Apparently, President Obama is having trouble raising Wall Street money for 2012.  One anonymous champion of capitalism even complains that it's because "Obama simply doesn't like rich people."  I figure a statement like that will draw cackles around here.  If Obama doesn't like rich people, who the heck does he like?  And, if he treats the people he dislikes as well as he's been treating the rich, how do I get on the big guy's bad side?

I used to write a political op-ed column for Forbes and my very first headline was, "Obama Loves The Rich."  This was back when everyone was howling about what a socialist he was in the wake of the financial crisis.  Back then, the president did socialize Wall Street's losses, spreading the pain caused by a few amongst all of the citizens in an attempt to save the very people who now inist that he hates them.  But that's about as far as the socialism (actually, corporatism -- the collusion of business and government interests and, to a lesser extent with the Detroit rescue, labor) went.  What really happened during the bailouts was a form of socialism for the rich.  It was high end welfare.

In exchange, Obama wanted to loosely regulate compensation at the banks for as long as they remained under government protection.  These were incredibly light terms.  The government didn't take much direct equity in the banks.  The government didn't fire any executives.  Even though the U.S. was forced to become the largest single shareholder of Citigroup it didn't use its muscle to fire Vikrim Pandit, who had led the bank into ruin.  Imagine that.  Not only did taxpayers generously rescue Pandit's bank, Pandit still has a job.

The subsequent financial regulation reforms that Obama signed into law were written in consultation with the evry people who caused the crisis in the first place.  For all the trouble these banks caused, they were asked to give up very a little.  Perhaps Goldman is angry that it will have to close down a few proprietary trading desks but if they were honest with themselves they'd realize that the regulations might actually save their company.  Without prop desks, clients might have some assurance that their banker isn't out to screw them.  Goldman can't manage its conflicts of interest so it'd be better off if the government took them away.  It's not a regulation, it's a favor.

Of course, business people don't like to be told what to do.  This, to me, was the most telling observation of the essay "Why Not Keynes?" by James K. Galbraith:

"That is what made Keynes insufferable. It wasn’t that as a young man he liked boys. It wasn’t that he taught that that thrift is a vice, or that savings are pathological, that deficits are helpful, that debt is necessary, that interest rates should be kept low, that the economy should be run at full employment for the good of all. It wasn’t even his reference at the end of The General Theory to the “euthanasia of the rentier.”

No, it was the fact that Keynesian policy required Keynes. And if Keynes were in charge, then the captains of industry could not be. Larry Summers is not Keynes. But he did give the impression, for a while, of running the show. This was a fatal error. It was the impression of making policy that business and the Tea Party could not stand. A better policy would not have been better liked."

For these people it isn't enough that the government spends billions to save them from their own failures, or that the government uses the force of American foreign policy to advance the global interests of its largest businesses, or that they enjoy the loudest voices by far in the political process -- they appreciate none of that a bit.

They have to be in charge.  They don't want to be told what to do.  They don't even want to be told what to do when it's in their best interests.  No government has been so helpful to businesses in such a hands off way as the U.S. government has since the middle of the 20th century.  China's government helps its large corporations but it also owns huge stakes in each and directs their activities.  Do you know what China's government would do to Lloyd Blankfein were he to lie to them the way he lied to Carl Levin?

It's sad, of course, that the plutocracy is now way past the point where Obama can run for president without courting Wall Street.  It'd be nice if he could rely on small donors to make up for the lack of that largesse but the fact is that the top 10% can outspend the bottom 90% if it wants to and, of course, the bottom 90% is politically polarized (and, of course, some of us normals on the left don't feel that the President has come anywhere near earning our donations).

Obama has served American business, particularly the financial sector, very well since he took office.  I don't even mean that to be a pejorative statement.  I really mean that from my perspective, if you look at where the banking system was in 2009 and where it is today, it's stunning that we hear complaints and whining out of New York's financial district.

The simple fact is that just like a group of people in the woods of Kentucky claiming to be "sovereign citizens," America's business interests refuse to be governed.  At all.  They're not anarchists because none of them would survive anarchy.  They need laws to direct people to respect their property, to pay their bills and to show up for work every day.  But they will not submit to laws that govern their behavior.

Even something so simple as "please don't secretly trade against the products that you're selling to your clients," is translated as, "he hates us."  If they sound like children it's because it's the same mentality:  "You're not the boss of me!"  But beyond that, they demand to be the bosses.

The lesson for Obama should be simple, though I fear he'll never get it.  Short of handing over the reins of the U.S. government to the Chamber of Commerce, there is nothing that he can do that these people will find acceptable.  He saved their businesses and they complained every step of the way and didn't even say thank you.  So maybe he should try playing to the rest of the country.  We just might appreciate the help.