THEY COME AT YOU WITH A SOFTBALL, YOU GO AT THEM WITH A BAT:

Still Stuck in Denial on Wall St. (JOE NOCERA, 10/02/10, NY Times)

“I represent the Wall Street community,” [Anthony Scaramucci] began, wearing a suit that was decidedly not polyester. “We have felt like a piñata. Maybe you don’t feel like you’re beating us with a stick but we certainly feel like we’ve been whacked with a stick.” After going on a bit about job growth and the “connection between Wall Street and Main Street,” he returned to his theme. “When are we going to stop whacking Wall Street like a piñata?”

In fact, Mr. Scaramucci had served up a softball question — just not the kind he had intended. The rap on Mr. Obama from most Wall Street executives these days is that he is antibusiness. Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, compared Mr. Obama’s approach to Wall Street as akin to Hitler invading Poland in 1939. (Mr. Schwarzman quickly apologized when the remark was made public.) The hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb turned his latest quarterly letter to his investors into an anti-Obama screed.

As Mr. Scaramucci later explained it, though, he wasn’t trying to pile on. He supports Mr. Obama and wants him to succeed, he said. Rather, he was trying to tee up a question that, he hoped, would give the president a chance to begin to heal Wall Street’s hurt. “I thought I was giving him an opportunity to say he is pro-business,” Mr. Scaramucci said.

Instead, Mr. Obama used Mr. Scaramucci’s question to whack him like, well, a piñata. In the span of just a few minutes, Mr. Obama mentioned billion-dollar hedge fund compensation, Mr. Schwarzman’s Hitler remark, the absurdity of a fund manager’s secretary paying a higher tax rate than his or her boss, and the fact that “most people on Main Street feel like they’ve been beat up on.” He was interrupted several times by applause. “He came at me with a baseball bat,” complained Mr. Scaramucci.

When I went to see Mr. Scaramucci a few days later, my purpose was to get him to explain to me why it is that Wall Street feels so beleaguered. I’d been having a difficult time understanding it.

Did Mr. Nocera read what he just wrote?

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 2, 2010 6:30 PM