Via Jen Rubin:

Wall Street money rains on Schumer

Wall Street has showered nearly $11 million on the Senate since the beginning of the year, and more than 15 percent of it has gone to a single senator: Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York.

[snip]

Of the $10.6 million the industry has given to sitting senators this year, more than $7.7 million has gone to Democrats. Schumer got his $1.65 million; his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand took in $886,000; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada received $814,000; Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut scored $603,000; Colorado freshman Michael Bennet got $401,000; and Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas— who will have a big say on the derivatives portion of regulatory reform — got $336,000.

Mind you, it’s a perfectly rational decision on Wall Street’s part: paying protection money often is. Despite Yahoo/Politico’s somewhat disingenuous suggestion of ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ what actually is happening here is a trade. Wall Street gives Schumer - and his new junior partner Gillibrand* - money, and Schumer makes sure that all those potentially fatal regulations and restrictions and investigations that Schumer says and talks about never happen.  Remember, this is the guy who declared that the American people don’t care about “little porky amendments:” he’s about as populist as T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII.

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The cap and trade national energy tax is being sold to the American people as a free-market answer to environmental problems. Dressed in green as it is, people are led to believe that it was a scheme hatched by the environmentally conscious. The truth is that cap and trade is a product of the very same minds that gave us subprime loans and market bubbles, credit default swaps and the financial meltdown. Cap and trade is actually a child of Wall Street. But, nowadays, that doesn’t help in the marketing, does it?

Cap and trade is based on government setting a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally. Companies will then be allowed to buy or sell permits to emit carbon dioxide. So, at a time when Congress is already grappling with the appropriate solution for restructuring our nation’s financial regulatory system, Congress also wants to simultaneously introduce a new, and potentially the largest, commodity market into the mix? As Tyson Slocum, director of energy for Public Citizen, has stated, “You have to ask yourself if it is wise policy to create a new derivatives market on the heels of the collapse of derivatives markets.”

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Look, I understand the temptation to mock. I really do.

Barack Obama’s rich supporters fear his tax plans show he’s a class warrior

Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: “I’m appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it’s the real world. I’m surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He’s a real class warrior.”

It’s a powerful temptation; worse and worse, it’s a justified one. You knew and I knew that this was going to happen. You knew and I knew that the upper classes were going to be subject to the Democrats’ faux-populism soon enough. You knew and I knew that they were going to raise tax rates on the wealthy, and never mind that it won’t actually work. And you knew and I knew that when Rahm Emanuel informed the world that you never let a good crisis go to waste, he meant it. So, it seems almost a duty to mock the people who are just now coming to the realization that they’re not only going to get beaten with clubs; they’re going to get beaten with the clubs that they themselves have paid for.

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Congratulations Mr. President: you’re in the record books again:

President Barack Obama now has the distinction of presiding over his own bear market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 20 percent since Inauguration Day, the fastest drop under a newly elected president in at least 90 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gauge has lost 53 percent from its October 2007 record of 14,164.53, slipping 4.1 percent to 6,594.44 yesterday.

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The best thing President Barack Obama can do for the economy is keep quiet. A day after delivering an address that won widespread praise from the chattering class, Obama’s big-government policies were rejected by traders on Wall Street.

Wall Street’s negative reaction to Obama is nothing new. Ever since Election Day, Obama’s words have failed to inspire investors. “When the President speaks, the market listens … and crumbles,” said Family Research Council chief Tony Perkins, who outlined the following pattern of the Dow’s drop after notable Obama addresses:

• Nov. 5, 2008 (Wednesday after Election Day): -486 (5.0%)
• Jan. 9, 2009 (one day after Obama speaks at George Mason University on “need” for $800 billion stimulus package): -143 (1.6%)
• Jan. 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day): -332 (4.0%)
• Feb. 10, 2009 (one day after Obama declares that without a stimulus, “an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with a catastrophe”): -382 (4.6%)
• Feb. 17, 2009 (market opens for the first time after Congress passes $787 billion stimulus on Feb. 13; Obama signs bill into law, declaring, “The stimulus lets Americans claim destiny.”): -298 (3.8%)
• Feb. 19, 2009 (one day after Obama announces potential mortgage relief plan): -90 (1.2%)
• Feb. 25, 2009 (one day after Obama’s first speech to the full Congress): -80 (1.1%)