Michelle’s husband gave a speech on Wall Street today. Check it:
Marking the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, which set off a series of events that led to last fall’s financial crisis, Obama cautioned Wall Street to step lightly as the economy and financial sector recover.
It was a “series of events” alright, but it started long before Lehman went under. Over the course of several years, our nation’s financial industry perpetrated a fraud on the entire financial world by creating extremely complicated (bogus) investment securities and their accompanying massive — albeit temporary — profits, all from thin air. Then, when the inevitable happened, and the bottom fell out, the right-wing noise machine rushed in to blame it all on niggers borrowing more money than they could afford to repay.
No one went to jail over this crime. In fact, when our government ponied up a trillion or so taxpayer dollars to stave off the next depression, the people who ran the whole system into the ground began passing out bonuses like frat boys pouring tequila shots. (Woo-hoo, make mine a double!)
So today our preznit stood before these titans of finance and told them a thing or two:
“Unfortunately, there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we are still recovering, they are choosing to ignore them. They do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation’s.”
That ought to teach them. I just hope he didn’t go too far and do anything uncivil like shake his finger at them.
I’m off to buy shingles for my garage today. That is what they did in Mexico when the peso got devalued – bought as much worthwhile stuff as they could while it still had a little value.