Take the Money and Run (The Steve Miller Band, 1976)

"Money, and not morality, is the principal of commercial nations" - Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the 3rd President of the United States (}1801 -1809)

So here we go again. Get ready for round two. A month after the historic passage of the most groundbreaking and morally responsible legislation in half a century, health care reform, President Obama is once again circling the wagons to take on another special interest behemoth. This time it is the banks and financial institutions, the cognoscenti that play with the nation's money by day and drink martinis after five, the aristocracy of corporate America, the fat cats of Wall Street and their enablers and supporters on K Street (home of corporate lobbyists in Washington D.C.)

Buoyed by their achievement in passing significant health care reform, a bill that will provide medical insurance to an additional 32 million Americans, the Democratic majority in Congress is posied to pass the toughest financial regulatory reform since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930's. Back then FDR didn't a lawyer or a banker to design and implement the changes needed to eliminate the corrupt practices that had brought on the stock market crash of 1929. Instead, he tapped Joseph P. Kennedy (yes, that Joe Kennedy) to be the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the words of one Washington columnist...'the best way to catch the pirates, Roosevelt figured, was to hire another pirate', and he got Captain Kidd himself when he chose Kennedy. Unfortunately President Obama doesn't have a Kennedyesque candidate over at the SEC to take the lead in beating the Wall Street chairmen into submission. In addition to his own significant fortitude and determination however, Obama has an experienced and wily Vice President, a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and perhaps most importantly, the majority of the American people on his side as he steps into the ring with another special interest heavyweight.

Perhaps not surprisingly, standing alongside the banks in complete opposition to any kind of reform on the financial sector, is the Republican Party. It seems inconceivable to me that after taking the side of the insurance companies over the concerns of the American people in the recent health care debate (not one member of the Republican Party, in either the House or the Senate, voted in favor of the health care legislation), the GOP thinks it is good politics to get into bed with the very institutions that have angered and outraged the American people perhaps more than any other.

The Republican Party has succumbed to the will of it's most hard right, conservative members (as well as the anti government fervor being generated by the so called Tea Party movement) and is taking an absolutely huge gamble leading up to November's mid term elections. It is that the American people will be more angry at the current administration for not turning around the economy as quickly as they think they should have (and vote Democrats out of office) than understanding that the economic mess that Obama inherited was the worse since the Great Depression. The gamble also assumes that the American people won't give any credit to Democrats for passing significant health care legislation (and probably financial regulatory reform, thereby handcuffing to some degree the very institutions that caused the financial meltdown) as well as steadying the economic ship of state. It's an argument I don't buy and I believe it is a gamble that they will ultimately lose.

Here is the history. Thanks in large part to the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt, America's banks, and by default the U.S. economy, prospered in the thirty five years after World War II. Then along comes Ronald Reagan, propagandist in chief for the concept of small government and less federal regulation of private enterprise (including financial markets and banking practices). For all his qualities or leadership and communication skills, one should also remember that Reagan has been publicly speaking out against so called "socialized medicine" since 1961. A direct result of Reagan economics (i.e. deregulation) was the famous "Savings and Loans" crisis of 1980's and 1990's, during which 747 separate financials institutions in the United States failed. The cost of that crisis, twenty years ago, was approximately $160B, the vast majority of which was paid for by way of a financial bailout during the presidency of none other than George H.W. Bush.

So, here we are in 2010 and Republican's are not only up in arms because the Obama adminsitration had to bail out the nations's banks in the same way W's father had to two decades ago, but perhaps more appallingly, they are now standing side by side with the very banks that precipitated the current financial crisis, a crisis caused by the predatory and corrupt practices that came into existence as a direct result of the Reagan policy of deregulation in the 1980's.

The hypocrisy of these people is stomach churning. Remember, the mess that was created here in the United States is one that has been replicated in dozens of countries across the world, where predatory, unethical and often illegal banking practices have wreaked havoc on economies and people's lives. There is one common theme however, in every case the tax payer has to pick up the tab.

We may not have a 21st century Joseph P. Kennedy to whip these leeches into submission but my money is on President Obama to take the fight to Wall Street and pass the most significant financial regulatory reform since the New Deal.