BILL PRESS: In 2008, then-candidate Obama introduced himself as an outsider who would bring change we could believe in. Remember? But obviously, after being president for the last three years, change is not really something he can run on this time.
In our third story — it seems President Obama has found his new identity, the populist president. Throughout the president's 65-minute State of the Union Tuesday night, he hammered home a need for economic fairness and a sharing of the financial burden.
(Excerpt from video clip) BARACK OBAMA: And I will not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules. If you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. If you make under $250,000 a year — like 98 percent of American families — your taxes shouldn't go up.
Now, you can call this class warfare all you want, but — asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.
PRESS: Warren Buffet's secretary there in the gallery. Today in Michigan, the president continued his populist tone and — responding to an enthusiastic audience — he took his message even further.
(Excerpt from video clip) OBAMA: I don't want to be in a country where we only are looking at success for a small group of people. We want a country where everybody has a chance. I want this to be a big, bold generous country where everybody gets a fair shot, everybody's doing their fair share, everybody's playing by the same set of rules, that's the America I know, that's the America I want to keep, that's the future within our reach.
PRESS: All right, so what's going on? Let's bring in Rolling Stone contributing editor and "Countdown" contributor Matt Taibbi. Matt, nice to see you this evening. Thank you for coming in.
So, you've a latest article for Rolling Stone, "Is Obama's Economic Populism For Real?" That’s the question. Is President Obama really a populist or does he just play one on television?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, when it comes to the Wall Street stuff that I cover, there's a lot of enthusiasm. Even in the last 10 minutes, actually, before the show happened — there's news coming out about this long-anticipated foreclosure settlement that — it looks like it's a much, much better deal than anybody ever anticipated.
PRESS: For consumers?
TAIBBI: For consumers, for people and not for banks. You know, the expectation from people like me for a long time was that this would actually be the equivalent of a giant TARP-sized bailout, in other words they were going to allow these banks to escape perhaps a trillion dollars in liabilities, but they've narrowed the focus of this deal so it only covers a small amount of liability and still leaves these banks incredibly exposed to all kinds of criminal investigations. And that's an enormous victory, if that ends up being true.
PRESS: Yeah, in this article, your skepticism is dripping about what Obama might do, so he sort of surprised you on that.
TAIBBI: Everybody, yeah.
PRESS: He also just recently created this task force on mortgage originalization.
TAIBBI: Origination, yes.
PRESS: It's a very complicated title, headed by the New York attorney general. Is he the right guy to lead it?
TAIBBI: Absolutely. And Schneiderman and the California attorney general Kamala Harris are probably the people who are responsible for getting that good foreclosure deal.
PRESS: She's terrific. She's really great.
TAIBBI: She is. What they did is they held out, they refused to sign on to a bad deal and that's probably why we got a good deal on the foreclosure thing.
Now, what Schneiderman is going after — you know, the foreclosure deal covered a small amount of the portion of the fraud that went on during the mortgage years. There is a much bigger galaxy of misdeeds that went on in the creation and pooling of bad subprime mortgages and all these banks are guilty of these offenses. And Schneiderman is looking right at that fraud. And he's definitely the right guy to look at it.
PRESS: So, might we see some of these guys go to jail?
TAIBBI: Absolutely. I mean, if they went — if they do this for real — if they do this like a real Enron-style investigation — you could have half the luminaries on Wall Street doing prison time and I'm not even kidding. Really, every single one of the major banks was involved in this sort of activity. They all made enormous profits from selling mismarked and over-evaluated mortgages to unsuspecting investors.
PRESS: Sure, oh yeah, knowingly.
TAIBBI: Knowingly. And knowingly overriding their own due-diligence people who said, "These mortgages are fraudulent, they're going to default." They covered up that information, they dressed it up in phony math and sold them as triple-A-rated securities and made hundreds of billions of dollars on this and they need to pay people back.
PRESS: Back to the gist of your question. You know, there is always a sort of duality with President Obama. He promised that — he campaigned on the public-plan option, right, and then he dropped it. He said, "We're never going to renew and continue those tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans," and then he did for another two years. So, has he turned a corner here, and do you believe — genuinely turned a corner — and said, "Now, I'm going to fight for the 99?"
TAIBBI: Well, I believe he just said it. I believe that they have gotten the political message that that is what people want. The question is — will they really follow through? Will it be a cosmetic investigation or will it be a real cleaning up of the markets? And — but I think that they might — there's a slight possibility that they might have gotten the message. Because they clearly haven't done it yet. I mean, they haven't put anybody, done any real investigations yet
PRESS: Yeah.
TAIBBI: And that's a glaring oversight.
PRESS: But I'm also speaking about the legislative agenda. For example —
TAIBBI: Sure.
PRESS: The fight over the payroll-tax-cut deduction.
TAIBBI: Right, right.
PRESS: I mean, he held tight, he held tough on that. And he brought Boehner to his knees. Now, they only got two months, but certainly the Republicans ended up having to cave in on that issue.
TAIBBI: Sure, and why wouldn't he hold fast again? It looks like the Republican Party's in chaos right now, with everything that's going on in the presidential elections right now. The Republicans are weak right now and Barack Obama — I think — I think the situation with the Republicans influenced his State of the Union address, I think it influenced this business with the foreclosure settlement, and I think he should feel confident in the payroll debate that's going to happen in a month or so — or the next three weeks or whenever it is. He should — he should stand tall right now.
PRESS: Yeah, and who would have thought that income inequality would be an issue in this campaign? But it's going to be. Matt Taibbi, always good to see you.
TAIBBI: Good to see you.
PRESS: Contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a "Countdown" contributor. Thanks for coming in very much.
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