Players (Financial Regulatory All-Star Game)

The Urban Dictionary defines a player as "A man or woman that hooks up with many diffent persons but commits to none and in that process ends up hurting some of those invovled. " sic

Two rookie players on the Financial Regulatory All-Star Teams are Barack Obama and Scott Brown. Each has displayed a remarkable trajectory from populist champion to big money booster. Brown, number 41, won a senate seat in a special election last January promising “no more closed-door meetings or back-room deals by an out-of-touch party leadership.” He learned the fine points of the game among the pros in Washington, quickly evolving into a real power player. Ever the consumate athlete, he negotiated recently for 20 hours, holding on throughout the grueling financial regulatory reform reconciliation committee meeting. In the end, he won an exception to the Volcker rule for banks including hometown State Street Corp. and Mass Mutual. They will now be free to invest as much as three percent of their capital in hedge funds and private equity firms yet still continue to manage those funds. These risky investments necessitated the bank bailout that Tea Party candidates like Scott Brown have campaigned so vigorously against. In a further show of his rapid maturation as a player, Brown then threatened to vote against the bill if the banks were taxed to cover the cost of the law's implementation. He is shown here in a green Celtics jersey contrasting nicely with his trademark pink leather shorts, but his fundraising motto is "What can Brown do for you?"

The coaching staff at the White House is deservedly proud of their rookie, Barack Obama. In a January photo-op with Paul Volker, Obama called for reforms to "ensure that the failure of any large firm does not take the entire economy down with it." Elite coaches Lawrence H. Summers, head of the National Economic Council for the Obama administration and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have brought about Barack's new attitude. Summers earned nearly $5.2 million in just the last of his two years at one of the world’s largest funds in a position he describes as merely a part time job. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is a former president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In the late 1990s they worked to block the efforts of top regulators to regulate the same financial derivatives market that resulted in the current global financial crisis. No surprise then that Wall Street banks and the derivatives industry are considered to be big winners in the new financial reform legislation. Distracted by the Gulf Oil spill, Republican obstruction, Iran, Stanley McChrystal, and the Gaza flotilla, number 44 failed to make a critical slam-dunk with the big money donors from the banking industry.

Scott and Barry both live by the cardinal rule of all great players when it come to money or principles, "love em and leave em."