beltway talk. While parroting carefully memorized talking points as only a good zombie can. Often devoid of factual information as they are, the following might be problematic for them, and not the president.

You see, according to the Washington Post’s Zachary A. Goldfarb, Wall Street has been doing much better under two and a half years of Barack Obama, than eight years of the George W. Bush presidency. Sure, things are bad on Main Street; but, can we really say Obama has made it worse?

The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.

Wall Street firms — independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They earned more in the first 2¹ / ₂ years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.

(See data in an Excel file here.)

Behind this turnaround, in significant measure, are government policies that helped the financial sector avert collapse and then gave financial firms huge benefits on the path to recovery. For example, the federal government invested hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in banks — low-cost money that the firms used for high-yielding investments on which they made big profits.

Stabilizing the financial system was considered necessary to prevent an even deeper economic recession. But some critics say the Bush administration, which first moved to bail out Wall Street, and the Obama administration, which ultimately stabilized it, took a far less aggressive approach to helping the American people.

“There’s a very popular conception out there that the bailout was done with a tremendous amount of firepower and focus on saving the largest Wall Street institutions but with very little regard for Main Street,” said Neil Barofsky, the former federal watchdog for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, the $700 billion fund used to bail out banks. “That’s actually a very accurate description of what happened.”

Oh yeah, remember when the Tea Party was so upset about the bank bailout that Obama put in place? They were so upset they were screaming that they wanted their country back? Where are they today? Oh yeah, they were shills for corporate interest, and it wasn’t Obama who passed TARP. They were also screaming and asking where were the bailouts for Main Street, so can we assume that they’re now Occupying Wall Street?

Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration, for instance, compelled banks to increase lending to consumers, known as “prime borrowers.” Such a step might have spurred spending and growth, although generating demand for loans may have proved difficult in the downturn.

A recent study by two professors at the University of Michigan found that banks did not significantly increase lending after being bailed out. Rather, they used taxpayer money, in part, to invest in risky securities that profited from short-term price movements. The study found that bailed-out banks increased their investment returns by nearly 10 percent as a result.

“If the goal was to support lending, it would have been sensible to require a portion of the money to support credit origination,” said Ran Duchin, one of the finance professors who completed the study. “Lending to prime consumers was not the most profitable use of their capital.

So, can you tell me who is best to run the country given this information? Can you say that Obama is indeed bad for America when the “Fat-Cats” are doing better than ever before? Can you say that Obama is bad for America when the GOP collective is opposed to raising taxes on the wealthy so as to pay for his jobs bill, to get the middle class back to work?

Beyond these questions, who do we credit for the dip in the unemployment rate to an even 9 percent? The economy has shown twenty straight months of adding jobs since Obama took office, and the economy has shown a 2.5% growth in the last quarter. So, again, who do we credit this to? Barack Obama? Democrats? Republicans? The Tea Party?

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go with the obvious answer. That’s right, I’m going to credit all of this to George W. Bush. Sure he’s not in office and it doesn’t make sense to credit him. But hey, how different is that from blaming the mess him and the GOP created on president Obama?

If Obama was that bad, why are Republican elected politicians attempting to suppress votes?

Some of Wall Street’s success has moderated in recent months, with bank stock prices down and layoffs on the rise. This mostly has reflected the renewed slowdown in the U.S. economy this year and the European debt crisis buffeting global markets.

Representatives of the financial industry say regulations in last year’s Dodd-Frank legislation, which Obama pushed for and signed, also have crimped bank profits. But many analysts think the law will make the financial system more stable. The legislation, for instance, requires banks to maintain a greater capital cushion to withstand losses during bad economic times. The measure also created a regulator whose sole purpose is to police lending to ordinary Americans.

But many of the legislation’s most significant measures have yet to be put into place, and their ultimate effect on the bottom line remains unclear.

Financial firms have raised major concerns about one of the largest structural changes made by the law, the “Volcker Rule.” This measure would bar banks from engaging in trading and other speculative activity on their own behalf rather than to profit customers. But the rule’s impact could prove limited because of loopholes and exceptions allowed by lawmakers and regulators working to implement it.

I just wish someone had the guts to tax the excess reserves of cash banks are sitting on right now. I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I think to do so would force banks to start lending; and thus, stimulating demand by the creation of jobs. It’s too bad both parties are beholden to the financial industry to even suggest a job creating measure such as I have.