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Wall Street Feeling Betrayed By Obama?

By Djelloul Marbrook  

Ahem, Wall Street, if the shoe fits....

Wall Street feeling betrayed by Obama?

A man's friends don't tell you much-you can be the new best friend of anyone who's trying to swindle you-but a man's enemies speak volumes. Take Barack Obama. The loonies and liars on the right would have you believe he's a foreign Muslim (ooh, that's supposed to be bad, right?) and now it seems his former Wall Street pals would have you believe he's a Communist threat. Remember the Communist threat?

Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in The New York Times Aug. 31 that 2008 Obama goombahs like Daniel S. Loeb and Steven A. Cohen are now consorting with Republicans and calling the President a bad guy for making Wall Streeters out to be villains. Loeb manages Third Point Partners and Mr. Cohen is the founder of a hedge fund. The Loeb-Cohen snit well fits the definition of the spoiled child.

They apparently don't like Wall Street having to take the rap for its misdeeds, the way some guy who robs the corner convenience store would have to do. They want a little perspective, such as blaming something abstract like the breaks or economic cycles or North Korea. And they're not particularly grateful for the taxpayer bailout because it had a few strings attached.

It makes me think that our beleaguered president must be doing something right. If Wall Street hollers ouch, well, that must be the spot. Not that Wall Street alone is to blame for our sickly economy, not by a long shot. The Reaganomics ideologues, still swearing by their big lie that tax cuts and less government will make us all prosperous, have everything to do with today's debacle. And they're still lying their heads off to make people like Loeb and Cohen richer.

But Barack Obama is being tarred by the same brush the plutocrats used to tar Franklin D. Roosevelt-he's a traitor to his class, they're squawking. What class is that? FDR came from old money and genteel circumstances. Things were handed to him. Barack Obama was born poor and had to excel at what he did, and he did excel. So these muckety-mucks thought he belonged to their class because he embodied the American dream. They were willing in their generosity to overlook his skin color. They thought he was conning liberal and moderate Democrats and would turn out to be a Republican in disguise.

Well, he sure as hell has disappointed the progressive wing of his party, perhaps fatally, and now it seems he has disappointed the titular Democrats who just want an old-fashioned Northeast Republican who calls himself a Democrat.

This is what happens to the rare politician who thinks, and it especially happens in a culture as polarized by cable news and venal politicians as our own.

Djelloul (jeh-lool) Marbrook was born in 1934 in Algiers to a Bedouin father and an American painter. He grew up in Brooklyn, West Islip and Manhattan, New York, where he attended Dwight Preparatory School and Columbia. He then served in the U.S. Navy.

His book of poems, Far From Algiers, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University in 2007 and was published in 2008. His story, Artists Hill, adapted from the second novel of an unpublished trilogy, won the Literal Latte first prize in fiction in 2008. His poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, poemeleon, The Same, and other journals. The pioneering e-book publisher, Online Originals (UK), published his novella, Alice MIller's Room, in 1999.

He worked as a reporter for The Providence Journal and as an editor for The Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, The Winston-Salem Journal & Sentinel and The Washington Star. Later he worked as executive editor of four small dailies in northeast Ohio and two medium-size dailies in northern New Jersey.

Del's book, Far From Algiers   New review of Far from Algiers
Artists Hill, Literal Latte fiction first prize
Djelloul Marbrook Blog
His mother's art: www.juanitaguccione.com   His aunt's art: www.irenericepereira.com