Obama's only friend. Who is Robert Wolf?
Obama took him on vacation. Obama whisked him off to an intimate golf foursome for the third year in a row. Now, its not just golf, but basketball. Oh, and serving as one of Obama's official economic advisers.
Wolf, it should be noted, helped Obama become president, corralled big bucks for his campaign in 2008, and is doing it again.
Oh, he runs the US branch of a pretty dirty bank (and that's saying a lot) UBS, which encouraged massive tax evasion by the richest Americans.
Here are some of the tricks UBS used to hide assets of extremely rich Americans from the IRS (and may have cost US coffers $100 billion), as described by an angry Sen. Carl Levin: Tax Haven Bank Secrecy Tricks
~ Code Names for Clients
~ Pay Phones, not Business Phones
~ Foreign Area Codes
~ Undeclared Accounts
~ Encrypted Computers
~ Transfer Companies to Cover Tracks
~ Foreign Shell Companies
~ Fake Charitable Trusts
~ Straw Man Settlors
~ Captive Trustees
~ Anonymous Wire Transfers
~ Disguised Business Trips
~ Counter-Surveillance Training
~ Foreign Credit Cards
~ Hold Mail
~ Shred Files
UBS paid $780 million to avoid prosecution. Do the math on a $780 million payment on a $100 billion crime.
One wonders what Wolf tells his fellow banker friends about Obama and what he will do in a second term. "Obama will create greater economic equality"? "Obama will get money out of politics"? "Obama will finally give the 99% a say in our democracy"? "Obama will clamp down on corporate and wealthy tax cheats"?
Wolf is a banker, part of the "permanent government", the "one percent", the corruption of democracy. It is "friendships" like this that allow the federal government to ignore their own Federal Reserve economists when they urge that taxpayer money bail out taxpayers, not zillionaire bankers.
excerpted from Russ Baker
As Galbraithe has pointed out, Obama is going to need a very high fence to protect himself and his family after he leaves office. Probably a higher fence if he serves two terms, which seems inceasingly likely given how totally wacked out viable Rethuglican really are. They spout utter nonsense and don't even bother to offer plausible solutions to any of our problems.
