I shouldve gotten paid by the hour to hear these people whine, says one, whom Ill call Former Official A.
(In truth, closing the hedge fund loophole will raise only a tiny fraction of the budget shortfall; raising the capital gains rate or the top marginal rates on ordinary income will raise a whole lot more, but still less than whats needed.)
If [Obama] simply said, Were in a difficult environment and all of us have to pay more, Id sign on one hundred percent, says Omegas Cooperman. Rather than trying to create a sense of equal opportunity, hes shitting on people who are successful. ... He creates this impression that wealthy people dont pay taxes. Who the fuck doesnt pay taxes?
The fund managers, he says, wanted Obama to approach the crash the way he had his 2008 speech on race: This is what they liked about him. He said, History is history, he described the history, and said, Lets move on.
A good speech [on the crash] in their mind was, We all screwed up, everyone had a hand in creating this mess, ... but this is not a time to cast blame, blah blah blah. Instead, in their view, Obama told a different story, a counter-narrative that this problem originated basically in Manhattan ... and painted a story in which they were the bad guys.
Says a former Democratic fund-raiser: What Obama didnt understand was that he couldnt play an inside-outside gametell them on the one hand, We dont hate you, but the politics are what the politics are. ... These people really freaked out about being villainized. Kramer, Obamas chief ally among the managers, observed drily,
There are people in the world of finance who have a limited understanding of the national mood.
For years, most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation, says Daley. These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestals gone, and now, in a lot of peoples minds, the industry doesnt have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. Theyve got to blame somebody, and they blame him because he is representative of that group of people who arent us. Former Official B told me,
Whether its [former Fed Chairman Paul] Volcker saying theres been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, theyre hypersensitive. Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: They dont just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.
Their idol is Chris Christie, the tough guy across the river. Former Official A recently met with a major hedge fund executive who was waxing poetic about the New Jersey governor. Its the great man theory of history, the former official says. They believed Obama was a great man, andlo and beholdWashington is a complicated place, and they blame it all on him, and now they believe its going to be a former prosecutor whos going to solve all their dreams.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/101726/obama-wall-street-donors-campaign-finance-tax?passthru=OTk3NzY3OGMyN2FiY2MyMGJhNmUyMmEyNmYyOWI3NTI
