Was it President Barack Obama or another candidate for the 2012 presidential race who said this? "Wall Street grew to be a source of capital for growing companies. It has become something else: A facilitator for greed and for the selling of American jobs. Enough already."
While the anti-Wall Street rhetoric sounds more typically like that of a Democrat, it was Republican candidate and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer who made that remark on Wednesday in a statement praising, of all things, the Occupy Wall Street movement that has gathered momentum in protests across the country over the past month.
Another sampling from Roemer's populist appeal: "It is Main Street that is being foreclosed on; and it is Main Street that is suffering while the greed of Wall Street continues to hurt our middle-class."
Another candidate, at a news conference on Thursday, had this to day about Occupy Wall Street:
"I think it expresses the frustrations the American people feel, that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country … and yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place."
That comment was from Obama, and its anti-financial industry theme is heard now with ever greater frequency. Here's the president in an ABC news interview on Saturday calling on the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to stop financial institutions like Bank of America from charging a $5 monthly fee for customer use of its debit cards:
