London in New York

“There is a Chinese curse which says ‘May he live in interesting times.’ Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.”     –Robert F. Kennedy

The Occupy Wall Street Movement along with the other planned and spontaneous uprisings across America presents our leaders with new challenges. America seems poised to engage in a vigorous debate about what is right, moral and just in our society in terms of its economic policy and the existing system by which we capitalize society.

One might wish to consider that those who demonstrate are not all anarchists seeking to bring down this country.  Likewise, it is also critical to remember that not every individual working in the financial sector is a mini-Madoff like Ken Starr or white collar criminal in a suit who deserves to have his or her life work and credibility or success challenged or stained in this process for playing the game by the rules established for the game. And this is true even if a casino mentality was fostered on Wall Street due to a lax regulatory environment. This is so even if the rules of the Wall Street Casino might need to be tweaked or rewritten. There are legitimate and honorable people working in the financial community who work to build the wealth of a nation and its investors.

In the words of Nicholas Kristof:

I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.

In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.

There is, however, something terribly awry when things are so bad that it necessitates the pitchfork wielding crowd of college educated citizens protesting in the streets in Lower Manhattan. How many more of us or them (depending on your perception) are but a paycheck or two away from having nothing to lose and taking it to the street? Do you take that gamble and double down against the current protesters? I hope not for pete sakes. Do you know how many others are out there now prepared to follow suit?

Do you know how many are angry that members of the Madoff Crime Family like Andrew Madoff and Shana Madoff are still at large, securely ensconced in relative luxury on the Upper East Side, Tribeca and in Palm Beach? What kind of message are we sending to our citizens when members of a criminal syndicate that destroyed the lives of thousands roam free?  Poor Ruthie left with a couple million bucks. Oy vey! And how many more are angry that they see our leaders more consumed with protecting the uber elite at the expense of average citizen?

There is a very real danger that this will spread when inequality grows, the elite seem oblivious at best and selfish at worst and a “let them eat cake” mentality is pervasive in our policy. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman dissected the false narrative being fostered by forces on the right. They postulate falsely that the reason for our stagnant economy is that business are suffering under a burden of taxes and regulations and President Obama’s socialist policies which are stifling economic growth. He goes on to point out the rather curious fact that businesses are making large profits and sitting on a lot of cash but aren’t spending that cash to expand capacity and employment. But why?

As stated by Paul Krugman on The Phony Fear Factor:

…..but what stands out now is a surge in the number of businesses citing poor sales — which strongly suggests that lack of demand, not fear of government, is holding business back.

So Republican assertions about what ails the economy are pure fantasy, at odds with all the evidence. Should we be surprised? At one level, of course not. Politicians who always cater to wealthy business interests say that economic recovery requires catering to wealthy business interests. Who could have imagined it?

And it also, of course, reflects the political need of the right to make everything bad in America President Obama’s fault. Never mind the fact that the housing bubble, the debt explosion and the financial crisis took place on the watch of a conservative, free-market-praising president; it’s that Democrat in the White House now who gets the blame.

But good politics can be very bad policy. The truth is that we’re in this mess because we had too little regulation, not too much. And now one of our two major parties is determined to double down on the mistakes that caused the disaster.

Partly, no doubt, this reflects the party’s broader slide into its own insular intellectual universe. Large segments of the G.O.P. reject climate science and even the theory of evolution, so why expect evidence to matter for the party’s economic views?

The Choice: A Real Revolution or Rebuild the American Dream

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. “
–President John F. Kennedy.

NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg is quite right when he warns that the jobs crisis could spark riots here. According to NPR in June 2011 over 25 million Americans were unemployed while famed economist Nouriel Roubini suggests that the real number is as high as 16% unemployment. The system is broken. We must get our nation’s house in order. And frankly if we do not get our house in order and the prostitute­s (err politico’s­) posing as our leaders in Washington, DC don’t begin to recognize that they represent the citizens of this entire country and not exclusively those who have lined their pockets, they will surely bring about ‘the end of America’.  They must recognize that a nation starving, with a rapidly eroding middle class  will turn on and ultimately consume itself along with them.  What are peaceful demonstrations now could morph into something else entirely. The choice is a real revolution or to rebuild the American Dream by making a deep commitment to rebuild, in earnest, the nation’s infrastructure and manufacturing base. Many economists think that may be the best alternative.

HELPFUL LINKS

Occupy Wall Street

-Occupy Wall Street
-Occupy Together
-Occupy Youtoube: Anonymous documents what the media blacks out.
-Anonymous Occupy Youtoube blog
-WaVe Movement (Facebook Page)
-Naomi Klein:  ”This is not the time  to be looking for ways to dismiss a nascent movement against the power of capital, but to do the opposite: find ways to embrace it, support it and help it grow into its enormous potential. With so much at stake, cynicism is a luxury we simply cannot afford.” read more about what the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” had to say at Moveon.org, Rachel Maddow Show and on Huffington Post
-‘A New Shift in Power’: Documentary entitled “Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution”Offers an Intimate Look at Occupy Wall Street
-Elizabeth Warren: “The People on Wall Street Broke this Country”: Elizabeth Warren is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She is running for the U.S. Senate against Scott Brown. See also the Brad Blog for Elizabeth Warren’s commentary on ‘Debt Crisis’ & ‘Class Warfare’

Rebuild America

-Building America’s Future
-Our Future
-Rebuild the American Dream
-RAI
-Fareed’s Take: Obama should declare a jobs emergency
-Van Jones on Rebuilding the American Dream (see also: Van Jones)

Inequality in America

-Inequality.org: The Program on Inequality and the Common Good focuses on the dangers that growing inequality pose for U.S. democracy, economic health and civic life. It is a project of theInstitute for Policy Studies and based in Boston, MA
-The United States of Inequality
-Who Rules America?
-Vanity Fair by Joseph E. Stiglitz: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
-The Economist: The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them
-PBS, In Perspective: Tricia Rose on America’s growing inequality
-Robert Reich: Growing Inequality Is The Central Problem Of Our Age
-The Nation magazine:  Inequality in America
-The Nation Magazine by Robert Reich: Unjust Spoils
-Mother Jones: It’s the Inequality, Stupid

The American  System

-Nouriel Roubini: Marx was right about self-destruction of capitalism
-Vice Chairman of China’s CIC Says It’s Become Harder to Defend the U.S. Model

The Danger

-The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (book) by Naomi Wolf
-The End of America (Trailer)
-“The End of America” Full Length HQ Film
-Bloomberg: Jobs crisis could spark riots here
-Kent State Massacre (Video): Could this happen in NYC? Will history repeat itself?

The Uprising

-Occupy Wall Street
-Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan: must-see site of the demonstrations
-Chris Hedges: [The Criminal Class that has seized power is scared but the]  Occupy Wall Street is ‘where the hope of America lies’
-My Great Depression (video)
-Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich Speak to Occupy Wall Street
-The Huffington Post – Occupy Wall Street: NYPD Arrests 700 Protesters On Brooklyn Bridge
-The Guardian: Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination: The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future
-Truthout: Wall Street Occupation Live Stream
-Occupy Wall St, SlutWalk, Hot Chicks, Van Jones by Zennie Abraham
-RT: Open-ended Wall Street occupation
-NPR by Joel Rose:  Wall Street Protests Stretch On, Reasons Vary
-Gothamist: Anonymous’s Occupation Of Wall Street
-UPI: Wall Street protesters morale ‘high’
-Michael Moore: The media ignores Wall Street occupation
-The Guardian, Occupy Wall Street: inquiries launched as new pepper-spray video emerges: NYPD officer Anthony Bologna faces two investigations as video emerges of a second pepper-spray incident
-NY Daily News: Pepper-spray videos spark furor as NYPD launches probe of Wall Street protest incidents
-Salon: Jon Stewart on the Wall Street pepper-spray attack
-Occupy Wall Street: ‘Pepper-spray’ officer named in Bush protest claim
-The Huffington Post: Anthony Bologna, NYPD Officer Who Pepper-Sprayed Protester, Had Role In 2004 Incidents
-JP Morgan gave NYPD $4.6 million to strengthen security
-Truthout: Got Class Warfare? Occupy Wall Street Now!
-Greg Palast | Uber-Vultures: The Billionaires Who Would Pick Our President
-Trumka: AFL-CIO Will Support Occupy Wall St. Protest ‘In Every Way’ It Can

“You say you want a revolution. Well, you know. We all want to change the world … But when you talk about destruction. Don’t you know that you can count me out.”   -Lennon/McCartney (1968)

Barbarians at the Gate

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has placed some new ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ of the financial elite; that is if you can refer to peaceful protesters as “barbarians.” As many will recall, President Obama in early 2009 in a meeting at the White House with Bankers whose institutions received TARP Funds famously stated that “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”  The President no longer stands between the bankers and the “pitchforks”, and perhaps I mean that metaphorically speaking because it does not  seem that the protestors have come with pitchforks or weapons of any kind.  As the Occupy Wall Street anti-greed protests spread on the eve of the Rebuild The American Dream march on Washington, DC which is scheduled for the week of October 10-16 it is important to recognize and understand it for what it is.  Our people, the conscience of a nation is speaking to us in a rather uncomfortable way, reminding us that in this system we live in and under, we are all connected in some way.

The painful growing inequality in America is more than a transactional externality that can be ignored, dismissed or otherwise managed safely.   This is true whether you stand in support of these movements or think that these folks are seriously misguided and their mission unclear or disingenuous. The simple reality is that it is happening. You cannot ignore that. We simply just can’t lock everyone up and think that things will be ok. Capische?

One need be careful in misinterpreting the undercurrent in this wave formation before another false narrative develops. Whether you believe that the protestors are misguided, clueless, or even silly as does Nicholas Kristof (see: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries by Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times) because they have a less than clear or perfect understanding of how our capitalist system operates and who or what are to blame does not really matter. For I am sure that at these demonstrations you can find those who literally don’t have a clue about what truly got America into this mess and the solutions necessary for us to climb out of it. But why should that surprise anyone?

America: The Age of Disenlightement

We have created a culture of distraction feeding our citizens a steady diet of misinformation to baffle, confuse, fill and otherwise pollute the heads of our befuddled masses. Our media assists in creating false narratives, pseudo news and Reality TV programming. As a result our citizens are so drugged up on bad art and culture that as consuming automatons wide swaths cannot distinguish between a Chocolate Soufflé and manure. Many of our citizens are thus cajoled into voting against their own best interests and more importantly, the interests of our nation because they literally have no comprehension of what is truly happening here in America or around the world.

In a piece on the Daily Beast discussing Obama’s strategy to go after some traditionally Republican states in 2012, the GOP Strategy for 2012 (as summed up by the Daily Beast) is as follows: “Republicans, meanwhile, are looking to states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin in the hope of capitalizing on Obama’s low support among lower-income, less-educated white voters.”

Does this not tell you all you need to know about the cynicism and the disingenuous posture of our political leaders? The people are seen as prey. If our elections have devolved into feeding red meat to the stupid unenlightened masses, that itself will be what brings about the end of our nation. And those dark forces that foster an un-enlightenment movement should be exposed in broad daylight by more than Lawrence O’Donnell and Jon Stewart. Is not our greatest challenge then in lifting all boats to make sure that all of us have the actual ability to drive the boat or at least have a basic understanding of how it is being driven? If we continue to allow for wide swaths of this country to decay structurally and intellectually, especially in places like Appalachia, we will reap what we sow. And whether you are a Democrat (Progressive or Centrist) or Republican (Right Wing or Moderate) you should keep that in mind. Our system is frayed and corrupted and those that protect the corrupt will perish peacefully or they will die in pain in the street. Pick your poison. Or stated more eloquently  by President John F. Kennedy in a speech at the White House in 1962: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. “

Zeitgeist Turning

The Zeitgeist may be turning. What is happening on Wall Street is an awakening that will have profound ramifications not just for the ruling classes but the future of America. It is grassroots.  It is Liberty. It is not Anarchy. It is Democracy in Action much in the same way that Ron Paul’s Revolution of ideas is.

As I heard one anonymous commentator state: “Real revolutions are always sad things. In the beginning the aristocrats laugh and the police arrest as many as they can. In the end the aristocrats lose their property and their heads? and the police become the hunted.”

Sure as the famed street remains the symbol of American power and American Greed, truth told the institution we know as Wall Street has been dispersed from downtown to midtown to Hedge Fund Row in Greenwich, Connecticut to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Denver, Colorado.  Wall Street or the idea of it still represents many things to many people, but in the post 9/11 world, it is also an increasingly residential community. Nevertheless the symbolism of those marching in Lower Manhattan and occupying Wall Street can not and should not be lost on anyone. The opportunity lays in rebuilding the foundation of American commerce, not in destroying it. Let the dialogue begin. To read Part II, click here.

HELPFUL LINKS

Occupy Wall Street Movement

-Occupy Wall Street
-Occupy Together
-Occupy Youtoube: Anonymous documents what the media blacks out.
-AnonOps Communicati0ns
-Anonymous Occupy Youtoube blog
-Global Revolution
-Adbusters
-OWS on Facebook
-OWS Livestream
-WaVe Movement (Facebook Page)
-Think Progress: The 99 Percent Movement
-Fair News & Opinion Portals: Truthout, Truthdig, Common Dreams, Think Progress, Mother Jones, The Nation, Media Watch, Media Matters, Countdown with Keith Olberman, The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur
-Paul Krugman: Panic of the Plutocrats, Fear the Oligarchs, not the Protesters, The Social Contract
-Cenk Uygur: “Washington is infested”
-Glenn Greenwald, “With Liberty & Justice for Some”

Key Editorial Perspective
-CBS News Coverage
-Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize Winning Economist with the NY Times
-Naomi Klein:  ”This is not the time  to be looking for ways to dismiss a nascent movement against the power of capital, but to do the opposite: find ways to embrace it, support it and help it grow into its enormous potential. With so much at stake, cynicism is a luxury we simply cannot afford.” read more about what the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” had to say at Moveon.org, Rachel Maddow Show and on Huffington Post
-NY Times, Protesters Against Wall Street: “It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.”
-‘A New Shift in Power’: Documentary entitled “Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution”Offers an Intimate Look at Occupy Wall Street
-Elizabeth Warren: “The People on Wall Street Broke this Country”: Elizabeth Warren is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She is running for the U.S. Senate against Scott Brown. See also the Brad Blog for Elizabeth Warren’s commentary on ‘Debt Crisis’ & ‘Class Warfare’ and Vanity Fair: The Woman Who Knew Too Much.
-Chris Hedges, Truthdig: Why the Elites Are in Trouble / Truthout: Why the Elites are in Trouble
-Truthout News Analysis (Dean Baker): When Being Rich Makes Us Poor, People Should Occupy Wall Street
-New York Observer: Jesse LaGreca Continues to Destroy Media Bias of Occupy Wall Street on ABC’s This Week.
-Firedoglake, Kevin Gosztola: Why Establishment Media & Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street
-Raw Story (Kate Wickman): WATCH: ‘I Am Not Moving’ compares Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street
-The Guardian, Occupy Wall Street: if banks are too big to fail, are people too small to matter?

Rebuild America: The Solution? Or one of them?

-Building America’s Future
-Our Future
-Rebuild the American Dream
-RAI
-Fareed’s Take: Obama should declare a jobs emergency
-Van Jones on Rebuilding the American Dream (see also: Van Jones)

Inequality in America: Basis for Revolt

-Inequality.org: The Program on Inequality and the Common Good focuses on the dangers that growing inequality pose for U.S. democracy, economic health and civic life. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies and based in Boston, MA
-The United States of Inequality
-Who Rules America?
-Vanity Fair by Joseph E. Stiglitz: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
-The Economist: The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them
-PBS, In Perspective: Tricia Rose on America’s growing inequality
-Robert Reich: Growing Inequality Is The Central Problem Of Our Age
-The Nation magazine:  Inequality in America
-The Nation Magazine by Robert Reich: Unjust Spoils
-Mother Jones: It’s the Inequality, Stupid

The American  System

-Nouriel Roubini: Marx was right about self-destruction of capitalism
-Vice Chairman of China’s CIC Says It’s Become Harder to Defend the U.S. Model
-Inside Job (trailer)
-Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (trailer)

The Danger

-The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (book) by Naomi Wolf
-The End of America (Trailer)
-“The End of America” Full Length HQ Film
-Bloomberg: Jobs crisis could spark riots here
-Kent State Massacre (Video): Could this happen in NYC? Will history repeat itself?

The Uprising

-Occupy Wall Street
-Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan: must-see site of the demonstrations
-In Protest the Power of Place (NY Times): As stated by Joe Mercurio on Facebook: “Just for background. Zuccotti Park, ironically formerly called Liberty Plaza Park was equally ironically renamed after John Zuccotti (Weil Gotshal & Manges) who was a deputy mayor under a Republican mayor of New York and company chairman of the owners Brookfield Office Properties on whose board the girlfriend of the current Republican mayor serves.”
-Global mass protests 15th October 2011
-Chris Hedges: [The Criminal Class that has seized power is scared but the]  Occupy Wall Street is ‘where the hope of America lies’
-My Great Depression (video)
-Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich Speak to Occupy Wall Street
-The Huffington Post – Occupy Wall Street: NYPD Arrests 700 Protesters On Brooklyn Bridge
-The Guardian: Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination: The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future
-Truthout: Wall Street Occupation Live Stream
-Occupy Wall St, SlutWalk, Hot Chicks, Van Jones by Zennie Abraham
-RT: Open-ended Wall Street occupation
-NPR by Joel Rose:  Wall Street Protests Stretch On, Reasons Vary
-Gothamist: Anonymous’s Occupation Of Wall Street
-UPI: Wall Street protesters morale ‘high’
-Michael Moore: The media ignores Wall Street occupation
-The Guardian, Occupy Wall Street: inquiries launched as new pepper-spray video emerges: NYPD officer Anthony Bologna faces two investigations as video emerges of a second pepper-spray incident
-NY Daily News: Pepper-spray videos spark furor as NYPD launches probe of Wall Street protest incidents
-Salon: Jon Stewart on the Wall Street pepper-spray attack
-Occupy Wall Street: ‘Pepper-spray’ officer named in Bush protest claim
-The Huffington Post: Anthony Bologna, NYPD Officer Who Pepper-Sprayed Protester, Had Role In 2004 Incidents
-JP Morgan gave NYPD $4.6 million to strengthen security
-Truthout: Got Class Warfare? Occupy Wall Street Now!
-Greg Palast | Uber-Vultures: The Billionaires Who Would Pick Our President
-Trumka: AFL-CIO Will Support Occupy Wall St. Protest ‘In Every Way’ It Can

POLICE ACTION vs. OCCUPY WALL STREET: Evidence of Police Brutality: Premeditated and Orchestrated Assaults on Peaceful Protesters

-MSNBC on NYPD: Police Brutality during Occupy Wall Street Lawrence O’Donnell with “The Last Word”
-Keith Olbermann: “Police brutality” at Occupy Wall Street
-Shameful Police Action & Brutality at Occupy Wall Street
-BRAVE Occupy Wall Street Protester Speaks Out
-NYPD Violently Elbow Peaceful Female OccupyWallStreet Protestor Knocking Her To The Ground
-NYPD Caught On Camera Punching OccupyWallStreet Protestor In The Face
-NYPD officers give peaceful protester a concussion during OCCUPY WALL STREET
-Cops turn Violent: NYPD drag girl across the street at OccupyWallStreet
-Anonymous WARNING to NYPD
-Police Brutality? Like 100 NYPD Cops Slam Some 100 Year-Old Asian Man To The Concrete And Arrest
-Occupy Wall Street Brutality
-“I CAN’T BREATHE!” – Police Shoving at 10:30AM at Liberty Plaza Occupy Wall Street
-Police Arrest Protester for Drawing with Sidewalk Chalk @ Occupy Wall Street 9/19/11
-‘Occupy Wall Street’ – Young man brutally knocked down and arrested for talking to an officer
-NYC Citibank Occupation Arrests Customers for Closing their accounts.

SILENCING THE TRUTH

-THE SILENCING OF BANK WHISTLEBLOWERS:  Occupy Wall Street Sept 17: Protester speaks out
-Florida Congressman Alan Grayson on Occupy Wall Street
-Florida congressman Alan Grayson laughs in Ben Bernanke’s face
-Eliot Spitzer on Occupy Wall Street and fraudulent banking activities (on Olbermann’s show)
-OccupyWallStreet talks to Fox News & Crushes Them
-CNN Wants This Video Banned SEE WHY
-Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich Speak to Occupy Wall Street – Original

Freedom to Fascism

-OccupyWallStreet George Carlin - Spreading The Truth!
-Charlie Chaplin
The Whole World Is Watching – Charlie Chaplin on Occupy Wall Street: Let Us All Unite!
Charlie Chaplin Speech – Occupy Wall Street! (Inception Soundtrack); see also United We Rise
-Aaron Russo: See Aaron Russo Memorial and Freedom to Fascism (Aaron’s last film)
-Anonymous Group: “We are Anonymous.  We are Legion.  We do not forgive.  We do not forget.  Expect us.” Yale Law refers to the group as an ‘Internet Subculture’. See: AnonNews.org, Why We Protest, AnonOps Communicati0ns
-Anonymous Educational Series: Freedom to Fascism (part 1)
-Anonymous Educational Series: Freedom to Fascism (part 2)
-Anonymous: Message to Ron Paul

President Obama is a lawyer.  He is a graduate of Harvard Law School who practiced briefly for several years as a full time attorney with Miner, Barnhill & Galland in Chicago. That got me thinking as to what kind of lawyer he was in his practice days. As one who was trained as a Bankruptcy and Restructuring Lawyer (a multidisciplinary practice) one might think that this was perhaps the perfect time for the Chris London Presidency. But if that were the case they would probably tap Harvey Miller of Weil Gotshal & Manges, the leader of the Business Finance & Restructring Group at WGM which I started with ironically.  In that case then my experience relative to his would sort of look much like……President Obama’s on economic matters. I digress

So, I started thinking even more deeply. What kind of lawyer is or was President Obama? What set of skills or perspective does he bring to his view of the world?  As a Summer Associate he hooked Michelle, then an Associate at Sidley & Austin–nabbing your mentor slick. As a mentor to some brilliant and charming young Summer Associates, I wish someone had nabbed me. I was not so slick. I was just trying to tread water in the brilliance around me. And Weil Gotshal’s Bankruptcy Department had some great minds.

America hates lawyers but I LOVE em, if only because you can tell a lot about their persona and philosophy by which craft they choose. Did America get a Transactional Lawyer such as an M&A Lawyer, a Venture Capital Lawyer or a Litigator or perhaps even a Trial Lawyer?  I know he is not a Real Estate Lawyer. We have those, in the name of Privatization everything is sold off to a foreign entity.  He is not a Bankruptcy or Restructuring Lawyer because if he had the skills of Harvey Miller we would be out of this Chapter 11 by now.

Then it hit me. We have a series of legislative victories from Stimulus Act, Health Care and now Financial Reform which have been panned by critics on the left and the right for a variety of reasons, including specifically that the assault on capitalism has not put anybody back to work yet. And what kind of symbolism is there that Jamie Dimon who is as responsible as anyone for saving Wall Street will not be there when the Financial Regulatory Reform bill is signed today?  Maybe that is not entirely fair but “Smart money” in America remains on the sidelines not sure where they should place their bets, entrepreneurs frozen in their tracks not sure if this game is even one they want to play as the outcome is far from certain.

It became clear:  Obama is a Trial Lawyer selling America on his victories on the court house steps, while engaged in a Motions practice, which inch by inch seems to give his case for rebuilding America some forward momentum. But the rest of us are scratching our heads because yes, he has won some procedural motions allowing him to frame the debate but the case is not yet won, testimony has not yet been heard nor have any jury deliberations been held,  resulted in a vote much less a verdict.

If America’s case is still being held back in a Motions Practice in 2012, many may be fooled but ultimately we as a people, all LOSE. In the alternative, American Citizens may file a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment against him.

Note: The author is “currently” a Registered Democrat who voted for and supported President Obama. But in terms of full disclosure, he has voted for members of both parties, including Independents like Mike Bloomberg at the local and national level. He wishes to note that he has no issues with lawyers being President but just believes that maybe in retrospect, if we were going to elect a lawyer to rebuild America, we should have elected a transactional lawyer instead of a litigator.