A Majority Of Americans Are Indeed Pissed About Banker Compensation...

and once again Obama and Congress have failed to respond, proving to us all that democracy is dead.  As per this Bloomberg report (LINK): 

Two-thirds of Americans say they have an unfavorable view of financial executives. More than half say big financial companies are only out to enrich themselves and also say they shouldn’t have received government aid. And most Americans don’t want to see bankers collecting fat checks at the end of the year if their companies were bailed out by taxpayers.

The issue is two-fold:  1) All of the big banks paying outrageous compensation this year would have failed - even Goldman Sachs - if it weren't for the generosity of the ex-bankers in the Bush/Obama Administrations who used Taxpayer money to keep them alive; and 2)  The saved banks haven't generated any real economic profits to justify the cash payouts. "Real economic profits" are defined as profits derived from risk-taking business activities that yield a cash on cash return and NOT the absurd mark-up of bad loans that have been largely monetized with Taxpayer money.

The pathetic argument for bank compensation goes like this, as expressed by this moron from the report: “'If you cut bonuses it will just let people go elsewhere. It will be a talent drain from the U.S.,” said Garson Li, 27, a Houston-based consultant at Deloitte.'"   Hmmm...."talent drain?"  Let's see, if the management committees at these banks told employees, whose base pay is already extremely high, that they weren't getting bonuses this year, where would these employees possibly find new jobs that paid anywhere near their base pay?  Where would they even find jobs?  Garson Li may get thrown into the Moron of the Year candidate pool.

The larger issue here is that Obama was elected by a demographic cross-section of the population that swallowed the bait of his campaign promise to fix the widespread corruption in our financial and political system.  On this, Obama has been a colossal failure.  This would explain the latest Gallup poll showing that Obama has the lowest first-year approval rating of any President in history.  Moreover, both Obama and Congress, despite polls which overwhelmingly support the issues of auditing the Fed, getting rid of Bernanke and letting big banks fail, have completely failed to respond to the voice of the People. 

When Obama was elected, I thought it might take a few years to determine if his Presidency was better or worse than that of the man he replaced.  I started having doubts when he began appointing his Cabinet. At this point I can state with complete confidence that Obama's Presidency has already deteriorated into a bigger failure than that of his predecessor, who left the White House with the lowest approval rating in history.

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"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it." -- Barack Obama, 2008

Someone commented to me that Obama's failures are no different than that of Bush's or than McCain's would have been.  To that I replied:  But Bush never promised "change," nor did McCain. Obama got elected for two reasons: he convinced the middle of the country (and southern rednecks) that he was serious about implementing "change." And second, the black voters had a record turnout and voted 97% for Obama. If Obama had not bamboozled the political "center," and if black voters had a typical turnout, he would have lost to McCain despite Palin's presence.  Those are the numbers and facts. Where Obama's failure is greater than Bush's, or McCain's would have been, is that Obama sold a dream and he's now defecating on that dream.