Fuck AI

I was in none other than Lehman Brothers during the last Crash and thus in the aftermath, still inside the Finance Industry and armed with some understanding of how that Industry worked, keenly observed both what the Obama Administration did and what the Cameron Government did (I was in the UK), and the Obama Administration very much did everything the bankers wanted and then some.

This wasn't merely a refraining to doing a few things, this was activelly working with the very people who caused the Crash to make sure they were fine (in many cases, even better than before) after the Crash. It's not by chance that all over the World (but more so in the US and UK) Asset Owners came back even wealthier than before whilst people whose income came from Work kept seeing their lot get progressively worse for at least a decade (in the UK, for example, years after the Crash, incomes of the top 10% by wealth of the population were going up in real terms 23% a year, whilst the rest saw their real terms income fall by 1.9% per year).

The actions of the Obama Administration are what's behind the complete halt of Social Mobility in the US (which used to have more Social Mobility than Europe) and the current problems of poverty at the lower end of the social scale there, which in turn helped the rise of Far-Right Populism in the form of Trump.

Obama's reaction to Occupy Wall Street wasn't a "oopsie", it was fully consistent with the kind of policies he was enacting, the section of society he chose to help and the sections of society he chose to sacrifice to fund that help, since he got elected and started tackling the consequences of the Crash.

I too had hopes about Obama, but seeing the choices he made, many going far, far (FAR) beyond what was necessary to protect the broader Economy (in some case actually sacrificing the future of the many to make sure the few did not at all saw their wealth go down) dispelled that hope and any illusions I had about him.