Why Goldman Sachs Is All in For Romney: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My President

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I know that banker bashing can be off-putting in a media world practiced in dismissing all-too-accurate references to the extreme disparity of rewards to the richest as an expression of the irrationality of class warfare. But how else to describe the pique of an industry that feels oppressed by the Obama presidency despite an average annual wage of $362,950, which in 2011 increased by a not inconsiderable 16.6 percent over the previous two years. (That’s the average for securities industry employees, not to be confused with the $12 million eked out by Goldman CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein last year, down from the $68.5 million he got in 2007 when Goldman was happily constructing toxic security bundles.)

Those figures on the overall rise in Wall Street pay, released this week by the New York State comptroller, offer a stark reminder that under the policy of bailing out the banks, initiated by Bush but embraced by Obama, class warfare has been waged effectively not by the unemployed and foreclosed. It rather has been carried out by the bankers who caused the economic meltdown and who now are ticked off that Obama has not completely rolled over.