Obama to Top Bankers: 'I'm Protecting You ... I'm Going to Shield You' (with video)

CEO of JP Morgan, Jaime Dimon

Michael Moore:

On March 27, 2009, President Obama and his economic team met at the White House with the heads of thirteen major U.S. banks: Ken Chenault of American Express; Ken Lewis, Bank of America; Robert Kelly, Bank of New York Mellon; Vikram Pandit, Citigroup; John Koskinen, Freddie Mac; Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs; Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase; John Mack, Morgan Stanley; Rick Waddell, Northern Trust; James Rohr, PNC; Ronald Logue, State Street; Richard Davis, US Bank; and John Stumpf, Wells Fargo.

With the U.S. economy in free fall, the banks the beneficiaries of an extremely unpopular bailout, and a new history-making president in the White House, Wall Street was more politically vulnerable than at any point since the Great Depression in the nineteen thirties.

In his new book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, Ron Suskind describes what happened at the meeting: MORE...

Howie P.S.: For some context, here's video (02:00)from "Obama presses bankers to help rebuild US economy" by FRANCE24 from 12/15/09 (nine months later).