News Worth Reading:
We’re Just Not That Into You
After years on the rocks, Wall Street is ready to break up with the GOP.
DAVID CALLAHAN | August 11, 2011
For more than a century, big business has counted on the Republican Party to do its bidding in Washington. Given recent debates over taxes and regulation—in which GOP lawmakers have catered to corporate interests—it might seem that not much has changed.
The past few weeks, though, show that everything has changed. Today’s Republican Party is turning out to be the worst friend business could imagine, led by politicians who don’t understand the modern economy, and, worse, are ready to blow it up on principle.
This spring, as a GOP beholden to the Tea Party geared up for brinksmanship on the debt ceiling, lobbyists for Wall Street and corporations begged Republican leaders to back off. These pleas were ignored, and now a few trillion dollars in shareholder equity, wealth owned primarily by the top 10 percent of the richest Americans and corporate executives, has gone poof.