Roosevelt Institute Fellow Matt Stoller joined Cenk Uygur last night on Current TV's Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer, where they discussed the presidential race and how it may effect efforts to end financial fraud and crack down on Wall Street. Surprisingly, Stoller thinks Wall Street reformers might have more success with Mitt Romney in the White House than they would if Barack Obama wins a second term. In the video below, he argues that "if you look at Mitt Romney's career, it's been about moving where the political winds are, and the interesting thing is that Barack Obama is far less flexible in terms of his policy approach than Mitt Romney has been." 

Matt says that there would be no surprises in Obama's second term when it comes to his relationship with the big banks. "We know what Barack Obama's policy architecture is, and it's to perpetuate these sort of fraud machines and to help them and to bail them out and to overrule and steamroll anyone in office who wants to take them on." He explains that while he doesn't believe Romney's policies would be any better, "I'm putting my hope in the public. The public has shown an unwillingness to take on Barack Obama. I think the public is far more willing to take on Mitt Romney, because Mitt Romney looks like a plutocrat, and they may say 'No, you have to justify your policies.'" In other words, while Romney might be naturally inclined to support his friends on Wall Street, he's also far more likely to bend to the will of the outraged electorate or pragmatic advisors. Matt argues that by contrast, Obama is "unwilling to be pushed in the right direction by people who know what they're doing" because he's "a neoliberal ideologue. He has a strong, rigid view on what is right, and he doesn't move, evidence be damned."