Obama made the big banks rich and now he wants a ‘thank you’

Former President Barack Obama wants a “thank you” from Wall Street.

“Sometimes you go to Wall Street and folks will be grumbling about anti-business,” Obama said during an event hosted by Rice’s University Baker Institute. “And I say, ‘Have you checked where your stocks were when I came into office and where they are now? What are you talking about, what are you complaining about? Just say thank you, please.’”

Maybe Obama deserves it.

Obama walked into the White House talking tough about the financial institutions he blamed for the recession. Before he even left, disappointed critics such as Cornel West were complaining that Obama had shattered their progressive hopes and dreams with his “Wall Street presidency.”

There certainly was, and is, a chummy relationship.

Despite promises to exile K Street, banking lobbyists quickly found their way into the Obama administration. One former vice president at Goldman Sachs, Mark Patterson, would easily snag a job as chief of staff at the Treasury Department. Others who lobbied for the likes of Visa and Fannie Mae had no trouble finding similar homes.

Obama still stays in touch with that crowd and for good reason. Wall Street made him a millionaire in less than a year. The former president was paid a cool $1.2 million for a series of speeches given to major investment firms such as Cantor Fitzgerald and Northern Trust Corp.

That cash and that company are a far cry from the Obama who once told the unwashed protesters occupying the Wall Street financial district that he understands “their struggles and we are on their side.” It is also out of step with the Bernie-Sanders-inspired new guard of the Democratic Party who rail against the supposed largess of capitalism.

Obama wasn’t as tough with Wall Street as he liked to advertise. His attorney generals never prosecuted bank executives, and he never listened to calls to break up the bigger banks. Maybe that’s because he really didn’t mind if the stock market boomed and Wall Street got rich. In fact, looking back, the big banks never had a better friend than Obama.

Dodd-Frank rewrote the rules and Obama’s marquee financial regulation actually helped the big banks. This is because financial giants can easily comply with the new standards while their smaller competitors struggle. And so Obama watched as community banks, institutions that certainly didn’t create the financial crisis, were inevitably crushed under the demanding weight of his regulators.

According to the National Credit Union Administration, 1,250 federally insured credit unions shut their doors between 2010 and 2015, 17 percent of the industry. That meant billions in business for the institutions that could survive Dodd-Frank, and that means a grateful Wall Street.

For all of this, Wall Street should at least say thanks. The next time they cut Obama a check for a couple hundred thousand dollars for a brief speech, they ought to let the former president know how much his presidency meant to them.