February 11, 2010 04:45 AM UTC

Obama Revisited. OR, Please Step to the Right

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• by: JO

From an interview with Bloomberg/BusinessWeek on 2/9, published 2/10:

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

….(S)aid in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen…. I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

Question: Was he speaking to Tea Partiers, or to his former fans among progressives?

Paul Krugman’s reaction: “Oh. My. God. …. We are doomed.” https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c…