Reviews for Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street

The average rating for Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-17 00:00:00 Dewijanti Hardi Bush43's signing of the massive Wall Street bailouts was nothing surprising. After all, it is common knowledge that the Republicans are in bed with big business and Wall Street. Strangely, however, Obama continued the policy of Wall Street bailouts, as well as many other unpopular policies of the Bush administration. This book exposes the largely unnoticed friendship between Obama and Wall Street, one characterized by record breaking campaign contributions and an anything goes attitude from regulatory agencies. Obama's notorious bank bashing amounted to little more than politically expedient words with no intentions of meaningful regulation. In the 2008 presidential elections, the vast majority of Wall Street firms and large banks donated unprecedented volumes of campaign money to Obama and the Democrats, and extremely little to McCain and the Republicans. Wall Street felt that McCain was too unpredictable and obviously not a friend of the major banks and Wall Street. It is the author's argument that the only reason Obama won the 2008 election is because Wall Street had bought and paid for him.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-29 00:00:00 Curtis Waller Not so sure the relationship between Wall Street and Washington is "hidden" as the revolving door between financial companies and Washington is pretty well known. That said, readers can still be outraged at the different rules of the game between big business and consumers--savers punished by low interest rate, tax funded rescues of companies that went on to pay millions in bonuses to executives whose recklessness caused great harm to our economy, underwater home owners struggling to get loan modifications, etc. Gasparino writes in caffeinated prose, not afraid to quoting street-type language among Wall Street denizens who somehow can't believe that after all the campaign contributions they gave to Obama that his administration was using Wall Street as a piñata to reflect public outrage at bankers. A pox on both of their houses Gasparino seems to be implying, but as we all know, the recent crisis is petering out and the reforms that were supposed to prevent another crisis like the one we just went through never materialized, and therefore we can expect the round trips between Washington and Wall Street to continue.