Listen intently, and you can hear the faint music of the band coming from over the hills. Their drums are pounding out a steady cadence, the bagpipes are wheezing mournfully, and the fifes are trilling plaintively. Coming straight at you, it’s The Musicale Marching Pity Corps from Wall Street!
This big banker band — including a line of baton-twirling lobbyists and a chorus of right-wing talk show yakkers — is on the march because Obama and other dastardly Democrats have proposed to cap the outrageous pay, bonuses and perks that bailed-out Wall Streeters keep grabbing for themselves. The band’s whining refrain (note: You might want to reach for your hankie before reading this) is that these princes of high finance are being picked on.
Yes, trumpet the bankers, we make a lot of money, but we deserve it, and the system cannot function without such rewards for us. Indeed, sniffs a Wall Street consultant, “taxpayers should want banks to retain the cream of the crop.” Uh, sir — wouldn’t that be the same cream that has soured America’s entire financial system?
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