JUST CALL HIM VICE-PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: Tim Kaine, Clinton’s VP pick, is a Democrat Wall Street can like.
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HEY, THEY DON’T CALL HIM PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS FOR NOTHING: Income for top 1% in America rose twice as fast in 2015 as it did for the remaining 99%.
PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS HARDEST HIT: Wall Street’s latest panic: Trump could win:
The CEO of one large Wall Street firm, who declined to be identified by name criticizing the GOP front-runner, said the assumption in the financial industry remains that something will eventually knock Trump off and send voters toward a more establishment candidate. But that assumption is no longer held with strong conviction. And a dozen Wall Street executives interviewed for this article could not say what might dent Trump’s appeal or when it might happen.
“I don’t know anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. They are like this huge mystery group,” the CEO said. [Shades of Pauline Kael! — Ed] “So it’s a combination of shock and bewilderment. No one really knows why this is happening. But my own belief is that the laws of gravity will apply and those who are prepared to run the marathon will benefit when Trump drops out at mile 22. Right now people think Trump is pretty hilarious but the longer it goes on the more frightening it gets.”
The latest frightening broadside for the Wall Street class came on Sunday when Trump said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that executive pay in America is “a complete joke” and promised to raise taxes on “the hedge fund guys.” In a statement sent to POLITICO on Monday from his campaign, Trump relished in the attacks from Wall Street, singling out both Bush and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, another favorite on Wall Street.
“Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will continue to let Wall Street and the ‘hedge fund guys’ rip off the people by paying no or very little in taxes,” Trump said. “They have total and complete control of Hillary, Jeb and others running. My campaign is self- funded. The only people that have control of me are the people of the United States.”
By the time of the 2008 election, Wall Street abandoned Republicans, preferring Michael Bloomberg’s nanny state and Barack Obama’s arugula to the GOP’s traditional values, as Kevin D. Williamson wrote the following year:
Wall Street isn’t politically agnostic, and there’s more to its politics than money. Culture matters, and you won’t find a lot of Pentecostal churches in Greenwich, Conn. Wall Street guys, for the most part, do not have time for social conservatives. “Of course these guys aren’t conservative,” says one longtime bond trader. “Why the [expletive deleted] would they be? We’re talking about guys who live in Manhattan, guys with manicures and eight-figure bank balances. And their wives–their wives aren’t showing up at parents’ day at Brearley with a Sarah Palin button. It’d be like showing up in flip-flops from Wal-Mart. Like showing up in a [rather lengthier expletive deleted] tracksuit.”
This cultural divide is particularly visible in New York City politics. “Ten to 15 years ago, half of the Upper East Side [officeholders] were Republican,” says John Mills, executive vice president of the Lexington Democratic Club. “There’s not one Republican there now. Abortion and gay rights are two of the biggest issues, and there are a lot of Jewish voters here not comfortable with Christian conservatives.”
Wall Street has no love for the southern, rural, and evangelical. But it’s not just the Jesus stuff–the southern and rural parts matter, too: Republican congressmen tend to represent places like Glasscock County, Texas, America’s most Republican jurisdiction, which reliably gives 90-odd percent of its votes to the GOP. Those districts are not going to feel the pain of the financial markets the way New York, New Jersey, California, and Connecticut are. The bailout is not very popular in farm country. Wall Street knew there was a gathering storm in the markets, and it didn’t want to find itself at the mercy of small-town and rural Republicans’ riding to the rescue.
And thus, the birth of the man Glenn likes to call “President Goldman Sachs.”
As Kevin noted, Wall Street abandoned the American heartland in 2008, so it shouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that someone showing up with an anti-Wall Street message resonates with voters there. I’m disappointed it’s a rather punitive and populist message than a conservative one, but historically, fire and brimstone populism has always allowed a candidate to position himself as the champion to a large group of disenfranchised voters.
PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS HAS BEEN GOOD FOR WALL STREET, BUT NOT FOR ORDINARY AMERICANS. EVEN MIDDLE-CLASS BLACKS ARE SUFFERING.
African Americans for decades flocked to Prince George’s County to be part of a phenomenon that has been rare in American history: a community that grew more upscale as it became more black.
The county became a national symbol of the American Dream with a black twist. Families moved into expansive new homes, with rolling lawns, nearby golf courses and, most of all, neighbors who looked like them. In the early 2000s, home prices soared — some well beyond $1 million — allowing many African Americans to build the kind of wealth their elders could only imagine.
But today, the nation’s highest-income majority-black county stands out for a different reason — its residents have lost far more wealth than families in neighboring, majority-white suburbs. And while every one of these surrounding counties is enjoying a strong rebound in housing prices and their economies, Prince George’s is lagging far behind, and local economists say a full recovery appears unlikely anytime soon.
The same reversal of fortune is playing out across the country as black families who worked painstakingly to climb into the middle class are seeing their financial foundation for future generations collapse. Although African Americans have made once-unthinkable political and social gains since the civil rights era, the severe and continuing damage wrought by the downturn — an entire generation of wealth was wiped out — has raised a vexing question: Why don’t black middle-class families enjoy the same level of economic security as their white counterparts?
Hopey-changey!
HEY THEY DON’T CALL HIM PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS FOR NOTHING, YOU KNOW: Forget the 1%: It is the 0.01% who are really getting ahead in America.
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT, FROM PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS? I MEAN, REALLY. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? In 8 Econ Recoveries from 1949 to 2000, Bottom 99% Got Over 1/2 of Income Gains. In this Recovery, 99% get measly 5%.
Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.
PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: Obama subsidizes private jets for high-flyers abroad.
HEY, THEY DON’T CALL OBAMA PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS FOR NOTHING: Eric Holder Gives Pass to Banking Criminals at Credit Suisse. “When it comes to the Tea Party, Obama’s IRS probes private citizens beyond the legal limits. But when it comes to Swiss banks engaged in widespread criminal conduct, Eric Holder’s Justice Department turns a blind eye.”
JUST ANOTHER DAY FOR PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: “Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, acted to shield Citigroup’s bondholders and management from accountability at the height of the financial crisis while taxpayers were left on the hook, a former US bank regulator has alleged,” according to the Financial Times.
FLASHBACK: How Wall Street Occupied the White House.
ED DRISCOLL: President Goldman Sachs Presents ‘The Muppet Show,’ Sponsored by GE.
Consider this another example of Blair’s Law: Goldman Sachs, the company that thinks of its customers as “muppets,” is deeply in bed with the Obama administration, right down to their fundraising operations. The leader of said administration thinks of most Americans as lethargic bitter clingers, typical white people, who’ve acted stupidly, who’ve become soft, and who have lost their imagination and willingness to go along with the big government projects he envisions for them. (“What about more smart grids?” “We need more moon shot!”) And the above articles appear on a subsidiary Website of General Electric, whose CEO is Obama’s “Jobs Czar,” when he’s not sending GE’s own jobs to China, and whose on-air talent at the sister network to CNBC thinks of half the American people in arguably even worse terms than Obama himself does.
Read the whole thing.
Plus: “Barack Obama’s reelection campaign has released the most recent list of names of fundraising bundlers. On that list is Jon Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey and embattled money man, the former head of MF Global.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? So America has a President Goldman Sachs, Italy has a Prime Minister Goldman Sachs, and the European Central Bank will now be headed by a former Goldman Sachs banker.
THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER ON PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: President Obama walks on both sides of Wall Street.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets grief from a lot of conservatives for having changed his position over the years on important issues like abortion and government-run health care. But Romney is a rank amateur compared to the doubletalk coming from President Obama on the topic of Wall Street. On the one hand, there is the former community organizer Obama. This Obama has made it clear in recent weeks that he is at one with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, saying, for example, when ABC asked how he viewed the demonstrators, that “the most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side. …”
But then there is the Obama who is more than happy to accept high-dollar contributions from every Gordon Gecko on Wall Street. As the Washington Post recently reported, Obama has accepted more money — more than $15.6 million — from these people than all of the Republican presidential aspirants combined.
As I keep saying: They don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.
PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: Wall Street has already made more money under Obama than it did in Bush’s two terms. “Behind this turnaround, in significant measure, are government policies.”
PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: Obama Has More Cash From Wall Street Than All GOP Hopefuls Combined. “Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data.”
BLOOMBERG: Obama Goes From White House to Wall Street in Less Than One Year. “Obama is coming to Wall Street less than a year after leaving the White House, following a path that’s well trod and well paid. While he can’t run for president, he continues to be an influential voice in a party torn between celebrating and vilifying corporate power. His new work with banks might suggest which side of the debate he’ll be on and disappoint anyone expecting him to avoid a trap that snared Clinton.”
Hey, they didn’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.
But it’s yet another argument for my Revolving-Door Surtax.
Flashback: Joe Biden to Goldman Sachs execs: “I’m doing a job interview with you.”
SHOCK: KAEPERNICK ENDORSES TRUMP, DEMANDS REPUBLICAN MAYOR IN SAN FRANCISCO.
At least, that’s how I’m reading this AP headline: “Kaepernick Will Sit Through Anthem Until There’s Change,” given that Hillary is running as Obama’s third term, and San Francisco, which has recently been struck with allegations of racism in its police department, hasn’t had a Republican mayor since about the time the Beatles arrived in America. Otherwise he’s just engaging in kabuki, a sort of one-man version of Occupy Wall Street, which never raised much of a ruckus over President Goldman Sachs during their protests.
So, just how much change would you like, Mr. Kaepernick?
SALON: Americans deserve more than an apology for the foreclosure fraud epidemic.
“I lost my home of 30 years to fraudclosure.”
“I have been fighting this bank for over five years now. I am finally losing everything to their fraud.”
“We feel captive in our own home.”
This is a sampling of what I have awakened to practically every day for the past few months, since my book “Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud” came out. Hundreds of people have emailed me, sent me letters, attended my public events, to relate their personal horror stories of foreclosure and dispossession. They come from across America, from different social and economic backgrounds. Some lost everything, and some haven’t given up.
Hey, they don’t call Barack Obama “President Goldman Sachs” for nothing — but is America (including Salon writers) ready for Madam President Goldman Sachs?
CNBC: Wall Street is giving up on Donald Trump.
But Wall Street gave up on Republicans in 2008. They’d rather have President Goldman Sachs and his handpicked successor.
(Via Newsalert.)
TRUMP TWEETS, “Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs.”
But isn’t that exactly who Occupy endorsed? At no point in 2012 did the leftwing movement call for the ouster of President Goldman Sachs while protesting and pooping on police cars.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL PREDATION? Goldman Sachs hired prostitutes to win Libyan business, court told.
Will any journalists ask President Goldman Sachs or his designated successor about this story? (A rhetorical question, I know, I know.)
ANALYSIS: TRUE, DEPENDING ON WHAT THE MEANING OF ‘IS’ IS. Why Both Clintons Are Such Unapologetic Liars.
Related: Hillary Clinton: I Am Goldman Sachs’ ‘Partner in Government.’
No doubt, the investment firm is hoping for a smooth transition of power, from one President Goldman Sachs to another.
‘LACK OF ENTHUSIASM’ MAY DOOM DOWAGER EMPRESS OF CHAPPAQUA’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: As Michael Walsh spots, even her cheerleaders at the New York Times are forced to grit their teeth and write:
But Mrs. Clinton has a striking problem with young voters. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that a solid plurality of young voters has a negative view of Mrs. Clinton. She did even worse in a Bloomberg Politics national poll. Here is a result to unnerve her Brooklyn campaign headquarters: Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton get a 60 percent favorable rating with 18-to-29-year-olds. She gets 35 percent approval and 57 percent unfavorable.
Betsy Newmark spots the Times adding this black mark against Hillary as well:
Though she criticizes the American economy as being “rigged” for the rich*, Mrs. Clinton has lost some support recently from party members who think she would go easy on Wall Street excess if elected.
President Goldman Sachs going easy on Wall Street? Heaven forefend!
* To be fair, Hillary may have stumbled onto something here, but not in the way she thinks.
CLINTON TELLS GOP HOW TO DEFEAT HER: “Her answers were terrible, but they were terrible because there are no better ones. And this is the Republican opening: She cannot move very far away from the president, because she was his diplomatic steward for four years,” John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post.
At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw notes “Clinton delivers bizarre performance in CBS Dem debate,” including this bit of clumsy tap-dancing from inside the exoskeleton:
The most bizarre part of the entire evening, however, had to be when Sanders challenged Clinton about all the Wall Street money she’s taken. She launched into an answer which invoked 9/11 and how proud she was to help them rebuild after the attacks.
“I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is.”
“I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild,” said Clinton, who represented New York from 2001 to 2009. “That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”
At that point I was just staring at the television screen speechless. I was sort of hoping that Dickerson’s next question would be whether or not Hillary was smelling burnt hair at the moment because it sounded as if she’d had a stroke. I clearly wasn’t the only one, either. The bizarre, rambling 9/11 answer led to jaws dropping all over Twitter (you can see a list from the RNC here) including the Daily Beast:
“Clinton Is Having As Bad A Night As She Could Be Expected To Have, With ISIS Not America’s Fight And 9/11 Is Why I Took Wall Street $$” (Twitter.com, 11/14/15)
Which is yet another way that Hillary isn’t moving very far away from President Goldman Sachs:
BERNIE SANDERS IS THE MOST PROMINENT CONSPIRACY THEORIST IN AMERICA, Rich Lowry writes at the Politico:
He runs around the country alleging that the economy is “rigged” — a term borrowed from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — by what he calls “the billionaire class.”
Sanders doesn’t mean this metaphorically. It’s not a poetic exaggeration. He’s dead serious. As he put it in his speech at Liberty University a couple of months ago, our economy is “designed by the wealthiest people in this country to benefit the wealthiest people in this country at the expense of everybody else.”
Designed. Per Sanders, the wealthy have built and maintained a self-serving system of income inequality at the cost of the 99 percent. As he has put it: “This is a rigged economy — heads they win, tails you lose.”
But when will he start attacking President Goldman Sachs by name, and his would-be successor?
Related: Fellow socialist Bill de Blasio endorses Hillary over Bernie, oddly enough.
(Via Betsy Newmark.)