WALL STREET SPONSORSHIP
Fifth, both McCain and Obama are deeply beholden to the very financial
elites and Wall Street firms who created the current mess and who stand
to gain from the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke proposal. Through August of 2008,
McCain's top 20 contributors include: Merrill Lynch (#1 at $298,000);
Citigroup (#2 at $209,000); Morgan Stanley (3 at $233,000); Goldman
Sacs (4 at $208,000); Credit Suisse Group (8 at $150,000); UBSAG (10 at
$140,000); PriceWaterhouseCooper (11 at $140,000); Bank of America (13
at $129,000); Wachovia (14 at $122,000); Lehman Bros (15 at $116,000),
Bear Stearns (19 at $99,000), and Pinnacle West (20 at $98,000)
Of all the leading U.S. economic sectors, FIRE (finance, real estate,
and insurance) is the top giver to McCain at $22,108,921 [11].
Obama's top 20 contributors include Goldman Sachs (#1 at $692,000),
Citigroup (#3 at $449,000), JP Morgan Chase (#4 at $405,000), Lehman
Bros. (#10 at $371,000), and Morgan Stanley (#16 at $319,000). Note
that Goldman Sachs has given three times the amount to Obama it has
contributed to McCain and that Citigroup's Obama giving more than
doubles its investment in McCain. Obama's #16 contributor - the
investment bank Morgan Stanley - gave Obama $20,000 more than McCain got
from his top contributor (the investment banker and brokerage house
Merrill Lynch).
FIRE is also Obama's top contributor, granting him $24,860,257, more
than $2 million more that sector gave to McCain [12].
It is darkly interesting to note that the Obama campaign's finance
chair, the Hyatt heress Penny Pritzker, was one of the leading
originators of the toxic sub-prime mortgage instrument during the late
1990s, when she served on the board of the Superior Bank in Hinsdale,
Illinois [13].
Also worth noting, Obama initially tried to hand his vice presidential
nominee vetting process to Jim Johnson, a former CEO of mortgage lender
Fannie Mae (recently re-nationalized in the wake of its financial
collapse). Johnson was a top player in the meltdown of the financial
system [14].
As the prolific author and Wall Street critic Kevin Phillips noted on
the Public Broadcasting System's Bill Moyers Show last week, "But then,
you've got Obama with Bob Rubin and he doesn't seem to have any problem
with the hedge fund types. I mean, one of the Chicago people was a major
financer of his. He gets a guy to pick his vice-president. Turns out to
be somebody who was part of the Fannie and Freddie mess."
"So I don't exactly see Obama as this fellow riding in on a horse who
represents all kinds of reformism. It's an important thing probably to
have to change from the Republicans but I don't see that he is free of
the ties to finance and Democratic Party financial types....."
When Moyers noted many Democrats' hopes that a new New Deal - involving
tightened financial regulation among other progressive reforms - is in
the offing under an Obama administration [15], Phillips responded with
understandable skepticism, explaining that:
"there's several difficulties here. First of all, at this point, what
you've got are the Democrats are the party right at this point that's
getting most of the financial money. When Franklin D. Roosevelt won in
1932, we know he wasn't getting most of the financial money."
"The second thing is I don't think we're more than partway through. The
Democrats think it's going to be another 1933, they get in there, they
can do all the New Deal stuff. My feeling is that they're coming in
halfway and they're going to have to make hard decisions that are going
to eat the Democratic coalition like a bologna sandwich. They're going
to start civil wars...."
Phillips added that McCain probably "osmossed ...much less sycophancy
toward Wall Street and the money crowd" growing up in "a naval family"
than what Obama would have "osmossed at Harvard Law School." (But
Phillips also noted that McCain who is an economic idiot, as evidence by
his willingness to be advised by the ridiculous Gramm)[16].
full: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18930
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