NPR's Totenberg: 'Bankers and Business' Are the 'Super-crooked'

On Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, regular panel member Nina Totenberg - a correspondent for NPR - generalized that "bankers and business" are not only the "super-rich" but also the "super-crooked" as the panel discussed the issue of Mitt Romney's taxes and President Barack Obama's "you didn't build that" gaffe in which he dismissed the importance of individual effort in entrepreneurship while crediting government. Totenberg:

(Video can be found here.)

You do have two views of the economy, and one of the reasons I think that the tax thing does play, other than all the obvious reasons, is, we have the latest banking scandal, the Libor scandal, and business thinks that Obama's the enemy. But bankers and business increasingly are distanced from the American public. They're the super-rich. They're the super-crooked, it appears, and people can't figure out how to get out of this, and-

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer then jumped in:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama was not speaking about the bankers. He was speaking about entrepreneurs-

NINA TOTENBERG: I understand that.

KRAUTHAMMER: -and individuals. And he said, "If you think it's your success, it's because of the infrastructure that the government had created."

TOTENBERG: That's actually not what he said.

KRAUTHAMMER:  You got to read the, you play the whole long quote, that's exactly what he says.