The Great Bank Robbery of '10: Obama's Weekly Address

Here's the President's weekly address, this week taking on the bankers and Wall Street. We're reminded of the Woody Guthrie line, "Some rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen."

Bankers Banquet

Another column in the blind squirrel/acorn retrieval category, this one from Dana Milbank at the Kaplan Daily, who writes a compelling piece today about how the banking/ credit industry is smugly confident it has already derailed the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. See, the agency would police the practices of the industry, whose lending abuses led to last year's financial implosion. A no-brainer, right? Umm... well no. A wide range of pols are apparently "creating problems" for the legislation to establish the agency, unfortunately including Dem Sens. Michael Bennet (CO), Evan Bayh (IN), Tim Johnson (SD) and others, along with the usual Rethug Wall of Obstruction. Which goes to prove, when it comes to greased palms, there aren't many in Washington whose hands are clean.

The always-excellent Steven Perlstein also covers the financial and banking barons in his column today, singling out Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as too-beholden to the Wall Street order. These same institutions of greed are back to their old tricks, with CEOs reaping unconscionable bonuses, credit card companies upping their rates and fees or canceling cards for the slightest reasons, and Wall Street fighting to avoid having its catastrophic derivatives markets regulated.

As Milbank notes:

"Or, to put it another way, Don't regulate us now because the economy is still suffering from the mess we made because we weren't regulated the last time. Chutzpah, it appears, is recession-proof."

A Clown Show Begins

Eight of the nation's top banking companies are testifying before Congress today, to try to explain why the massive amounts of taxpayer dollars have yet to produce results from last fall's bailout. Another major concern is the lack of accountability for the money already loaned to these clowns, and the ease with which they are spending our money as if lavish junkets, huge bonuses and other perks were justified by their woeful mismanagement of their banks' assets.

Confiscation and sale of their personal assets -- second and third homes, yachts, and other signs of their previous theft -- and return of the proceeds to the investor/taxpayer would be a delicious move, even limits on their compensation, but who has the gonads to push for that? Geithner apparently lacks them.

(photo: Finally, their appearance matches their performance)