NYSE - source: gov

(Best Syndication News) Now that 9.8 percent of Americans are looking for work and 17 percent are either under-employed or gave up looking for a job, the Obama administration may be going to war with Wall Street. Aids say Americans have a right to be outraged. “I think they have a right to be frustrated and angry,” said Whitehouse Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel over the weekend.

“They (Wall Street) have responsibilities and they ought to meet those responsibilities”, President Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod stated. Even after the AIG bailout the Obama administration privately pressured Congress to not pass laws limiting executive pay and bonuses. Instead the President appointed a compensation Czar.

The czar couldn’t stop companies who returned their bailouts from paying-out huge bonuses, despite the fact that they received and kept trillions of dollars from the Federal Reserve.

The Center For Responsive Politics is reporting that in the first six months of this year the financial services industry has spent $224 million on lobbying lawmakers. Now Congress is planning to vote on the Presidents new financial reforms.

A top treasury official told a reporter from CNN that the Obama Administration has sent over 618 pages of “detailed legislative language” on the financial reform proposal. This is very different than the way they handled health care reform. The Whitehouse is taking the initiative on this one.

Rahm Emanuel says the goal is to prevent another financial meltdown. In the proposal there is a plan to create a “consumer agency” dedicated to protecting consumers. Similar to the public option, this Consumer Agency will be the disputed item in the proposal.

By: John Waters
Business Writer