Really Not a Good Idea for Obama To Be Talking About The "Best and the Brightest"
From President Obama's 60 Minutes interview, broadcast last night:
President Obama said Sunday it isn't "anti-Wall Street" to say that the "best and the brightest" made poor investment decisions that have plunged the nation into economic crisis.
"Because of bad bets made on Wall Street, there have been enormous losses," Obama said during a 60 Minutes interview in which he defended his advocacy of increased federal regulation. "I want them (the people on Wall Street) to do well, but what I also know is that the financial sector was out of balance," he said.
There's no question that a load of people on Wall Street made stupid decisions. Typically, those decisions were aided and abetted by dumb government policies (read: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and more) and various ongoing bailouts ("Too big to fail" is a phrase that should never again be uttered by anyone in Washington, D.C.). And now the dumb decisions of the past 1,000 years are being exacerbated by the bailout/stimulus frenzy that shows little to no signs of abating, even as it sets up the next big catastrophe down the road. Is that any way to create what Obama dubs a "New Era of Responsibility" in his proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 (which increases spending over FY 2008 by 19 percent)?
60 Minutes interview video below.