A lack of leadership among CEO’s and top officials within financial institutions and many US Corporations, who take outrageous salaries and stock options with golden parachutes that guarantee their incomes are, in my opinion, the source of the current financial crisis.

Complicated deals that even the CEO’s don’t understand and risks taken with shareholders money defies the basic rule that you don’t spend more than what you have.

Very simply that’s what Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch and AIG did and each of the heads of these financial institutions are guaranteed their salaries and stock options, whatever they might be worth, while failing to do their job.

We began the year of 2008 with five investment firms and today only two remain.  The executives of these five firms, who failed to provide the leadership and supervision, should not be rewarded for their incompetence and paid off with taxpayer monies, — for example the CEO of Fannie Mae, a Clinton appointee, made $90 million in six years – they should be given a pink slip, period, and placed in the same state of affairs they put their stockholders.

Furthermore they failed to provide full disclosure to their shareholders about their financial state and when they went bankrupt, merged or were bailed out by the Feds they did so on the weekend leaving the common man in the lurch as their 401K’s and pension plans tanked.

The Federal Government also needs to take its share of the blame for failing to properly regulate Wall Street and that source of failure begins in the White house and trickles down to each and every member of Congress.

Meanwhile while the stock market tanks and millions of our citizens are loosing their homes, Presidential candidate Barack Obama’ who says we are in “the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression,” is holding a dinner and concert this evening featuring Barbara Streisand costing attendees $31,000 each.  Yes that’s right $28,000 for dinner and $2,500 for the Streisand concert where she will sing, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”  It’s Obama Hypocrisy at its best.

Obama has selected not to take public funds because, as the elitist he is, he is counting on tinsel town attendees to come through tonight and break a single day fund raiser of $9 million.

As expected Obama is blaming the Wall Street crisis on the Republican administration.

That is fair game, but I have trouble reconciling this with the fact, from a financial viewpoint, that Obama took $1million of taxpayer funds each and every day he has served in the Senate for pork barrel funding in the State of Illinois.

If leadership and greed are at the heart of our financial crisis, it doesn’t sound as though Obama is using very good economic judgment hosting a $31.000 fund raiser, while this financial crisis is touching most, and taking $1million of taxpayers money for every day he has served in the Senate – while McCain hasn’t taken 1 cent in pork — for pork funding in Illinois.