Obama Takes on the Banks

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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January 21, 2010

Obama Takes on the Banks

For nearly a year, President Obama's economic team "resisted measures to restrict the size and activities of the biggest U.S. banks. Two days after Democrats suffered a devastating election loss in Massachusetts, the White House rolled out a proposal to do just that," the Wall Street Journal reports.

Paul Volcker and David Axelrod were in favor of the new policy, while Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers were at least initially opposed.

The New York Times notes that with the quick shift Obama "was throwing a public punch at Wall Street for the third time in a week, underscoring the imperative for him and his party to strike a more populist tone."

"The administration's new tack suggests just how much big banks have miscalculated Americans' intensified resentment against the bailout -- anger stoked by persistent high unemployment, banks' stinginess in lending to small business and the revival of Wall Street's bonus culture... They have become the perfect foil for the White House... As the White House hopes to define the fight, the enemy is not big government but big money."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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January 21, 2010