Obama to Meet With Top Bankers

President Barack Obama, who reportedly stated that he did not run for office to help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,  has invited all of the heads of America’s biggest banks to hang out at the White House tomorrow in order to interchange ideas on ways to increase lending, to review the financial-industry regulatory bill, and to discuss bankers’ compensation. These top bankers include
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, and Bank of America Corp.’s Ken Lewis.

American Bankers Association head Ed Yingling, who has been working with the bankers who will be attending the meeting, said that the banks planned to present new ideas on lending. These include setting up “second look” programs for small businesses that are rejected for loans, to see whether they might qualify under different terms. Obama has said that he is frustrated with big banks that pay large bonuses, while the rest of the country suffers through unemployment rates. “Some people on Wall Street still don’t get it,” he said.

“They don’t get in some cases that they wouldn’t be where they are today, and they certainly would not be paying the bonuses they are paying today, if their government hadn’t taken extraordinary actions,” said Larry Summers.

Obama also had a negative opinion towards the people who let Tareq and Michaele Salahi handle his Vice President, Joe Biden. “I was unhappy with everybody who was involved in the process,” Obama said. “It was a screwup.”

Via: NY Mag, WSJ