President Obama's change from man of the people to friend of Wall Street is one of the biggest political turnarounds in history, writes Matt Taibbi. As soon as he was elected, Obama ditched his moderate economic advisers and built an economic team of Wall Street insiders with ties to "arch-capitalist" Citigroup honcho Bob Rubin, Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone.
Obama had a mandate to clamp down on Wall Street excesses, but he instead formed a team of "callous millionaire-assholes" with "absolutely zero interest in reforming the gamed system that made them rich in the first place, Taibbi writes. "Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us," Taibbi concludes. "If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different." (More Robert Rubin stories.)