Michael Lind: Wall Street's Anti-Obama Strategy: Absurd Analogies
[Michael Lind is policy director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation.]
Has the war of metaphors gone too far? Historians, constitutional lawyers and even zoologists have jumped into the fray provoked by Wall Street critics of the Obama administration and Congress.
It all began when Stephen A. Schwarzman, a co-founder (with right-wing Republican deficit hawk Pete Peterson) of the Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm, said that the Obama administration’s proposals for taxing partners in firms like his brought to mind "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."
Schwarzman’s critics have included fellow members of the financial industry like Robin Plunder of Dewey, Schwindel and Howe, a major U.S. pump-and-dump firm. "That comparison was way too kind to President Obama," Plunder wrote in his monthly letter to his co-conspirators. "Let’s remember that Poland provoked Hitler, after all. But Wall Street had nothing to do with the financial crisis."
Unlike Plunder, however, many financial historians think that Schwartzman’s comparison of President Obama to Chancellor Hitler was too harsh. "It’s way over the top," says Shirley U. Geste, the Ken Lay Memorial Professor of Financial Ethics at William Duer University. "Hitler’s invasion of Poland? No way. I think it would be much more accurate to compare the administration’s proposals for higher taxes on partners in private equity firms to the Hyksos invasion of Egypt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries B.C., which destroyed the 13th Dynasty and ended Egyptian unity until the Hyksos were finally driven out during the 17th Dynasty by Seqenenre Tao II and his son Kamose."...
Read entire article at Salon
Has the war of metaphors gone too far? Historians, constitutional lawyers and even zoologists have jumped into the fray provoked by Wall Street critics of the Obama administration and Congress.
It all began when Stephen A. Schwarzman, a co-founder (with right-wing Republican deficit hawk Pete Peterson) of the Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm, said that the Obama administration’s proposals for taxing partners in firms like his brought to mind "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."
Schwarzman’s critics have included fellow members of the financial industry like Robin Plunder of Dewey, Schwindel and Howe, a major U.S. pump-and-dump firm. "That comparison was way too kind to President Obama," Plunder wrote in his monthly letter to his co-conspirators. "Let’s remember that Poland provoked Hitler, after all. But Wall Street had nothing to do with the financial crisis."
Unlike Plunder, however, many financial historians think that Schwartzman’s comparison of President Obama to Chancellor Hitler was too harsh. "It’s way over the top," says Shirley U. Geste, the Ken Lay Memorial Professor of Financial Ethics at William Duer University. "Hitler’s invasion of Poland? No way. I think it would be much more accurate to compare the administration’s proposals for higher taxes on partners in private equity firms to the Hyksos invasion of Egypt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries B.C., which destroyed the 13th Dynasty and ended Egyptian unity until the Hyksos were finally driven out during the 17th Dynasty by Seqenenre Tao II and his son Kamose."...