The President has finally realized (or so I hope) how angry, I mean raging-mad angry, ordinary people (including ‘bleeding heart’ liberals like myself) are about the unfairness of it all – bank bailout, huge bonuses bankers are awarding themselves, the brisk businesses lobbyists have been doing, the generous concessions given away to industries, the revolving door between lobbying and politicians and their staffers, …

He doesn’t need to be a populist to be a great president; in fact, I’d rather he makes good policy than pandering to voters. But there’s nothing wrong in aligning himself with the majority of the country and be mad at corporate excess.

His agenda seems to be, to put it simply, to moderate corporate behavior so their long-term interests are more aligned with the country’s. He’s really trying to save capitalism, by regulating it so it doesn’t gauge itself to death as we saw it almost did. He thought he could do that following Summers/Geithner’s school of economics, but now it turned out voters don’t think much of their ideas. So I say, good riddance to them, the sooner the better.

It might be a good strategy. It sure constitutes a formidable standard to rally your troops around in an election year. Also, you don’t want to fight the banks unless you have to. Obama probably waited one year to gauge if popular anger had died down. The humiliating defeat in Massachusetts clearly showed the rage is still here.

As Simon Johnson says, the Dems now have to force the Reps to state which side they’re on:
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/01/20/p aul-volcker-prevails/