Obama's Vanguard Group/`Vanguardgate' Scandal Wall Street Connection

In 2008 some anti-corporate left supporters of Barack Obama’s candidacy claimed that a Democratic Obama Administration was going to represent the economic and class interests of U.S. working-class and lower middle-class people who don’t own any Wall Street corporate stock because “Barack used to be a community organizer” in the 1980s.

Yet between 2009 and 2012, the Democratic Obama Administration has generally just represented the special economic interests of the white U.S. upper-class and upper middle-class folks who invest in the mutual funds of firms like the Vanguard Group, which profit from their ownership of big chunks of Wall Street stock in corporations that exploit both U.S. and foreign workers and U.S. and foreign consumers. One reason might be because, according to Obama's 2011 financial disclosure form, Democratic President Obama and his wife, coincidentally, have had a personal investment of between $200,000 and $450,000 of their money in the Vanguard Group’s Vanguard S and P 500 Fund in recent years.

According to the Vanguard Group’s website, on June 30, 2012 the Vanguard S and P 500 Fund in which the Obamas have a personal economic investment owned billions or millions of dollars worth of Wall Street stock in companies like the following transnational corporations:

1. $4.9 billion worth of Apple Inc. stock (8.4 million shares);

2. $3.5 billion worth of Exxon Mobil stock (42 million shares);

3. $2 billion worth of Microsoft stock (67.2 million shares);

4. $2 billion worth of IBM stock (10.3 million shares);

5. $1.9 billion worth of General Electric (GE)/NBC stock (95.3 million shares);

6. $1.8 billion worth of AT&T stock (52.7 million shares);

7. $1.8 billion worth of Chevron stock (17.7 million shares);

8. $1.6 billion worth of Johnson & Johnson stock (24.7 million shares);

9. $1.5 billion worth of Wells Fargo & Co. stock (47.8 million shares);

10. $1.5 billion worth of Coca-Cola stock (20.2 million shares);

11. $1.5 billion worth of Pfizer stock (67.3 million shares);

12. $1.5 billion worth of Procter & Gamble stock (24.6 million shares);

13. $1.3 billion worth of Philip Morris International stock (15.3 million shares);

14. $1.3 billion worth of Google Inc. stock (2.2 million shares);

15. $1.2 billion worth of JP Morgan Chase stock (34.2 million shares);

16. $1.2 billion worth of Intel stock (45.2 million shares);

17. $1.1 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock (14.2 million shares);

18. $1.1 billion worth of Merck & Co. stock (27.3 million shares);

19. $1.1 billion worth of Verizon stock (25.5 million shares);

20. $1 billion worth of Wal-Mart stock (15.5 million shares);

21. $1 billion worth of Oracle Corp. stock (34.9 million shares);

22. $994 million worth of PepsiCo stock (14 million shares);

23. $912 million worth of Abbott Laboratories stock (14.1 million shares);

24. $858 million worth of QUALCOMM stock (15.4 million shares);

25. $827 million worth of Cisco Systems stock (48.1 million shares);

26. $809 million worth of McDonald’s stock (9.1 million shares);

27. $793 million worth of Bank of America stock (96.9 million shares);

28. $779 million worth of Disney/ABC stock (16 million shares);

29. $778 million worth of Schlumberger stock (11.9 million shares);

30. $740 million worth of Amazon.com stock (3.2 million shares);

31. $733 million worth of Comcast/NBC stock (22.9 million shares);

32. $729 million worth of Home Depot stock (13.7 million shares);

33. $723 million worth of Citigroup stock (26.3 million shares);

34. $679 million worth of United Parcel Service stock (8.6 million shares);

35. $635 million worth of ConocoPhillips stock (11.3 million shares);

36. $632 million worth of Altria Group stock (18.3 million shares);

37. $625 million worth of Occidental Petroleum stock (7.2 million shares);

38. $619 million worth of United Technologies stock (8.1 million shares);

39. $616 million worth of Kraft Foods stock (15.9 million shares);

40. $559 million worth of 3M stock (6.2 million shares);

41. $553 million worth of Visa stock (4.4 million shares);

42. $548 million worth of US Bancorp stock (17 million shares);

43. $546 million worth of Bristol-Myers Squibb stock (15.1 millions shares);

44. $546 million worth of UnitedHealth Group stock (9.3 million shares);

45. $538 million worth of CVS Caremark stock (11.5 million shares);

46. $524 million worth of American Express stock (9 million shares);

47. $511 million worth of Union Pacific stock (4.2 million shares);

48. $511 million worth of Amgen stock (6.9 million shares);

49. $500 million worth of Boeing stock (6.7 million shares);

50. $498 million worth of Caterpillar stock (5.8 million shares);

51. $424 million worth of Simon Property Group stock (2.7 million shares);

52. $424 million worth of Goldman Sachs stock (4.4 million shares);

53. $422 million worth of News Corp/Fox News stock (18.9 million shares);

54. $363 million worth of Starbucks stock (6.8 million shares);

55. $338 million worth of Dow Chemical stock (10.7 million shares);

56. $332 million worth of Time Warner/CNN stock (8.6 million shares);

57. $329 million worth of Ford Motor stock (34.3 million shares);

58. $309 million worth of Apache Corp. stock (3.5 million shares);

59. $235 million worth of Halliburton stock (8.6 million shares);

60. $213 million worth of General Dynamics stock (3.2 million shares);

61. $208 million worth of Lockheed Martin stock (2.3 million shares);

62. $173 million worth of Yahoo Inc. stock (10.9 million shares); and

63. $169 million worth of Raytheon stock (2.4 million shares).