On Which Street Will Obama Walk?

Here’s a fact.  Obama cannot walk on both Wall Street and on Main Street at the same time.  Any appearance that he does so is mere pretense.  To walk on Wall Street is to oppose Main Street.  To walk on Main Street is to oppose Wall Street.  It was not always so.  Before the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Investment Banks served to transfer wealth, and Commercial Banks served to provide the loans needed to fuel the economy.  Now all have flocked to investment, because that’s where the most money can be made.  Nobody is fueling the economy.  Unless government does so, funding the effort with funds from the beneficiaries of unprecedented upward transfer of wealth, the economy will continue to wither.  The economy depends on jobs here to benefit Main Street.  Transfer of wealth depends on keeping wages here depresses and transferring jobs offshore to benefit Wall Street.  On which Street will Obama walk?

Yeah yeah, I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it as long as I have to. Obama has a choice to make.

After business leaders sank millions into the midterms to defeat Democrats, a chastened Obama administration is seeking reconciliation with the corporate community.

But after two years of building frustration, the executives say they won’t be won over by another round of private lunches and photo opportunities at the White House.

If President Barack Obama has any hope for a truce with corporate America in time for his 2012 reelection campaign, he needs to drop the name-calling, try to see their point of view better and step up with some specific proposals […]

“We have to see some concrete policies that will help grow business because everyone’s goal is to grow jobs. This isn’t hocus-pocus. There are concrete steps to take for job growth,” she added.

Reality:

Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.

Reality:

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

There’s no job growth because corporations aren’t reinvesting their massive profits into new hires. That’s not Obama’s problem, that’s Wall Street’s and the business community’s problem.

Fact is, voters didn’t see Democrats as any different than Republicans on dealing with Wall Street, so they voted on social and irrelevant issues (like earmarks)… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Kos’ article illustrates my point.

However, I’m not saying that Obama should be anti-business.  To the contrary, business is the engine that runs the economy.  Wall Street and business are not synonymous, no matter how much banksters and their Republican lackeys would have us believe they are.  Wall Street is currently only that segment of business that transfers wealth while providing nothing of real value in return.  The business Obama must support is the business that produces goods and services here in America, products for export, builds infrastructure, provides green energy, etc.

Wall Street needs no Democratic representation.  They have the Republican Party bought and paid for to help them strip mine you and I for the few resources we have left.

So, on which street will Obama walk?  I wish I knew.  I’d love to have the certainty of an Obamaphile, for whom he can do no wrong, or of a Regressive, for whom he can do no right.  Neither of those positions is reality based.  We’ll have to wait and see, before planning for the future.