NO ONE SERVED HIS CRONY BANKSTERS MORE THAN LAWYER ERIC
HOLDER AND KENNETH FEINBERG. THE BANKS HAVE BEEN MIGHTY GENEROUS WITH THE
OBOMB, WHAT WITH ALL THESE SPEECH FEES AT $500k A WACK!
Banks, hedge funds and other financial
firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him considerably more than
they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Former adviser to President Obama and
investor Robert Wolf told Politico that
the financial industry has changed over the last few decades and that Wall
Street-types are vastly more aligned with the Democrat establishment than Trump’s
GOP.
“The response of the administration was
to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama
expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded.
He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital,
symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner.”
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
“This was not
because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the
contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013
that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
He was also chosen
by the Obama administration as its “pay czar” to ensure that the heads of
bailed-out Wall Street banks received multi-million-dollar bonuses in the wake
of the 2008 financial crash.
Consequently, while pushing a legislative agenda of public
bail-outs, the Obama Administration maintained a secret program of
multi-trillion dollar loans, including billions at below market interest rates.
The principal recipients of the funding were JPMorgan, Bank of America,
Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan
Stanley. JONATHAN EMORD
The fix is in: Kenneth Feinberg to
oversee payouts to Boeing crash victims
Boeing’s appointment last week of Kenneth Feinberg to
administer the aerospace giant’s $50 million Community Investment Fund to
compensate the communities affected by the two 737 Max 8 crashes and the
resulting 346 deaths leaves little doubt that the account will be used to
defend the airplane manufacturer’s multi-billion-dollar profits.
Feinberg played a similar role when he was selected in July
2019 to head the $50 million Boeing Financial Assistance Fund. In that role, he
oversaw payments of a mere $144,500 to each family that lost a loved one on
either the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 outside of Jakarta,
Indonesia or Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019 near Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia.
In total, Boeing has pledged only $100 million to
compensate the crash victims’ families and neighborhoods for putting their
friends and relatives on the deadly Max 8 jets. For comparison, the company
reported revenues of $76.6 billion in 2019 and has pledged to pay airlines at
least $5 billion for their lost profits resulting from the two crashes. To date,
no executives at the company or regulators at the Federal Aviation
Administration, which were all aware of the deadly flaws in the Max 8, have
been prosecuted or even charged for the murder of the 346 men, women and
children who were killed.
The selection of Feinberg to oversee both funds was
approved by Boeing’s executives with good reason. As Wall Street’s preeminent
corporate “fixer,” he has repeatedly been called upon to protect the interests
of the country’s corporate and political elite. In recent times, he has chaired
an escrow account to minimize compensation to victims of the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks in the US. He was also chosen by the Obama administration
as its “pay czar” to ensure that the heads of bailed-out Wall Street banks received
multi-million-dollar bonuses in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
Feinberg’s chief responsibility will be to ensure that whatever
money Boeing does eventually pay out is vetted in such a way that the
corporation will ultimately be absolved for manufacturing lethal airplanes.
While Tim Keating, the Boeing executive who is overseeing the funds, has stated
that Boeing is “empower[ing] the [crash victims’] families to decide how to
allocate these funds,” a press release on the Community Investment Fund makes
clear that “governments and other interested parties” will have the final say.
This is not the first time Feinberg’s services have been
employed to minimize damage to major manufacturers in the wake of their
criminal negligence. He was hired by General Motors in 2015 after it was
exposed that the automaker hid an ignition switch fault in low-end GM vehicles
that killed at least 169 people. Under rules set by the Obama administration,
Feinberg rejected 90 percent of the claims submitted against GM for the
company’s criminal negligence, saving GM several billion dollars in liability
costs.
The fixer is playing a similar role for Boeing. The payouts
that Boeing gave directly to its victims’ families amounted to less than what
ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg averaged in a month. The company is also using the
fund, and Feinberg’s skills, in an attempt to stave off other lawsuits. So far
only 50 families have come forward with additional claims, which Boeing has
settled out of court for $1.2 million for each life lost. If Feinberg is able
to convince the other 296 families that they should accept Boeing’s payout and
not seek further damages, it will save Boeing an estimated $355.2 million.
Other cases in which Feinberg has saved giant corporations
or the federal government hundreds of millions or billions of dollars include
suits by Vietnam citizens and US soldiers against Dow and Monsanto for
supplying Agent Orange to the American military, and ensuring that BP paid only
a quarter of what it originally claimed it would pay to people devastated by
the ecological catastrophe caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Feinberg, who emerged as a political figure as chief of
staff for Senator Ted Kennedy in the late 1970s, was also appointed trustee of
the victim compensation fund for the notoriously dangerous Dalkon Shield, a birth
control device made by A.H. Robins. It was established that Robins knew of the
dangers the device posed to women’s health, including causing death, and suppressed
and destroyed such information where and whenever it could.
The Dalkon Shield ultimately caused life-threatening pelvic
infections in more than 200,000 women, with side effects including complete
hysterectomy, chronic pelvic pain and/or permanent infertility. Feinberg
ensured that each woman injured would receive money from the fund only if she
forfeited her right to sue outside of the settlement. Those who accepted the
deal received an average of $725.
Boeing is eager to receive similar windfalls. Over the past
year, Boeing’s total stock value has fallen more than $72 billion. It has been
forced to pay nearly $19 billion as a result of the grounding of its 737 Max
fleet, including compensation to airlines for canceled flights and maintenance
costs.
Feinberg is being used to minimize the money going to the
company’s victims and to silence criticism so the aerospace giant can get back
to business as usual as soon as possible.
It is still unclear, however, when or even if the Max 8
will ever fly again. Since its grounding last March, a steady stream of
internal leaks, news reports, interviews with former employees and
congressional hearings have provided a mountain of evidence that the plane is
fundamentally unsafe and should remain grounded indefinitely.
Just last week, in a report to the FAA, Boeing revealed
that it found trash and debris in the fuel tanks of 35 of 50 inspected Max 8s
that were being reviewed in preparation for the plane’s reintroduction into
service. Objects that were discovered in the fuel tanks included tools, rags,
shoe covers and other detritus, all of which can cause fires, block fuel lines
and trigger other potentially catastrophic problems.
The planes that were reviewed are among the nearly 400 Max
8s that were made after the jets’ grounding, which are all now being inspected.
According to company spokesman Bernard Choi, “It’s still undecided,” if Boeing
will mandate the inspection of the other 385 jets that have been delivered to
customers. He claimed, despite the past year’s evidence to the contrary, that,
“Obviously, we’ll do what’s right for safety.”
Both Boeing and the FAA also missed a fault in the
electrical wiring related to the aircraft’s horizontal wing, which can create a
short and cause an unrecoverable, uncontrolled dive similar to the Lion Air and
Ethiopian Airlines crashes. Boeing argues that because the same wiring
configuration was authorized for use on the older 737 NG model, it shouldn’t
need to inspect the wiring for the Max 8, basing itself on safety regulations
from the early 1990s.
It is likely, however, that the FAA will force Boeing to
resolve the fault, pushing back the relaunch of the Max 8 by months, in order
to relieve pressure from other regulatory agencies, particularly the European
Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Even if the FAA approves the Max 8 to fly, it is
now a given that other countries will not allow the Max 8 to fly unless also
approved by the EASA, meaning that the Max 8 must satisfy two sets of
regulators if Boeing is to have any hope of pushing its flagship aircraft into
international aviation market
OBAMA-BIDEN AND THEIR
BANKSTERS:
And it all got much,
much worse after 2008, when the schemes collapsed and, as Lemann points out,
Barack Obama did not aggressively rein in Wall Street as Roosevelt had done,
instead restoring the status quo ante even when it meant ignoring a staggering
white-collar crime spree. RYAN COOPER
The Rise of Wall Street
Thievery
How
corporations and their apologists blew up the New Deal order and pillaged the
middle class.
by Ryan Cooper
MAGAZINE
A merica has long had a suspicious streak toward business, from
the Populists and trustbusters to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. It’s a
tendency that has increased over the last few decades. In 1973, 36 percent of
respondents told Gallup they had only “some” confidence in big business, while
20 percent had “very little.” But in 2019, those numbers were 41 and 32 percent—near
the highs registered during the financial crisis.
Clearly, something has
happened to make us sour on the American corporation. What was once a stable
source of long-term employment and at least a modicum of paternalistic benefits
has become an unstable, predatory engine of inequality. Exactly what went
wrong is well documented in Nicholas Lemann’s excellent new book, Transaction
Man . The title is a reference to The Organization Man , an
influential 1956 book on the corporate culture and management of that era.
Lemann, a New Yorker staff writer and Columbia journalism
professor (as well as a Washington Monthly contributing
editor), details the development of the “Organization” style through the career
of Adolf Berle, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s brain trust. Berle argued
convincingly that despite most of the nation’s capital being represented by the
biggest 200 or so corporations, the ostensible owners of these firms—that is,
their shareholders—had little to no influence on their daily operations.
Control resided instead with corporate managers and executives.
Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the
Decline of the American Dream
by Nicholas Lemann
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pp.
Berle was alarmed by the wealth of these
mega-corporations and the political power it generated, but also believed that
bigness was a necessary concomitant of economic progress. He thus argued that
corporations should be tamed, not broken up. The key was to harness the corporate
monstrosities, putting them to work on behalf of the citizenry.
Berle exerted major influence on the New Deal
political economy, but he did not get his way every time. He was a fervent
supporter of the National Industrial Recovery Act, an effort to directly
control corporate prices and production, which mostly flopped before it was
declared unconstitutional. Felix Frankfurter, an FDR adviser and a disciple of
the great anti-monopolist Louis Brandeis, used that opportunity to build
significant Brandeisian elements into New Deal structures. The New Deal social
contract thus ended up being a somewhat incoherent mash-up of Brandeis’s and
Berle’s ideas. On the one hand, antitrust did get a major focus; on the other,
corporations were expected to play a major role delivering basic public goods like
health insurance and pensions.
Lemann then turns to his major subject, the
rise and fall of the Transaction Man. The New Deal order inspired furious
resistance from the start. Conservative businessmen and ideologues argued for a
return to 1920s policies and provided major funding for a new ideological
project spearheaded by economists like Milton Friedman, who famously wrote an
article titled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its
Profits.” Lemann focuses on a lesser-known economist named Michael Jensen,
whose 1976 article “Theory of the Firm,” he writes, “prepared the ground for
blowing up that [New Deal] social order.”
Jensen and his colleagues embodied that
particular brand of jaw-droppingly stupid that only intelligent people can
achieve. Only a few decades removed from a crisis of unregulated capitalism
that had sparked the worst war in history and nearly destroyed the United
States, they argued that all the careful New Deal regulations that had
prevented financial crises for decades and underpinned the greatest economic
boom in U.S. history should be burned to the ground. They were outraged by the
lack of control shareholders had over the firms they supposedly owned, and argued
for greater market discipline to remove this “principal-agent
problem”—econ-speak for businesses spending too much on irrelevant luxuries
like worker pay and investment instead of dividends and share buybacks. When
that argument unleashed hell, they doubled down: “To Jensen the answer was
clear: make the market for corporate control even more active, powerful, and
all-encompassing,” Lemann writes.
The best part of the book is the connection
Lemann draws between Washington policymaking and the on-the-ground effects of
those decisions. There was much to criticize about the New Deal social
contract—especially its relative blindness to racism—but it underpinned a
functioning society that delivered a tolerable level of inequality and a decent
standard of living to a critical mass of citizens. Lemann tells this story
through the lens of a thriving close-knit neighborhood called Chicago Lawn.
Despite how much of its culture “was intensely provincial and based on
personal, family, and ethnic ties,” he writes, Chicago Lawn “worked because it
was connected to the big organizations that dominated American culture.” In
other words, it was a functioning democratic political economy.
Then came the 1980s. Lemann paints a visceral
picture of what it was like at street level as Wall Street buccaneers were
freed from the chains of regulation and proceeded to tear up the New Deal
social contract. Cities hemorrhaged population and tax revenue as their
factories were shipped overseas. Whole businesses were eviscerated or even
destroyed by huge debt loads from hostile takeovers. Jobs vanished by the
hundreds of thousands.
And it all got much, much worse after 2008,
when the schemes collapsed and, as Lemann points out, Barack Obama did not
aggressively rein in Wall Street as Roosevelt had done, instead restoring the
status quo ante even when it meant ignoring a staggering white-collar crime
spree. Neighborhoods drowned under waves of foreclosures and crime as far-off
financial derivatives imploded. Car dealerships that had sheltered under the
General Motors umbrella for decades were abruptly cut loose. Bewildered Chicago
Lawn residents desperately mobilized to defend themselves, but with little
success. “What they were struggling against was a set of conditions that had
been made by faraway government officials—not one that had sprung up
naturally,” Lemann writes.
T oward the end of the book, however, Lemann starts to run out of
steam. He investigates a possible rising “Network Man” in the form of top
Silicon Valley executives, who have largely maintained control over their
companies instead of serving as a sort of esophagus for disgorging their
companies’ bank accounts into the Wall Street maw. But they turn out to be, at
bottom, the same combination of blinkered and predatory as the Transaction Men.
Google and Facebook, for instance, have grown over the last few years by
devouring virtually the entire online ad market, strangling the journalism
industry as a result. And they directly employ far too few people to serve as
the kind of broad social anchor that the car industry once did.
In his final chapter, Lemann argues for a
return to “pluralism,” a “messy, contentious system that can’t be subordinated
to one conception of the common good. It refuses to designate good guys and bad
guys. It distributes, rather than concentrates, economic and political power.”
This is a peculiar conclusion for someone who
has just finished Lemann’s book, which is full to bursting with profoundly bad
people—men and women who knowingly harmed their fellow citizens by the millions
for their own private profit. In his day, Roosevelt was not shy about
lambasting rich people who “had begun to consider the government of the United
States as a mere appendage to their own affairs,” as he put it in a 1936 speech
in which he also declared, “We know now that government by organized money is
just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”
If concentrated economic power is a bad thing,
then the corporate form is simply a poor basis for a truly strong and equal
society. Placing it as one of the social foundation stones makes its workers
dependent on the unreliable goodwill and business acumen of management on the
one hand and the broader marketplace on the other. All it takes is a few
ruthless Transaction Men to undermine the entire corporate social model by
outcompeting the more generous businesses. And even at the high tide of the New
Deal, far too many people were left out, especially African Americans.
Lemann writes that in the 1940s the United
States “chose not to become a full-dress welfare state on the European model.”
But there is actually great variation among the European welfare states. States
like Germany and Switzerland went much farther on the corporatist road than the
U.S. ever did, but they do considerably worse on metrics like inequality,
poverty, and political polarization than the Nordic social democracies, the
real welfare kings.
Conversely, for how threadbare it is, the U.S.
welfare state still delivers a great deal of vital income to the American people.
The analyst Matt Bruenig recently calculated that American welfare eliminates
two-thirds of the “poverty gap,” which is how far families are below the
poverty line before government transfers are factored in. (This happens mainly
through Social Security.) Imagine how much worse this country would be without
those programs! And though it proved rather easy for Wall Street pirates to
torch the New Deal corporatist social model without many people noticing,
attempts to cut welfare are typically very obvious, and hence unpopular.
Still, Lemann’s book is more than worth the
price of admission for the perceptive history and excellent writing. It’s a
splendid and beautifully written illustration of the tremendous importance
public policy has for the daily lives of ordinary people.
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at the
Week. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New Republic, and the
Nation. He was an editor at the Washington Monthly from 2012 to 2014.
Before
his first day in office Barack Obama had sucked in more bribes from banksters
than any president in history.
During
the economic meltdown caused by Obama’s crony banksters, and Obama’s first two
years in office, banks made more money than eight years under pro-bankster
administration of George Bush.
Both
of Obama’s Attorney Generals, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, were chosen by the
banks because they were from law firms that had long protected big banks from
their victims.
"This is how they will destroy
America from within. The leftist billionaires who
orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing
us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of
millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt
for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being
intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers. These
people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats
who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA
McCARTHY
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
“This was not
because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the
contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013
that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
Joe
Biden, the walking moron, was selected by Obama also because of his ties and
servitude to big banks!
OBOMB'S
CRONY BANKSTERS DESTROYED MORE
THAN A TRILLION DOLLARS IN AMERICAN
HOME
VALUES AND NOW THEY'RE COMING BACK FOR
MORE WITH THE BANKSTES' RENT BOY BIDEN!
Decades of
decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide.
While the rich
accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages
and benefits have
been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of
the population
took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017,
that fell to only
61 percent.
NO
PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN BARACK
OBAMA!
This
was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the
contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013
that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
Income inequality grows four times faster under Obama than Bush …. we
bankroll Mexico's welfare state in our borders as the number of Americans
(Legals) sink into poverty! Illegals also get all the jobs!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/09/obamas-assault-on-american-people-on.html
The study noted that, in the aftermath of the Great Depression,
the US undertook policies “during the New Deal [that] permanently reduced
income concentration until the 1970s.” In contrast, the study noted a striking
absence of any measures to reign in social inequality in the present crisis.
Far from it, the Obama administrations’ bank bailouts, austerity program and
wage-cutting policies have vastly expanded the prevalence of social inequality.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM
THE FED'S OLD BOY NETWORK
By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The Rise of
Tyranny" and
"Global Censorship of Health
Information"
December 19, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News, performed an enormous
service for the American public when it sued the Federal Reserve and the
Clearing House Association LLC, an institution created by several of the
nation’s largest banks, to force disclosure of secret loans made by the Federal
Reserve principally to the six largest U.S. banks but also to certain foreign
banks. The treasure trove of evidence ultimately obtained by Bloomberg reveals
that while the public Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailed out leading
Wall Street firms for the whopping sum of $700 billion, the Fed at the same
time doled out some $7.77 trillion (an astronomical sum equal to have the gross
domestic product). To make matters worse, the Fed expanded its emergency
discount lending program, giving tens of billions more to the same banks at an
interest rate of 1%, while the prime lending rate stood at over 3%. The
banks getting these funds often turned them into profit centers, lending out
proceeds from them at higher interest rates and pocketing the difference,
profiting on federal largesse.
The President and his top economic advisers bought the “too
big to fail” concept, the notion that regardless of how profligate,
irresponsible, even criminal, heads of the leading financial institutions in
America had been, it would be worse for the nation if those institutions were
to collapse. Consequently,
while pushing a legislative agenda of public bail-outs, the Obama
Administration maintained a secret program of multi-trillion dollar loans, including
billions at below market interest rates. The principal recipients of the
funding were JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co.,
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
The General Accounting Office audit of the Federal Reserve
revealed that some $16 trillion was supplied in secret loans from the Federal
Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. The largest single
recipients were Citigroup ($2.5 trillion); Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion);
Merrill Lynch ($2 trillion); Bank of America ($1.3 trillion); Barclays PLC
($868 billion); Bear Stearns ($853 billion); Goldman Sachs ($814 billion); the
Royal Bank of Scotland ($541 billion); JP Morgan Chase ($391 billion); and
Deutsche Bank ($354 billion).
Bloomberg discovered that while top banks were touting in
their press releases during the crisis that they had fiscal soundness, their
balance sheets were made up primarily of federal funds, most from the Federal
Reserve. Moreover, while many banks paid back the TARP funds, they most often
did so in reliance on the secret receipts of tens of billions of dollars in
Federal Reserve money (in other words, the pay back was in that sense a
charade: federal money paid back federal loans). In short, the
Administration was complicit in the orchestration of a massive fraud on the
American public, making it seem that the banks largely responsible for the
financial crisis were weathering the storm of their own accord when in fact
they were on board the good ship U.S. Taxpayer.
Meanwhile, the bad lending and financial dealing practices
that helped produce the financial crisis have been largely kept in place,
underwritten by the federal government. The top banks suddenly realized that
far from having to suffer ignominy and defeat for their abuses, they would be
kept alive by a seemingly endless flow of federal cash. Indeed, the feds
accepted as collateral for loans securities of virtually no worth and other
properties that would never support private commercial lending. By propping up
the major banks despite their irresponsible lending practices, the federal
government has given them a privileged financial status whereby private lenders
will give them terms far more favorable than their smaller competitors because
they understand the federal government will not let them fail. Economist call
this safety net a “moral hazard” (effective federal underwriting for heightened
risk taking that permits these lenders to profit at above market rates of
return in speculative investing without suffering financial liability for
loss). The amounts doled out by the federal government to the banks could
have paid off as much as one tenth of all of the delinquent mortgages,
Bloomberg determined.
Rather than be forced to take their losses on their enormous
junk portfolios and interbank lending practices, the top six banks were allowed
to keep the junk portfolios, maintain their dubious lending practices, and turn
to the Federal Reserve for money on demand whenever problems arose. Repeatedly
when the banks should have gone under due to poor lending practices and grossly
speculative profiteering, they were complimented by the Federal Reserve,
rescued, and then allowed to tout the falsehood that their success came from
sharp management rather than from secret loans. At the same time, these banks
and others have shut down commercial lending for small businesses nationwide.
The “too big to fail” justification for the massive federal
welfare dole to the top six United States banks was based on a faulty premise.
Without question the demise of the leading banks would entail hardship,
particularly for the employees of those institutions, but the long term
prognosis was good for a restructuring of the financial market through
bankruptcies and takeovers. The alternative to allowing the market to impose
its own swift and harsh corrective involves imposing a massive burden on every
American citizen for generations to come for the trillions spent to prop up a
few dozen Wall Street moguls. Rather than have the taxpayers pay an inflated
sum to keep the banks responsible for the financial crisis alive, the nation
could have spared itself an assumption of massive debt and witnessed the demise
of these banks and the rise of new competing financial institutions based on a
solid financial model.
The Bush and Obama Administration’s role as Santa Claus for
Wall Street has kept from Wall Street the needed lessons that would have
otherwise come from the collapse of the major lending institutions. Painful as
it may seem to some, it is far better to allow the market to experience a
correction for profligate lending practices than to force the American
taxpayers for generations to come to pay for the bad decisions made by a few
and to let those few go without suffering a single consequence beyond temporary
embarrassment.
Obama
paid $600,000 for a single speech
In the two years since leaving the White House, former
President Barack Obama has spent his time raising and solidifying his position
in the uppermost echelons of the top one percent of Americans. Obama has raked
in exorbitant amounts of money for public speaking events and made deals worth
millions with multiple companies.
Despite his quip, made during the depths of the Great
Recession, that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” there seems to
be no such limit for the Obamas. His family has amassed so much wealth that
even Obama himself said he was surprised in a speech in South Africa last year.
Since he left office, the former president has given an
estimated 50 speeches a year to corporate audiences for hundreds of thousands
of dollars per event. In 2017, the same year he left office, Obama was
officially recognized as one of the top ten highest paid public speakers in the
US.
Just last month, Obama was reported to
have been paid nearly $600,000 to speak at the EXMA conference in Bogotá,
Colombia. According to the Bogotá Post , EXMA is Colombia’s largest marketing
and business event of the year and one of the largest in Latin America. Simply
titled, “A conversation with President Barack Obama,” his talk purportedly
addressed “influential growth strategies” in marketing and other aspects of the
marketing economy.
Colombia is infamous for the corruption prevalent in
its public sector and military,
which costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent
to 5.3 percent of its GDP.
Colombia exports half of the world’s cocaine and its
drug cartels have been known
to have a hand in the government. Corruption
and drug money are so rampant that
Colombia’s Inspector General likened it to “the
new cartel.”
While Obama warns of the danger of “exploding inequality” in
his speeches, the massive sum granted to him for one night in Bogotá is more
than 10 times what the typical household in the US makes in a year, and 72 times
the average worker’s annual income in Colombia.
Notably, Obama’s purse was nearly triple the amount Hillary
Clinton was paid for her notorious speeches to Goldman Sachs that revealed her
and the Democratic Party as Wall Street stooges. Former President Bill Clinton
was paid just $200,000 per speech when he toured Latin America in 2005.
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing
between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow
Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on
terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president
to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the
military-industrial complex.
As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened
themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the
top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose
crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during
Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in
life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era.
In addition to monetary rewards for his service to the
financial elite and military-intelligence apparatus, Obama has been lavishly
feted by socialites and billionaires such as Richard Branson. Obama was
Branson’s special guest in 2017 on a private island where the pair were seen
kite surfing and enjoying the amenities of Branson’s exclusive resort.
Michelle Obama has also benefited after the family’s
departure from the White House. The couple signed a $65 million book deal with
publishing company Penguin Random House for their political memoirs. Michelle’s
memoir “Becoming” was the best-selling book of 2018 with over 10 million copies
sold. The pair also signed multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce
content aimed at “fostering dialogue” and promoting diversity in entertainment.
Obama’s lucrative post-White House career hobnobbing with
the corporate, entertainment and financial elite epitomizes the revolving door
relationship between the US government and the private sector. Obama’s rewards
are simply retroactive bribery for services rendered to the capitalist elite , who have welcomed him
with open arms.
BARACK
OBAMA, LA RAZA FASCISM and the CULTURE of DEM CORRUPTION
They Destroyed Our Country
“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They
knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to
the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a
figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm
to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-democrat-party-party-for-illegals.html
CHICAGO HUCKSTER or
simply a PSYCHOPATH?
THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA
'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the
president: Pew Research Center
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/pew-american-people-legals-see-obama-as.html
The larger fear is that Obama might
be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they
claim to be all for the common guy.
CRONY
CAPITALISM ...the rise of Barack Obama and the fall of America!
OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON AMERICA -WHY WALL STREET, ILLEGALS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS
and the 1% LOVE HIM, AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS THE SHAFT TO PAY FOR HIS CRONY
CAPITALISM
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/07/obamas-looting-of-america-crony.htm l
CEO pay is higher than ever, as is the chasm separating the rich and
super-rich from everyone else. The incomes of the top 1 percent grew more than
11 percent between 2009 and 2011—the first two years of the Obama
“recovery”—while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent actually shrank.
Meanwhile, Obama is pressing forward
with his proposal, outlined in his budget for the next fiscal year, to slash
$400 billion from Medicare and $130 billion from Social Security… AS WELL AS
WIDER OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
OBAMA AND BIDEN: SERVANT OF THE 1%
Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth
The richest one percent of the world’s
population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last
year.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-barack-obama-and-his-crony.html
The report found that the growth of global
inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the
values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the
donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE WALL STREET
BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/democrats-and-bankster-billionaire.html
SERVING BANKSTERS,
BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the
donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE CRONY CLASS:
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES
FASTER under Obama-Biden and their bankster regime than Bush.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/12/obamanomics-at-work-depressed-wages-and.html
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in
1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the
reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare
programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW
MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black
capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three
strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the
world.”
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat
and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the
donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET
CRONIES
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/soaring-poverty-in-america-good-time-to.html
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the
donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE REAL ECONOMY:
US “retail
apocalypse” expected to exceed annual high with more than 1,100 store closures
announced in one day.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/americas-economic-reality-retail.html
The declining
living standards of the working class are feeding directly into the retail
apocalypse and mass layoffs of retail workers will only exacerbate the issue.
Workers’ wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades, and any
economic growth experienced since 2008 has gone to the wealthiest of the
wealthy.
Why do all global
billionaires want wider open borders, amnesty and no E-VERIFY?
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the
donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
AMERICA: THE
ECONOMY IS RIGGED BY CONGRESS SO THE RICH BECOME SUPER RICH.
The American
middle class gets the tax bills for Wall Street’s crimes and bottomeless bailouts!
Wealth
concentration increases in US.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/02/staggering-concentration-of-wealth-in.html
The latest research
on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel
Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global
financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited
directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their
wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has
suffered a major decline.
The past 40 years
have seen the consolidation of a plutocratic elite, which has subordinated every
aspect of American society to a single goal: amassing ever more colossal
amounts of personal wealth. The top one percent have captured all of the increase in national
income over the past two decades, and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden
defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of
wealth inequality.
BILLIONAIRE BETO
“BETOMATIC” O’ROURKE PROCLAIMS AMNESTY FOR 40 MILLION INVADING “UNREGISTERED”
DEMOCRAT VOTING ILLEGALS.
No word on
America’s homeless, housing or jobs crisis for Legals!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/02/beto-betomatic-orourke-announces-his.html
Joe Biden
Fundraises with Wall Street During Donald Trump Rally
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/06/18/joe-biden-fundraises-with-wall-street-during-donald-trump-rally/
Scott Olson/Getty Images
18 Jun 201984
Former Vice President Joe Biden attended a fundraiser
with Wall Street donors during President Donald Trump’s campaign kickoff rally
in Florida on Tuesday.
It was the fourth New York City
fundraiser for Joe Biden in about 24 hours.
The fundraiser was hosted by Eric Mindich, the CEO of Eton Park
Capital Management with about 100 donors including Stephen Scherr, the
executive vice president and chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, H.
Rodgin Cohen the senior chairman at Sullivan & Cromwell as well as former
Clinton and Obama officials
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
“You know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic
as poor people,” he said. “Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize
anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know,
you all know in your gut what has to be done.”
Biden warned that if Trump won re-election, he would “literally
fundamentally change the nature of who we are and how we function.”
Biden boasted that Obama leaned on him to help bring members of
Congress together during their administration.
“Folks, I believe one of the things I’m pretty good at is
bringing people together,” he said. “Every time we had trouble in the
administration, who got sent to the Hill to settle it? Me. No, not a joke.
Because I demonstrate respect for them.”
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged
them to be aware of wealth inequality.
AMERICA: THE RICH GET MUCH
RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get the jobs!
*
Why do
the billionaire class all want wider open borders and hordes more “cheap” labor
illegals? It’s all about keeping wages depressed for greater profits!
*
“Today’s society benefits those who shaped
it, and it has been shaped not by working men and women, but by the new
aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, big multi-national corporations,
along with their allies in the academy and the media—these are the aristocrats
of our age. They live in the United States, but they consider themselves
citizens of the world” Sen. Josh
Hawley
*
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/staggering-economic-inequality-in.html
"This is how they
will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires
who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked
with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the
cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing
but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our
communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and
human traffickers. These people have no intention
of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have
contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible
government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the
people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance
between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the
statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
*
"But what the Clintons do is criminal
because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel
thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their
friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs
beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by
now." ---- Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com
*
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in
the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a
political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists
essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business
support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal
fortunes."
*
"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall
for the super-rich, on top of the fact
that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed
recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent income
bracket."
*
Graph from the Economic Policy Institute
Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating
divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages
and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the
population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell
to only 61 percent.
*
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of
global private wealth by 2019
While the wealth of the
rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within
the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.
At the end of 2014, millionaire
households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG.
This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24
trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
By Gabriel Black
*
The massive increase in the value of the stock market,
which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that
the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of
all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren
Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America
combined last year.
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
America Created Just 20,000 Jobs in
February...and those all went to foreign born
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/mo-brooks-billionaires-want-america.html
Exclusive–Mo Brooks: ‘Masters of the
Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of Americans’
Consequently, the pumping of
ultra-cheap money into the financial system, fueling speculation and
parasitism, together with ever-widening social inequality, is not
a temporary measure but must be made permanent.
The declining living standards of the
working class are feeding directly into the retail apocalypse and
mass layoffs of retail workers will only exacerbate the issue.
Workers’ wages have seen little to no
growth in the last four decades, and any economic growth experienced
since 2008 has gone to
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
“US household net worth sees biggest fall
since crisis”
“Trump Touts Legal Immigration System for ‘Our Corporations’
at Expense of
American Workers “–
JOHN BINDER
Trump’s shift from a wage-boosting legal immigration system to
one that benefits corporations and their shareholders coincides with recent big
business lobby influence over his White House, at the behest of advisers Jared
Kushner and Brooke Rollins.
*
“Trump Abandons ‘America First’ Reforms: ‘We
Need’ More Immigration to Grow Business Profits” JOHN BINDER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
Despite a booming economy, many U.S.
households are still just holding on
"One of the
premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued
an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008
crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis”
was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that
effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of
the potential impact of central bank actions in driving
inequality between asset owners and labor."
“Our entire crony
capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN
THINKER.com
“Behind the ostensible government sits
enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no
responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul
the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first
task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
Jim
Carrey: America ‘Doomed’ If We Don’t Regulate Capitalism "
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater
concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is
starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and
working class living standards are driven down by entrenched
unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of
a broader global process."
The father of US
Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin just completed the most
expensive purchase of a living artist’s work in
US history, spending over $91 million on a
three-foot-tall metallic sculpture. Ken Griffin,
the founder of hedge fund Citadel,
recently dropped $238 million on a
penthouse in New York City, the most
expensive US home ever purchased. And
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man,
has invested $42 million in a 10,000-year
clock.
Decades of decaying
capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate
wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under
increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of
the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
"This is how they will destroy
America from within. The leftist billionaires who
orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us
in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of
millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt
for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities
being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers. These
people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats
who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA
McCARTHY
In 2014 the Russell
Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net
worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36
percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they
are more than making that money back.
Between 2009 and 2012,
95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is
the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
Additionally, Koch spokespeople at the donors’ conference
said the network has its sights set on pushing amnesty for millions of illegal
aliens this year.
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
NO PRESIDENT SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM
BANKSTERS BEFORE AND AFTER HIS PRESIDENCY THAT BARACK OBAMA.
Trump criticized
Dimon in 2013 for
supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m not
Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11
billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in
the United States,” he told reporters.
“The response of the
administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to
power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he
subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the
interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers
and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”
Practically every cabinet
appointee of Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling class, many
having come directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a
single executive at a major financial firm has been criminally tried, much less
sent to jail, for their role in the financial crisis.
“Attorney
General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful
scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
"One of the
premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued
an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008
crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis”
was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that
effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential
impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
This manufactured
crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama administration and both big
business parties to hand over trillions in pension funds and other public
assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
“Our entire crony capitalist
system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN
THINKER.com
“This was not because of
difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney
General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama
administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do
so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
"One of the premier
institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued
an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008
crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis”
was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that
effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of
the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality
between asset owners and labor."
$2,198,468,000,000: Federal Spending Hit
10-Year High Through March; Taxes Hit 5-Year Low
By Terence P. Jeffrey | April 10, 2019 | 5:09 PM EDT
(Getty Images/Ron
Sachs-Pool)
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government spent $2,198,468,000,000
in the first six months of fiscal 2019 (October through March), which is the
most it has spent in the first six months of any fiscal year in the last
decade, according to the Monthly Treasury Statements .
The last time the government spent more in the
October-through-March period was in fiscal 2009, when it spent
$2,326,360,180,000 in constant March 2019 dollars.
Fiscal 2009 was the fiscal year that began with President George
W. Bush signing a $700-billion law to bailout the banking industry in October
2008 and then saw President Barack Obama sign a $787-billion stimulus law in
February 2009.
Jamie
Dimon arriving to testify before Congress. Aaron
P. Bernstein/Reuters
· JPMorgan reported
first-quarter earnings results on Friday, kicking off another earnings season
for the largest US banks.
JPMorgan Chase reported
record first-quarter results on both the top and bottom lines Friday morning.
Shares climbed 2.3% in early trading to $108.68.
Here's how the results stacked
up with Wall Street's expectations as compiled by Bloomberg.
· Adjusted net income: $9.18 billion versus
$7.7 billion expected
· Earnings per share: $2.65 versus $2.34
expected
· Revenue: $29.85 billion versus
$28.4 billion expected
· Expenses: $16.4 billion versus
$16.7 billion expected
"In the first quarter of
2019, we had record revenue and net income, strong performance across each of
our major businesses, and a more constructive environment," CEO Jamie Dimon
said in the earnings release . "Even amid some global
geopolitical uncertainty, the US economy continues to grow, employment and
wages are going up, inflation is moderate, financial markets are healthy, and
consumer and business confidence remains strong."
A deeper look into the
numbers showed the trading and investment-banking businesses exceeded
expectations, though trading declined 17% from the year earlier:
· FICC sales & trading
revenue: $3.73 billion versus $3.67 billion expected
· Equity sales & trading
revenue: $1.74 billion versus $1.73 billion expected
· Investment-banking revenue: $1.75 billion versus
$1.63 billion expected
"The Federal Reserve is a key mechanism
for perpetuating this whole filthy system, in which "Wall Street
rules."
The effect can be seen in the ever more staggering wealth of the
financial oligarchy, which has consistently enjoyed investment returns of
between 10 and 20 percent every year since the financial crisis, even as the
incomes of workers have stagnated or fallen.
Wall Street rules
The Federal Reserve sent a clear message to Wall Street on
Friday: It will not allow the longest bull market in American history to end.
The message was received loud and clear, and the Dow rose by more than 700
points.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain furloughed or
forced to work without pay as the partial government shutdown enters its third
week, but the US central bank is making clear that all of the resources of the
state are at the disposal of the financial oligarchy.
Responding to Thursday’s market selloff following a dismal
report from Apple and signs of a manufacturing slowdown in both China and the
US, the Fed declared it was “listening” to the markets and would scrap its
plans to raise interest rates.
Speaking at a conference in Atlanta, where he was flanked by his
predecessors Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, both of whom had worked to reflate
the stock market bubble after the 2008 financial crash, Chairman Jerome Powell
signaled that the Fed would back off from its two projected rate increases for
2019.
“We’re listening sensitively to the messages markets are
sending,” he said, adding that the central bank would be “patient” in imposing
further rate increases. To underline the point, he declared, “If we ever came
to the conclusion that any aspect of our plans” was causing a problem, “we
wouldn’t hesitate to change it.”
This extraordinary pledge to Wall Street followed the 660 point
plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday, capping off the worst
two-day start for a new trading year since the collapse of the dot.com bubble.
William McChesney Martin, the Fed chairman from 1951 to 1970,
famously said that his job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party
gets going.” Now the task of the Fed chairman is to ply the wealthy revelers
with tequila shots as soon as they start to sober up.
Powell’s remarks were particularly striking given that they
followed the release Friday of the most upbeat jobs report in over a year, with
figures, including the highest year-on-year wage growth since the 2008 crisis,
universally lauded as “stellar.”
While US financial markets have endured the worst December
since the Great Depression, amid mounting fears of a looming
recession and a new financial crisis, analysts have been quick to point
out that there are no “hard” signs of a recession in the United States.
Both the Dow and the S&P 500 indexes have fallen more than
15 percent from their recent highs, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ has entered
bear market territory, usually defined as a drop of 20 percent from recent
highs.
The markets, Powell admitted, are “well ahead of the data.” But
it is the markets, not the “data,” that Powell is listening to.
Since World War II, bear markets have occurred, on average,
every five-and-a-half years. But if the present trend continues, the Dow will
reach 10 years without a bear market in March, despite the recent losses.
Now the Fed has stepped in effectively to pledge that it will allocate
whatever resources are needed to ensure that no substantial market
correction takes place. But this means only that when the
correction does come, as it inevitably
must, it will be all the more severe and the Fed will
have all the less power to stop it.
From the standpoint of the history of the institution, the Fed’s
current more or less explicit role as backstop for the stock market is a relatively
new development. Founded in 1913, the Federal Reserve legally has had the “dual
mandate” of ensuring both maximum employment and price stability since the late
1970s. Fed officials have traditionally denied being influenced in policy
decisions by a desire to drive up the stock market.
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, appointed by Democratic
President Jimmy Carter in 1979, deliberately engineered an economic recession
by driving the benchmark federal funds interest rate above 20 percent. His highly
conscious aim, in the name of combating inflation, was to quash a wages
movement of US workers by triggering plant closures and driving up
unemployment.
The actions of the Fed under Volcker set the stage for a vast
upward redistribution of wealth, facilitated on one hand by the trade unions’
suppression of the class struggle and on the other by a relentless and dizzying
rise on the stock market.
Volcker’s recession, together with the Reagan administration’s
crushing of the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike, ushered in decades
of mass layoffs, deindustrialization and wage and benefit concessions, leading
labor’s share of total national income to fall year after year.
These were also decades of financial deregulation, leading to
the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, the dot.com bubble of 1999-2000,
and, worst of all, the 2008 financial crisis.
In each of these crises, the Federal Reserve carried out what
became known as the “Greenspan put,” (later the “Bernanke put”)—an implicit
guarantee to backstop the financial markets, prompting investors to take ever
greater risks.
In 2008, this resulted in the most sweeping and systemic
financial crisis since the Great Depression, prompting Fed Chairman Bernanke,
New York Fed President Tim Geithner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (the
former CEO of Goldman Sachs) to orchestrate the largest bank bailout in human
history.
Since that time, the Federal Reserve has carried out its most
accommodative monetary policy ever, keeping interest rates at or near zero
percent for six years. It supplemented this boondoggle for the financial elite
with its multi-trillion-dollar “quantitative easing” money-printing program.
The effect can be seen in the ever more staggering wealth of the
financial oligarchy, which has consistently enjoyed investment returns of
between 10 and 20 percent every year since the financial crisis, even as the
incomes of workers have stagnated or fallen.
American capitalist society is hooked on the toxic growth of
social inequality created by the stock market bubble. This, in turn, fosters
the political framework not just for the decadent lifestyles of the financial
oligarchs, each of whom owns, on average, a half-dozen mansions around the
world, a private jet and a super-yacht, but also for the broader periphery of
the affluent upper-middle class, which provides the oligarchs with political legitimacy
and support. These elite social layers determine American political life, from
which the broad mass of working people is effectively excluded.
The Federal Reserve is a key mechanism for perpetuating
this whole filthy system, in which “Wall Street rules.” But its
services in behalf of the rich and the super-rich only compound the
fundamental and insoluble contradictions of capitalism, plunging the
system into ever deeper debt and ensuring that the next crisis will be
that much more violent and explosive.
In this intensifying crisis, the working class must assert its
independent interests with the same determination and ruthlessness as evinced
by the ruling class. It must answer the bourgeoisie’s social counterrevolution
with the program of socialist revolution.
the depression is already here for most of us below the
super-rich!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/jerome-powell-warns-wall-streets.html
Trump and the GOP created a fake
economic boom on our collective credit card: The equivalent of
maxing out your credit cards and saying look how good I'm doing right
now.
*
Trump criticized
Dimon in 2013
for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m
not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11
billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in
the United States,” he told reporters.
*
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
*
"Overall,
the reaction to the decision points to the underlying fragility of
financial markets, which have become a house of cards as a result of the
massive inflows of money from the Fed and other central banks, and are now
extremely susceptible to even a small tightening in financial
conditions."
*
"It is significant that what
the Financial Times described
as a “tsunami of money”—estimated to reach $1 trillion for the year—has failed
to prevent what could be the worst year for stock markets since the global
financial crisis."
*
"A decade ago, as the financial
crisis raged, America’s banks were in ruins. Lehman Brothers, the storied
158-year-old investment house, collapsed into bankruptcy in mid-September
2008. Six months earlier, Bear Stearns, its competitor, had required a
government-engineered rescue to avert the same outcome. By October, two of
the nation’s largest commercial banks, Citigroup and Bank of America,
needed their own government-tailored bailouts to escape failure. Smaller
but still-sizable banks, such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac,
died."
*
The GOP said the "Tax Cuts and Jobs
Act" would reduce deficits and supercharge the economy
(and stocks and wages). The White House says things are working as
planned, but one year on--the numbers mostly suggest otherwise.
Obama's Wall Street
cabinet
6 April
2009
A series
of articles published over the weekend, based on financial disclosure reports
released by the Obama administration last Friday concerning top White House
officials, documents the extent to which the administration, in both its
personnel and policies, is a political instrument of Wall Street.
Policies
that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in
place over the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share
values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of
dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at
inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of
Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage
cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by
the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market”
accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.
At the
same time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to
executives at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other
bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social
spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The new
financial disclosures reveal that top Obama advisors directly involved in
setting these policies have received millions from Wall Street firms, including
those that have received huge taxpayer bailouts.
The case
of Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Obama’s top
economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous character of relations
between the Obama administration and the American financial elite.
Last
year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of
the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches
delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money.
This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and
the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a
speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is
substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of high-seniority
auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama administration and the media
for their supposedly exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.
Alluding
diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these
disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director
of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s
policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from
which he recently received payments.”
Summers
was a leading advocate of banking deregulation. As treasury secretary in the
second Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting of basic financial
regulations dating from the 1930s. The Times article notes that among his
current responsibilities is deciding “whether—and how—to tighten regulation of
hedge funds.”
Summers
is not an exception. He is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders
who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is filled with
multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his own political
career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael
Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs,
worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from
January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration this year. This
included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within
weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup
has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion
in government guarantees of its bad debts.
David
Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the
president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he
controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over
the next five years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and
$10 million.
Obama’s
deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a
Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and
the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis
Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year
from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime
mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The
presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and
third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well. David Stevens, who
has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing Administration, is the
president and chief operating officer of Long and Foster Cos., a real estate
brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top executive for
Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was bailed out
and seized by federal regulators in September.
Neal
Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy counsel to the president for economic
policy, is a top executive at the insurance giant Hartford Financial Services,
where his salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s
Auto Task Force has as its top advisers two investment bankers with a long
resume in corporate downsizing and asset-stripping.
It is
not new for leading figures from finance to be named to high posts in a US
administration. However, there has traditionally been an effort to demonstrate
a degree of independence from Wall Street in the selection of cabinet officials
and high-ranking presidential aides, often through the appointment of figures
from academia or the public sector. In previous decades, moreover,
representatives of the corporate elite were more likely to come from industry
than from finance.
In the
Obama administration such considerations have largely been abandoned.
This
will not come as a surprise to those who critically followed Obama’s election
campaign. While he postured before the electorate as a critic of the war in
Iraq and a quasi-populist force for “change,” he was from the first heavily
dependent on the financial and political backing of powerful financiers in
Chicago. Banks, hedge funds and other financial firms lavishly backed
his presidential bid, giving him considerably more than they gave to his
Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Friday’s
financial disclosures further expose the bankruptcy of American democracy.
Elections have no real effect on government policy, which is determined by the
interests of the financial aristocracy that dominates both political parties.
The working class can fight for its own interests—for jobs, decent living
standards, health care, education, housing and an end to war.
“Records
show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial
industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase
($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”
OBAMA
and HIS BANKS: THEIR PROFITS, CRIMES and LOOTING SOAR
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/02/obama-and-his-banks-their-profits.html
CRONY KING OBAMA: CURL: The Obamas live
the 1% life
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/04/crony-king-obama-curl-obamas-live-1.html
OBAMAnomics:
FROM THE MAN THAT HATED AMERICAN BUT
LOVED AMERICAN BANKSTERS:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/02/obamanomics-by-man-that-hated-americans.html
OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM
THE GLOBALIST LEGACY OF A SOCIOPATH
Obama warns against “cynicism” at Ohio
State commencement address
7 May 2013
At a commencement address on Sunday at
Ohio State University, President Barack Obama counseled students not to be
“cynical” about government and politics.
There was an almost comically absurd
element to Obama’s remarks, delivered with his characteristic demagogy and
attempted gestures at profundity. In his first four years in office,
along with the first months of his second term, Obama proceeded to systematically
repudiate every campaign pledge and to deflate every illusion that, with the
assistance of a highly coordinated marketing campaign, led millions of people,
including a large number of young people, to vote for him in 2008.
The Obama administration handed trillions
of dollars to the banks; has overseen a massive attack on public education; is
leading the campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare, the core federal
retirement and health care programs; expanded the war in Afghanistan, led a war
against Libya, and is preparing a new war in Syria; and has asserted the right
to kill anyone, anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.
After this record of service to the
corporate elite, he declares: “When we turn away and get discouraged and cynical…
we grant our silent consent to someone who will gladly claim it. That’s how we
end up with lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached from what
middle class families face every day; the well-connected who publicly demand
that Washington stay out of their business—and then whisper in government’s ear
for special treatment that you don’t get.”
The references to the “whispers” of the
wealthy and well-connected is particularly rich, coming only a week after Obama
nominated Penny Pritzker for commerce secretary. The selection of
Pritzker—a longtime Obama confidant, billionaire heiress and owner of a private
equity company—only underscores the fact that the administration is a
government of, by and for the financial aristocracy. She will be the
wealthiest person ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Previous to his appointment of Pritzker,
Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC), one of the main financial regulators. White made millions of dollars as an attorney
for banks responsible for the financial crisis, including Bank of America and
JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, called White the “perfect choice” to
head the SEC.
Practically every cabinet appointee of
Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling class, many having come
directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive
at a major financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail,
for their role in the financial crisis.
As a whole, Obama’s speech was
characterized by a complete separation from the actual conditions facing the
graduates he spoke to, who confront joblessness, falling wages, and a lifetime
in debt. “You have every reason to believe that your future is bright,” he told
his audience. “You’re graduating into an economy and a job market that is
steadily healing.”
He added later, “The trajectory of this
great nation should give you hope.” Really? This is under conditions in which
over 11 percent of college graduates are unemployed a year after getting out of
school, and another 16.1 percent simply drop out of the labor force, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of those who do find a job are paid
barely enough to get by, let alone pay off student loans. Wages for young adults
are falling faster than any other part of the population, and are down by 6
percent in the past four years.
Most of the students that Obama addressed
Sunday will be so burdened with debt that they will delay or have to completely
put off starting a family or buying a home.
It is not surprising that Obama should
neglect to dwell on this disastrous situation, because his administration bears
responsibility for it. In the government-sponsored restructuring of the auto
industry, the White House insisted that the wages of new-hires be slashed in
half, setting the stage for vast reduction of wages throughout the economy.
Obama sought to paint opposition to the
government’s violation of democratic rights as right-wing hysterics.
“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of
government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity,” Obama said.
“They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should
reject these voices.”
This comes from a president who has personally
overseen the illegal assassination of thousands of people, including at least
three American citizens, in weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings. The assertions of
executive power have been systematically expanded, going beyond those claimed even
by the Bush administration. The specter of a police state—the response of the
ruling class to growing social opposition—is in fact lurking around the corner.
The moribund state of American politics,
of which the Obama administration is a principal expression, is, according to
the president, the fault of the American people. “Democracy doesn’t function
without your active participation,” he admonished. If politicians “don’t
represent you the way you want… you’ve got to let them know that’s not okay.
And if they let you down, there’s a built-in day in November where you can
really let them know that’s not okay.”
Such limp efforts to encourage illusions
in the viability of the “democratic process” in the United States will not go
very far. The experience of the past four years has not passed in vain.
Millions of people, including many of those in the audience at Ohio State, are
drawing the quite justified, if “cynical,” conclusion that the entire political
and economic system is rotten to the core.
Mounting evidence of international
collusion in Libor rigging - THE RAPE OF THE ECONOMY BY THE BANKSTERS
Mounting evidence of international
collusion in Libor rigging
OBAMA'S AND HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS
AT WORK:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/07/obama-and-j-p-morgan-partners-in-crime_23.html
JPMorgan’s investment arm, which includes
its energy group, collects $14 billion annually; in comparison, six months’
worth of fines would amount to a paltry $180 million.
THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED HEAVILY IN OBAMA’S
CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION!
Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).
Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the
Best-Managed Banks'
By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 31
mins ago
Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the …
Lou Rocco / ABC News
Just hours after a top JPMorgan Chase
executive retired in the wake of a stunning $2 billion trading loss, President
Obamatold the hosts of ABC's "The View" that the bank's risky bets
exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.
*
JPMorgan Chase investigated for manipulating California energy
market
By Oliver Richards
23 July 2012
The California
Independent Systems Operator (CalISO), the nonprofit organization that
coordinates the state’s electricity market, has alleged that JPMorgan Chase&
Co. manipulated the state’s energy market, resulting in at least $73 million in
improper payments—costs passed along to the state’s energy consumers.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS:
STILL SUCKING THE BLOOD OUT OF AMERICA
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/01/fifty-years-since-johnsons-declaration.html
This manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the
Obama administration and both big business parties to hand over trillions in
pension funds and other public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules
America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.
This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen
McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee
in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big
banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the
national economy.”
OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE BANKSTERS
AND GLOBAL BILLIONAIRES
https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2018/10/barack-obama-his-plundering-banksters.html
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
BILLIONAIRES,
BANKSTERS AND THE RICH PARTNER WITH TRUMP TO FIGHT … economic equality.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/04/donald-trump-declares-that-wall-streets.html
"JPMorgan Chase
CEO Jamie Dimon, who was known as Barack Obama’s favorite banker and
who has been a major donor to
the Democratic Party,
centered his annual letter to shareholders on a denunciation of
socialism."
BANKSTER SOCIALISM
Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in
government bailouts and many billions more from the
Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative
easing” money-printing policies. He told his shareholders that
“socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and
“authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our
country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!
*
"This paved the way for the elevation of
Trump, the personification of the criminality and backwardness of the ruling
oligarchy."
*
"The very fact
that the US government officially acknowledges a growth of
popular support for socialism, particularly among the nation’s youth,
testifies to vast changes taking place in the political consciousness of
the working class and the terror this is striking within the ruling
elite. America is, after all, a country where anti-communism was for
the greater part of a century a state-sponsored secular religion. No
ruling class has so ruthlessly sought to exclude socialist
politics from political discourse as the American ruling class."
*
Socialism haunts the
American ruling class In the two months since Donald Trump vowed in his
State of the Union Address that “America will never be a socialist country,”
the right-wing demagogue president and the Republican Party have embraced
anti-socialism as the defining theme of their campaign in the 2020 elections.
Wall
Street Warms Up to Elizabeth Warren: ‘She’s the Smartest,’ ‘Most
Policy-Oriented’ Democrat
AP
Photo/Charles Krupa
22 Jul 201968
4:14
Wall Street is warming up to the idea of Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) being the Democrat nominee for president against
President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, interviews with executives and
bankers reveal.
A Politico report details how Wall Street insiders are becoming comfortable with
Warren as the potential nominee to go up against Trump and his “America First”
agenda:
“I think she is going to get the nomination because she’s the
smartest, she’s charismatic and she’s the most policy-oriented,” said one
former top executive at a large Wall Street bank who, like several
interviewed for this story, declined to be quoted on record saying anything
nice about Warren. “Wall Street is very good at accommodating itself to reality
and if the reality is the party is going to be super-progressive, they may not
like Warren but she’s a better form of poison than Bernie .”
[Emphasis added]
…
“If she were the nominee, there will certainly be people who
will say that Donald Trump represents everything that I’m against,” said Orin
Kramer , a hedge fund manager who is raising money for
Buttigieg. “And they will find stuff that they like about her and will
vote for her.” [Emphasis added]
BLOG: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF CRONY CAPITALISM IS THE PARTY OF
BANKSTERS AND BOTTOMLESS BANKSTER BAILOUTS... AND NO PRISON TIME!
Former adviser to President Obama and investor Robert Wolf
told Politico that
the financial industry has changed over the last few decades and that Wall
Street-types are vastly more aligned with the Democrat establishment than Trump’s
GOP.
“I don’t think the stereotypes of the industry serve the same
purpose as they used to,” Wolf said. “People who work in corporate America and
financial services may have the same views that she does on 95 percent of the
issues such as income inequality, student loans, climate change, and others.”
Wall Street and Warren have at least one major policy initiative
in common: A full repeal of Trump’s illegal and legal immigration reforms.
This month, Warren released her
immigration platform that includes increasing overall legal immigration to the
U.S. to provide business with an even greater flow of foreign workers to hire
over Americans, as well as a decriminalization of illegal immigration, an
amnesty for all illegal aliens in the country, and an end of Trump’s reforms
such as his immigration ban from terrorist-sponsored countries and reduction of
the refugee resettlement program.
Like Warren, Wall Street executives have railed against Trump’s
immigration agenda — demanding that his zero-tolerance policy at the
U.S.-Mexico border be ended and opposing his travel ban.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has supported amnesty
for illegal aliens since at least 2016 when he announced support for the
infamous “Gang of Eight” amnesty, saying, “Let them stay and let them build
companies.”
Last month, Dimon said amnesty for
illegal aliens was necessary to grow the economy, saying, “If we do these
policies right, America will be growing a lot faster.”
Some of the top multinational banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup,
Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — have come out against Trump’s travel ban
that effectively stopped all
immigration from a handful of foreign countries that sponsor terrorism.
“This is not a policy we support, and I would note that it has
already been challenged in federal court, and some of the order has been
enjoined at least temporarily,” former Goldman Sachs CEO
Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a
letter at the time. “Let me close by quoting from our business principles: ‘For
us to be successful, our men and women must reflect the diversity of the
communities and cultures in which we operate … Being diverse is not optional;
it is what we must be.'”
Meanwhile, Citigroup has promoted mass immigration as a
necessary component to growing the American economy in terms of increasing GDP.
A report released by executives
last year championed migration into the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany.
For decades, the big business lobby, Wall Street, and donor
class have said mass immigration is crucial to growing GDP in the U.S. though
research has shown that increasing legal immigration levels to an enormous ten
million admissions a year would only grow GDP by about 2.5 percent. Meanwhile,
Trump’s low-migration, high-wage economy has translated to 3.2
percent annual economic growth.
John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
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