Guest Author - Tony Daltorio
There is yet another huge Wall Street bailout that will be paid for by Uncle Sam. Following on the heels of a massive bailout of Citigroup, the government has just announced a bailout of Bank of America.
Uncle Sam has had to step in and inject another $20 billion directly into Bank of America. On top of that, the government will guarantee approximately $120 billion of "bad" Bank of America loans.
I know what you are thinking. It's the same thing I am thinking. Is there no end to these massive Wall Street bailouts?
President Obama will officially take office this Tuesday. What can he do to stop the seemingly endless bailouts?
I think the first thing President Obama should do is to try to change the culture of Wall Street. He has to somehow break the Wall Street mindset - the sheer arrogance and sense of entitlement that pervades Wall Street.
The sense of entitlement and arrogance pervades Wall Streeet from top to bottom. It's not just big shots like Ponzi scheme king Bernie Madoff that have this attitude. It goes all the way down to the lower levels of Wall Street too.
Here is a perfect example - it's an article I ran across last week. The article appeared at the SeekingAlpha.com website, which is a major investing website. Articles appear there from a broad spectrum of Wall Street. Many articles I write also appear at that website.
The article in question came from a person who works for a system trading service called Point and Profit. In the article, he told everyone not to worry about the huge amount of Treasuries that our government will be forced to sell. The government will have to sell trillions of dollars worth of Treasuries to fund all of these massive bailouts.
The writer said that overseas investors would gladly buy all of the Treasuries we put up for sale in order to sustain their own economies. What nonsense - his ignorance was defintely showing. I'm sure he has never left the cozy confines of Manhattan and actually travelled overseas.
Here is a direct quote from his article about "foreigners": "They have NOTHING, they build NOTHING, they sell NOTHING without OUR demand". So he is basically saying that foreigners are NOTHING without the United States.
According to him, the whole purpose in life of everyone else on the globe is to merely serve the needs of Americans and to make their Wall Street "masters" filthy rich. I'm sure the author has similar feelings toward us "unwashed masses" of Americans too.
This is the sheer arrogance and sense of entitlement on Wall Street that President Obama needs to break. I am hoping President Obama can do it with his abilities as a powerful orator to get the country behind him and force changes on Wall Street.
President Obama could start by removing his nomination of Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary. I sure everyone knows by now my feelings about Mr. Geithner. He is a Wall Street insider. I think we've had enough of Wall Street insiders as Treasury secretaries!
Mr. Geithner conveniently forgot to pay some federal income tax he owed. He says it was an "honest" mistake. All I see is more of that Wall Street sense of entitlement and arrogance.
Let us hope that President Obama is able to make some much needed CHANGES in the culture of Wall Street soon.
As always, please send any comments or questions you have to me directly or through the forum.
