CT Blue

If an email I received from Moveon is accurate, we may find out soon whether Obama will give a giant gift to American banks:

Breaking: There are reports that in the next 48 hours President Obama could make a decision on whether to hold Wall Street accountable by opening a full investigation into the banks’ role in the housing crisis, or give them a sweetheart deal that lets them off the hook. This is it!

The banks would argue that they need it, and given the perverse prevailing logic they can make a compelling case. The Bank of America, for instance, has struggled so badly that it had a negative tax rate, entitling it to millions in federal subsidies. How can it be expected to make the consumers it defrauded whole? And if it did, what would be the point, as those same consumers, in their role as taxpayers, would end up picking up the tab.

I don’t know if the meeting is as crucial as Moveon claims, though the threat of an eventual sellout is depressingly real.  Its source is Mike Lux at the Huffington Post, who writes:

Progressive activists should feel incredibly good about all they have accomplished in the last year, and should feel good as well that President Obama — even if it is sometimes more slowly or reluctantly than we would like — is understanding that on a range of issues, it is politically smart of him to be aligned with these grassroots movement. But it is also no time to pat ourselves on the back: over the next 72 hours, an enormous issue will probably get resolved that will be the biggest single thing that will determine whether the dead housing market, as well as the broader economy, will get a boost that will bring it to life: the bank settlement deal. How this issue gets resolved not only will have a massive impact on the economy, it will go a very long ways in whether the President can credibly run for re-election as the guy who took on Wall Street and held them accountable when the chips were down.

I consider myself a student of American history, but I admit that the gilded age holds no charms for me and I have tended to neglect it, so maybe there’s more than ample precedent for this type of activity, but I can’t recall a time when corporations openly lobbied-no, rather insisted- that they be immunized from the legal consequences of their own intentional law breaking.  Not that it hasn’t been done, only that usually it’s done in Mitt’s “quiet rooms”. This open insistence is not new in this new and improved gilded age; recall that the telecoms demanded and got immunity for illegally tapping people’s phones. I’m somewhat hopeful that if this weekend is indeed critical, Obama will decide that he needs votes and semi-energized feet on the ground, more than he needs money, of which he already has an ample supply. Fact is, at this point the smart money is probably coming around to the view that it’s getting four more years of Obama no matter which clown emerges alive from the circus, so back the banks or not, he’ll still get their money.