JONATHAN CHAIT OCTOBER 18, 2010
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Former New York Stock Exchange Director and NRCC donor Ken Langone complains in an op-ed that President Obama is preventing a recovering by saying mean things about businessmen:
Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase.
What is Langone talking about? Obama has accused Republican elected officials, not business owners, of driving the economy into a ditch. The part about short-changing workers? Fleecing customers? Cheating borrowers? He cites no quotations, and this is either a wild distortion or a pure figment of Langone's imagination.
I suppose it's no surprise that an angry, nutty rich guy -- Langone's self description: "I'm nuts, I'm rich, and boy, do I love a fight" -- would concoct persecution fantasies. But, really, why are malefactors of wealth like Langone so sensitive? I can see why he wants to keep in place tax cuts for the rich. Do they really think that the fact that Obama has denounced the miscalculation and greed by Wall Street is actually holding back an economic recovery? Or does it just hurt their feelings so much that the public does not regard people like him with the gratitude to which he feels entitled, and presidential rhetoric strikes Grasso as the most likely explanation for this otherwise inexplicable injustice?
6 comments
Typo alert: you mixed up your I-talian names when you referred to Langone as Grasso at the end.
- ATuring
October 18, 2010 at 9:51am
When it comes to beating up on Wall Street, Obama's a milquetoast compared to the Mother of All Grizzlies (from the VP debate): [I]t was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that. One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. [T]here have been so many changes in the conditions of our economy in just even these past weeks that there has been more and more revelation made aware now to Americans about the corruption and the greed on Wall Street.
- Geoff G
October 18, 2010 at 10:42am
To Langone: It sounds like someone needs to dump their wealth, get out of the business and go back to being and under-the-radar citizen. More for the rest of us. Thank you.
- jet
October 18, 2010 at 11:36am
Well, he probably owns several Republican elected officials, so criticism of them is like criticism of him.
- JEFF FREY
October 18, 2010 at 12:36pm
Rich people want to be rich AND for everyone to thank them for being rich.
- ironyroad
October 18, 2010 at 2:57pm
That is an hilarious comment, Jeff.
- liberal reformer
October 19, 2010 at 2:16pm