The American Spectator : Who Owns Whom?

The American Spectator : Who Owns Whom?

By Shawn Macomber on 11.19.10 @ 6:08AM

Bestselling investigative reporter Charles Gasparino's latest tome Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street commences not with a scene from the much-ballyhooed first one hundred days of the new Administration, but at a hush-hush 2007 pow-wow at Johnny's Half Shell in Washington, D.C. between then-Senator Barack Obama and executives from Wall Street's top firms -- Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns -- which went so swimmingly the only warm fuzzy it lacked was the ghost of Humphrey Bogart intoning, "Barry, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

TAS: What compelled you to write Bought and Paid For?

Charles Gasparino: The notion of Big Government and Big Wall Street colluding to do bad things is something I've covered for a long time. I've always been interested in the conflicts between public policy and finance. What I've seen over the years is this seemingly bizarre anomaly of how Wall Street, which is allegedly the epicenter of capitalism, in reality thrived on something that is very anti-capitalist, which is Big Government. Crony capitalism. And these guys aren't doing it just to make money on fees selling government bonds to finance the deficit or government programs. The people at the top have political beliefs that are strongly aligned with progressivism.

TAS: Reading your book I was surprised to learn how kindred a spirit the big players of Big Finance saw in Barack Obama, particularly at first. They weren't supporting him simply as a pragmatic, strategic move. David Axelrod joked about Obama having a "man crush" on JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and you write financial executives saw the future president as "a guy who could have easily worked at a big Wall Street law firm if he hadn't gone into community organizing first."

Gasparino: I think a lot of the country was projecting something onto Obama they wanted to see but maybe wasn't there. Here was one of the most far left politicians I have ever seen -- based on his record, based on his associations, everything. People forget Reverend Wright, aside from his racially charged language, taught liberation theology, which basically says the Bible is infused with Marxism. That's his spiritual mentor. And all these Wall Street guys were lining up to support him.