Rich People Wake Up to Find Out they Voted for Obama

Put this story in the "thanks for paying attention nimrods you've help ruin our country" file.

Some of Barack Obama's richest supporters fear they have elected a "class warrior" to the White House, who will turn America's freewheeling capitalism into a more regulated European system.

Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr. Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: "I'm appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it's the real world. I'm surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He's a real class warrior."

Among those affected by such changes would be some of Mr Obama's most powerful supporters in the election, such as Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, and other "Silicon Valley" executives whose profits are mostly made abroad. They were taken aback when the President blasting companies for "shirking" their responsibilities by avoiding tax.

It has also dawned on wealthy Americans who flocked to the Obama campaign of "Hope" and "Change" that the president opposes the "trickle down" theories that have guided US economics since President Ronald Reagan was elected with a mandate to slash taxes.

Mr Obama said last week that it was "an aberration" that profits in the financial sector had grown so large over the last decade. It was ridiculous he suggested, that "25-year-olds (were) getting million-dollar bonuses, (and) they were willing to pay $100 for a steak dinner and the waiter was getting the kinds of tips that would make a college professor envious."

He warned that by the time he was done with them, Silicon Valley and Wall Street would remain large parts of the US economy, but not "half of our economy".

Believe me. I want very much to laugh. But how can you?