Eric Alterman writes in The Nation that Wall Street is turning its back on a president who has bent over backwards for them.

The Obama campaign is encountering [difficulty] in pumping Wall Street for 2012 cash. Apparently, the president “enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them ‘fat cats’ and criticizing their bonuses.” As a result, “executives at large investment banks, a group that gave generously to Mr. Obama in his last campaign, are remaining on the sidelines for now.”

I actually think this is good news. Things might actually change if Obama wins a second term with little or no support from Wall Street. (The question, of course, is can you win an election without that mountain of cash?)

But here is the line that really caught my attention:

At the same time that banks were given massive loans at or near 0 percent from the Fed, they could turn around and lend to consumers at a 100 percent profit.

In his book Debt: The first five thousand years, David Graeber (a brilliant anthropologist) makes it clear that the hate for moneylenders and their schemes and games of exploitation is much deeper than capitalism. Moneylenders have a poor reputation in almost all known cultures and parts of history. There has yet to appear a society that universally celebrates the profession, sees it as honorable and honest work. Aristotle was by no means alone. In ancient story after ancient story, moneylenders are greedy, cruel, and their bodies associated with the excrement of beasts. For this and other more profound reasons, Graeber's book has forced me to completely reevaluate my position on human economics, its history, and its branches of thought. A Marxism without Graeber's anthropology is beginning to feel meaningless to me.