Obama talks tough with Wall Street

One mark of a true leader is the confidence to give people the straight truth, whether they like to hear it or not.  During a speech this week at the Nasdaq offices in New York City, Obama reminded Wall Street leaders that the middle class is not being protected:

Some workers, he said, “now compete with their teenagers forminimum-wage jobs at Wal-Mart because their factory moved overseas,”and he described this summer’s subprime lending crisis as a case studyof greed among mortgage lenders and the agencies that provideinformation about them.

“Our free market was never meant to be afree license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it,” Mr.Obama said. “And so from time to time, we have put in place certainrules of the road to make competition fair and open and honest.”

“If more Americans werearmed with this kind of information before they purchased riskymortgage loans,” he said, “the current crisis might not have happened.”

Will that one tough speech change the fortunes of a struggling middle class?  Of course not.  However, it is certainly better than posing with these CEO's, as Hillary Clinton did, and acting as if you agree with their country club mentality that shows indifference to working families.

Lastly, Obama is rolling out his economic proposals, which include tax cuts for working families and simplify the tax code so that people can file their returns in under five minutes:

Obama wants to give 150 million working Americans a $500 tax credit,expand relief for homeowners, eliminate income taxes for seniors makingless than $50,000 and simplify tax returns so millions of Americans canfile in less than five minutes, according to a summary documentprovided by his campaign.

Hopefully within the next few weeks he will also elaborate on how he plans to generate a budget surplus.