You know those people who, when you ask what crowd they were friends with in high school, say, “Oh, I was kind of friends with everyone,” which is an obvious lie since no one is “friends with everyone”; in high school you’re either a dork or a popular kid, and the only in-between people are dorks who spend the whole time disassociating themselves from the dorks and trying to be popular and therefore aren’t really friends with anyone. We feel like right now, Chuck Schumer is kind of that guy. The New York senator has always sucked up to Wall Street — he even broke with his party a couple of years ago when he opposed a bill raising taxes on hedge funds and private-equity firms — but now that it’s cool, he’s jumping on the populist bandwagon. “When Wall Street comes in conflict with Main Street, I tend to side with Main Street,” he told Bloomberg today. “When Wall Street comes in conflict with other entities, large entities, overseas or elsewhere, I try to help New York, at least when I think they’re right.” See, he’s friends with everybody! And, he says, the benefit of this is that he has the influence to help enact true change.
The senator sees his criticisms of banks not as scolding but as tough-love advice from a friend. In January, Schumer says, he advised Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit to cancel delivery of a corporate jet, telling him, “When you get government money, you’re in a different world, in terms of compensation, in terms of planes, in terms of everything.”
Pandit, he says, “sort of acknowledged I was right, I think.”
Then we can only imagine Pandit put him in a headlock, gave him a fierce noogie, and said, ‘Where’s my term paper, bitch?’
Schumer Chastises Wall Street Friends Amid Ire Over Bailouts [Bloomberg]
