The massive concentration of wealth is a decades’ long and bipartisan policy of redistribution to the rich. The Institute for Policy Studies measured the tax obligations of America's billionaires as a percentage of their wealth between 1980 and 2018 and found that it had decreased 79 percent. Over the last 20 years, the growth in US billionaire wealth has been 200 times greater than the growth in median wealth.
Kamala Harris Touts Wall Street’s Support for Joe Biden During VP Debate
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) touted Wall Street’s support for Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate Wednesday evening.
As Breitbart News reported this week, economists with Moody’s Analytics on Wall Street cheered a Biden presidency, citing their support for his globalist agenda centered on more free trade and more immigration to the United States.
At the debate, Harris touted that Wall Street support.
“Joe Biden economic plan, Moody’s, which is a reputable Wall Street firm, has said will create seven million more jobs than [President] Donald Trump’s,” Harris said.
In recent months, Wall Street and nearly all of the nation’s biggest banks have lined up support for Biden and Harris against Trump’s economic nationalist agenda.
Economists with Goldman Sachs, a huge donor to Biden and Harris, have issued a similar report where they say a “blue wave” on November 3 will help return the U.S. to an economic status quo.
Biden’s campaign has raked in nearly $280,000 from Goldman Sachs employees. Trump has taken less than $9,000 from Goldman Sachs employees this election cycle.
JPMorgan Chase employees have given three times as much campaign cash to Biden as Trump. Biden has taken nearly $380,000. At Morgan Stanley, Biden has taken more than twice as much as Trump, nearly $258,000 from the bank’s employees compared to Trump’s $96,010.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Global billionaire wealth tops $10 trillion as COVID-19 deaths mount
The collective wealth of the world’s 2,189 billionaires has risen to $10.2 trillion, an increase of nearly $1.3 trillion in the past three years, according to a new report by the Swiss bank UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The unprecedented surge in wealth takes place amidst a global pandemic that has killed more than one million people worldwide, including more than 215,000 in the United States alone.
The report, “Riding the Storm,” is based on data from 43 markets, including interviews with 60 billionaires, accounting for around 98 percent of global billionaire wealth. It sums up the results: “Most of the decade was a time of exceptional prosperity for billionaires regardless of sector…”
The US continues to have the largest concentration of billionaire wealth, accounting for 36 percent of the world’s total, or $3.6 trillion. China ranked second with $1.6 trillion and saw the largest growth over the decade, by 1,146 percent.
Third was Germany, where billionaire wealth totaled $594.9 billion, an increase of 175 percent from 2009’s $216.1 billion. While fourth in terms of billionaire wealth at $467.6 billion, Russia saw the smallest growth by percentage, 80 percent, from $260.2 billion in 2009 to $467.6 billion in 2020.
The $10.2 trillion amassed by less than .0003 percent of the global population is more than the estimated 2020 Gross Domestic Product of every country on the planet except for the US and China. The staggering total hoarded by less than 2,200 people, or about the number of COVID-19 deaths in the US within the last 72 hours, surpasses the previous high of $8.9 trillion recorded in 2017.
For a household earning the average US median income, it would take over 16 million years to accumulate $1 trillion, not even enough to cover what has been collectively usurped from global society in less than three years. Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, has calculated the cost of ending hunger in the US at $25 billion, which could be done 400 times over with $1 trillion.
The billionaires who have increased their wealth the most, according to the authors, are in the “technology, healthcare and industrial sectors,” including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The report states: “During 2018, 2019 and the first seven months of 2020, technology billionaires’ total wealth rose by 42.5% to USD 1.8 trillion, supported by the surge in tech shares.”
The surge in technology and medical shares was buoyed by unlimited cash from the Federal Reserve, included as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed at the end of March in a near-unanimous vote by both Democrats and Republicans.
This financial bailout made a “big difference” in the fortunes of billionaires, with the authors writing: “Billionaire wealth is loosely correlated with equity markets, due to holdings in listed companies, and a few weeks makes a big difference. From the end of March, governments’ huge fiscal and quantitative easing packages drove a recovery in financial markets. By the end of July 2020, billionaire wealth was back above its 2019 level.”
Particularly obscene is the surge in wealth of billionaires in the health care industry, in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. The authors write, “Healthcare billionaires’ total wealth increased by 50.3% to $658.6 billion, boosted by a new age of drug discovery and innovations in diagnostics and medical technology, as well as latterly COVID-19 treatments and equipment.”
The report adds: “The number of tech billionaires grew from 68 in 2009 to 234 in 2020, while the number of healthcare billionaires grew from 48 to 167. Tech and healthcare billionaires’ total wealth both multiplied by four times – from $321.3 billion to $1.3 trillion for tech and from $120.8 billion to $482.9 billion for healthcare.”
And what are these “pandemic profiteers” spending their fortunes on? To get some idea, Christie’s auction house in New York held its latest online auction, “20th Century Evening Sale” live-streamed from the Rockefeller Center in New York on October 6. In one night, the world’s wealthiest spent over $340 million on 59 different 20th and 21st century art pieces. The auction also featured the most expensive dinosaur skeleton ever sold, a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex, for $27.5 million.
The massive concentration of wealth is a decades’ long and bipartisan policy of redistribution to the rich. The Institute for Policy Studies measured the tax obligations of America's billionaires as a percentage of their wealth between 1980 and 2018 and found that it had decreased 79 percent. Over the last 20 years, the growth in US billionaire wealth has been 200 times greater than the growth in median wealth.
While the billionaires are richer than ever, the response of the ruling class to the pandemic has produced a massive social catastrophe for the working class. In the United States, tens of millions are unemployed and being cut off of all benefits, facing poverty, homelessness and hunger.
Earlier reports found that the 643 wealthiest Americans increased their wealth by a staggering $845 billion between March 18 and September 15. During that same time, over 62 million people in the US applied for unemployment benefits. An estimated 10.5 million jobs were eliminated, with major companies such as Disney, United Airlines, and Cineworld announcing tens of thousands additional layoffs in the last week.
ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS. ALL BILLIONAIRES WANT
AMNESTY AND WIDER OPEN BORDERS. ALL BILLIONAIRES WANT NO CAPS ON IMPORTING
CHEAPER FOREIGN WORKER.
Further, the dubious
choice of Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee was made solely
to placate and reassure Wall
Street and the wealthy, as she was viewed by them as being very deferential to
the mega-rich class based on her days in California.
Millionaire Democrat Donor Says Joe Biden Will Be Good for
Wall Street
Scott
Olson/Getty Images
15 Sep 2020395
2:53
A millionaire Democrat donor, who
was once listed as a billionaire by Forbes, says Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden will be
good for Wall Street in the long run.
Michael Novogratz, the former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge
fund manager, told CNBC in an
interview that while a Biden win against President Donald Trump may initially
drag the market down, Wall Street will stand to benefit.
“I think Biden’s going to win. I hope Biden wins,” said
Novogratz, who now runs an investment firm. “But if he wins, I think the market
will go down, at least initially because he’s going to raise capital gains tax
… he’s going to raise corporate taxes some and he’s going to raise personal
income tax.”
“I think it’s probably better for the markets [if Biden
wins] because the chaos Trump brings every week, every day just gets tiring,”
Novogratz said.
Novogratz donated $200,000 to
the Biden Action Fund in June.
Despite endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Novogratz said Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala
Harris’s (D-CA) platform “sounds a lot more conservative than the Republican
team when you’re talking about their plans.”
“There’s going to be so much pressure to start redistributing
wealth whether it’s paying for college, paying for loans, if it’s Medicare for
All,” Novogratz said. “Those are things the Democrat Party cares about and
there’s going to be pressure and maybe we’re not going to get all of those but
we’ll be heading in that direction. So I don’t see our deficits miraculously
collapsing.”
Biden and Harris have sought to distance themselves from their
large Wall Street backing in recent weeks. Although Biden blasted Wall Street
executives in a town hall with the AFL-CIO union, a new report revealed that the
former vice president’s campaign has assured Wall Street donors that his
administration will maintain an economic status quo to their benefit.
This month, Biden touted Wall Street’s
support for his plan to abolish America’s suburbs by seizing control of local
zoning laws to construct housing developments and multi-family buildings in
neighborhoods. Likewise, Wall Street is fully behind Biden’s plan
to hugely expand legal
immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards
and 1.4 million visa workers a year.
The Biden-Harris ticket has elated Wall Street
so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are
donating to the Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for
Responsive Politics analysis reveals.
John Binder is a reporter for
Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Biden’s Billionaires
By Steve McCann
Many years ago, while
participating in a voter registration drive, I came upon a grizzled and
disheveled old man sitting in the overgrown and weed-infested yard of his
paint-starved house calming smoking his pipe. Despite his gruff demeanor,
Ully (Ulysses) was very pleasant and loquacious as we talked for over an hour
on topics ranging from the weather to the innate foibles of mankind. It
turned out that he had to leave school after the fourth grade in order to work
in the fields to help support his family and had toiled in a variety of menial
and labor-intensive jobs ever since. Yet, he had a deep and thorough
insight into human nature. Among his comments about the rich and
ostensibly well-educated was: “All the money in the world cain’t buy a fool a
lick of common sense.”
I was reminded of that
observation after reading an article describing the 131 billionaires who are pouring
millions into the coffers of the Democrat party and Joe Biden’s campaign in
their mindless obsession to defeat President Trump in November. Among the
prominent names are Jeff Skoll, a founder of eBay who has contributed $4.5
million; Laurene Powell Jobs of Apple and owner
of The Atlantic magazine has donated $1.2 million,
and Josh Bekenstein, Chairman of Bain
Capital (co-founded by Mitt Romney), $5 million.
Far more Wall Street
financers have also jumped on the Biden/Democrat party bandwagon than are
supporting Donald Trump, whose policies have overwhelmingly revived the economy
after the stagnation of the Obama-Biden years. The tech billionaires, not content to simply
cough up untold millions in direct political contributions, are also funding
massive voter drives, promoting mail-in balloting, creating divisive partisan
news sites, aiding and designing the Democrat party’s digital campaigns and
unabashedly censoring the social media accounts of the Trump campaign and
innumerable conservatives.
The political party they
are gleefully underwriting in order to oust Trump is no longer the party of the
middle and working class (which is now one and the same) but a two-tier
assemblage in which the prey is sleeping with the predator. The witless
wealthy and socially aware are in bed with the avowed socialists and militant Marxists.
What is holding this marriage of convenience together is a mutual hatred of
Donald Trump and the undoable promises made by Joe Biden and the Democrat party
hierarchy.
In a 2019 meeting with
100 super-wealthy potential donors, Biden assured the gathering that he would
not demonize the rich and would only increase their taxes slightly while
ensuring that their standard of living would not be affected by any of his
policies.
He also
stated: “I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 Billionaires are the reason
why we are in trouble”. Further, he unabashedly emphasized that the
wealthy are not the reason for income inequality and “If I win this
nomination. I won’t let you
down. I promise you.”
Further, the dubious
choice of Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee was made solely
to placate and reassure Wall
Street and the wealthy, as she was viewed by them as being very deferential to
the mega-rich class based on her days in California.
When the time came to
deal with the Marxist/socialist wing of the Democrat party’s anti-Trump
coalition, policy commitments, many diametrically opposite of what was promised
the wealthy donors, were also guaranteed with a non-verbal pledge of we won’t
let you down.
The first step was a de
facto party platform. The 110-page Biden-Sanders Manifesto which includes,
among other commitments, a massive job killing $2+ trillion climate agenda to
phase out fossil fuel usage within 15 years, the elimination of cash bail,
redirecting (i.e. cutting) funding for the police, dismantling all border
protections, legalizing virtually all illegal immigrants and massively raising
corporate and individual tax rates on the wealthy. This manifesto is a
socialist screed that would destroy the middle class and permanently neuter the
economy and nation.
An effusive Bernie
Sanders proclaimed to the world that Biden and the Democrats have embraced his
socialist agenda and that Biden would be the most progressive president since FDR.
Sanders exposed not only the behind the scenes reality of today’s Democrat
party but Biden’s figurehead role.
Further confirmation of
the radicalization of the Party came about unexpectedly as the militant Marxist
faction of the Sanders coalition forced the issue. Impatient and
unwilling to wait until after the 3rd of November, Antifa and Black Lives
Matter used the death of George Floyd as a pretext to take to the streets and
begin their long-hoped for revolution. They claimed that rioting,
looting, committing arson and attacking law enforcement was a necessity as this
was a systemically racist country. Yet, they openly demanded immediate
changes rooted in their radical Marxist ideology of class warfare not so-called
systemic racism. As two of their preferred chants and graffiti
slogans “eat the rich” and “abolish capitalism now” confirms.
Biden, the Democrat party
hierarchy as well as virtually all Democrat elected officials refused to
address the violence and those responsible. Thus, they tacitly approved
of the lawlessness and by doing so flashed a green light to continue the
riots. When forced to acknowledge the reality on the streets of the
nation’s cities, they instead blamed Trump, the police, white supremacists and
even the Russians. Due to their spinelessness, the armies of anarchy and
revolution Biden and the Democrats unleashed will never be defeated or
mollified by them.
Considering the vast
dichotomy in the litany of promises made and actions taken, it is inevitable
that either the moneyed elite or the mob of passionate true believers will be
betrayed. There is no middle ground. Who will prevail?
Will it be the elites
whose only weapon is money and fleeting political influence or the passionate
mob whose weapons are unconstrained violence and intimidation? Will it be
those who believe a revolution could never happen here or those who are
currently inciting revolution with the implicit blessing of a major political
party? Will it be those who believe that Biden and the Democrats, if
elected, will be able to forcefully deal with the insurgents or the insurgents
who now know that riots and extortion causes Democrat politicians to cower in
the corner?
Beginning with the French
Revolution and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, history has recorded that
passionate mobs always prevail when dealing with a feckless ruling class or
party. And the first casualties have inevitably been the wealthy elites.
I can envision sitting
with my old friend, Ully, and asking him if he thought the wealthy elites,
indiscriminately tossing money at the Democrats for the sole purpose of
defeating President Trump, understood the pitfalls involved. He would
lean back, slowly exhale a puff of smoke from his well-worn pipe and with
uncontrollable anger in his eyes would say: “Nope. Those damn fools ain’t
got a lick of common sense.”
Report:
Joe Biden Promises Wall Street Donors the Status Quo in Private Calls
OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images
8 Sep 2020343
3:50
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden is promising Wall
Street donors the economic status quo that they became used to before President
Donald Trump’s administration, according to a report.
An investment banker on Wall Street told the Washington Post that in
private calls with financial executives two months ago, Biden’s campaign
assured them that talk of populist reforms on the campaign trail was nothing
more than talking points.
The Post reports:
When Joe
Biden released economic recommendations two months ago, they included a few
ideas that worried some powerful bankers: allowing banking at
the post office, for example, and having the Federal Reserve guarantee all
Americans a bank account. [Emphasis added]
But in
private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those
proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda.
[Emphasis added]
“They basically said, ‘Listen, this is just an exercise to keep
the Warren people happy, and don’t read too much into it,’” said one investment
banker, referring to liberal supporters of
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The banker, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to describe private talks, said that message was conveyed on multiple
calls. [Emphasis added]
In a statement to the Post,
Biden’s campaign downplayed the influence of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — left populists on trade and economic policy — on
the former vice president’s agenda.
“The Biden-Sanders task forces made recommendations to Vice
President Biden and to the [Democrat National Committee] platform drafting
committee,” Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo said. “This anonymous source appears
to be confused and uninformed about this very basic distinction.”
The report comes as Biden told AFL-CIO members on Labor Day that
he will be the “strongest labor president” union workers “have ever had.”
“You can be sure you’ll be hearing that word, ‘union,’ plenty of
times when I’m in the White House,” Biden pitched. “The words of a president
matter. Union. We’re going to empower workers and empower unions.”
In the Democrat presidential primary, Biden told a group of rich
Manhattan donors at a private fundraiser that “nothing would change” for them
or their wealthy lifestyles if elected.
“I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made
money,” Biden said at the
June 2019 fundraiser.
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know
in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth
of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished,”
Biden said. “No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would
fundamentally change.”
Like failed Democrat
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Biden has enjoyed a cozy relationship
with Wall Street executives, along with his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris
(D-CA).
Most recently, Biden touted Wall Street’s
support for his plan to abolish America’s suburbs by seizing control of local
zoning laws to construct housing developments and multi-family buildings in
neighborhoods. Likewise, Wall Street is fully behind Biden’s plan
to hugely expand legal
immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards
and 1.4 million visa workers a year.
The Biden-Harris ticket has elated Wall Street
so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are
donating to the Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for
Responsive Politics analysis reveals.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on
Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
As Bloomberg
pledges $100 million, Wall Street boosts Biden campaign
15 September 2020
Billionaire Michael
Bloomberg has pledged to spend at least $100 million to support the campaign of
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in Florida. This announcement
Sunday is only the largest pledge of support from the financial oligarchy for
the Democratic campaign.
Bloomberg aide Kevin Sheekey
said the pledge of virtually unlimited financial backing to Biden in Florida,
the most critical “battleground” state in the 2020 election, “will allow
campaign resources and other Democratic resources to be used in other states,
in particular the state of Pennsylvania.”
Florida has 29 electoral
votes, the most of any closely contested state, following California with 55,
overwhelmingly Democratic, and Texas with 38, leaning Republican. New York
state, also with 29 electoral votes, is heavily Democratic.
Only once in the last 60
years—Bill Clinton in 1992—has a candidate won the presidency while losing
Florida. The last Republican to lose Florida and still win the White House was
Calvin Coolidge in 1924, when the state was lightly populated swampland.
Early voting begins in
Florida September 24, and Bloomberg’s money will pay for massive campaign
advertising on behalf of Biden, in both English and Spanish. Campaign officials
said the funds would be devoted almost entirely to television and digital ads.
Even before the Bloomberg
commitment, the Biden campaign and supporting Democratic groups had outspent
Trump and the Republicans by $42 million to $32 million. The flood of cash from
the billionaire media mogul will give the Democrats a three- or four-to-one
advantage over the final seven weeks of the campaign.
The efficacy of Bloomberg’s
huge financial commitment is open to question. The media billionaire spent $1
billion (a mere one-fiftieth of his gargantuan personal fortune) on his own
pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination. He launched his campaign at
a time when he believed Biden’s candidacy was near its demise, hoping that his
money might forestall the nomination of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
The sudden revival of
Biden’s campaign with his victory in South Carolina in February and then in the
Super Tuesday primaries on March 3 led Bloomberg to abandon his own efforts and
endorse the former vice president, since their right-wing views on a range of
topics, and particularly on foreign policy, were virtually identical.
Since then, Bloomberg has
transferred $20 million from his abortive presidential campaign to the
Democratic National Committee, as well as pumping in another $120 million to
local, state and congressional campaigns, making him by far the largest single
backer of the Democratic Party.
Florida is only the most
glaring example of the general trend in the 2020 election, in which the
financial oligarchy and Wall Street have indicated a distinct preference for
Biden and backed it up with heavy financial commitments.
During August, the Biden
campaign broke all records for fundraising in a single month, raking in $365
million, nearly double the previous record of $203 million set by the campaign
of Barack Obama in September 2008, and more than Hillary Clinton and Trump
combined to raise, in August 2016, $233 million. The Trump campaign also broke
the Obama record, but its total of $210 million in August was far behind the
pace set by the Democrats.
Approximately $205 million
of the $365 million came through online donations, including 1.5 million new
donors. This is more an indication of the widespread hostility to Trump among
millions of working-class and middle-class people than any groundswell of
support for Biden, who personifies the corrupt US political establishment,
having spent 36 years in the Senate before his eight years as Obama’s vice president.
That means that $160
million—a near-record amount by itself—was raised through large donations from
wealthy supporters of the Democratic Party. While Trump continues to rake in
the lion’s share of support from industries such as oil and gas, mining and
real estate, Biden has collected the bulk of financial backing from the banks,
hedge funds and insurance industry.
Under rules set by the
Federal Election Commission, a wealthy donor can now give as much as $830,600
to support a presidential candidate, routing much of the money through federal
and state party committees rather than the candidate’s own campaign.
The result of the disparity
in fundraising throughout the summer is that the Democratic presidential
campaign has now caught up with and even surpassed Trump’s war chest. The Trump
reelection campaign, despite raising an unprecedented $1.1 billion, has less
cash on hand for the fall than the Biden campaign. According to press accounts,
more than one-third of the money raised by the Trump campaign was used to pay
the expenses of fundraising itself.
There
were several reports last week that the Trump campaign was experiencing a “cash
crunch,” and was unable to sustain advertising in all 15 of the so-called
battleground states. Both the Washington
Post and Bloomberg News reported that Trump campaign manager
Bill Stepien has halted television advertising in Michigan and Pennsylvania at
least temporarily, and that Biden was outspending Trump in nearly every closely
contested state.
Stepien replaced Brad
Parscale as campaign manager in July, at least in part because of concerns that
Parscale had squandered Trump’s substantial initial fundraising advantage.
According to the media
tracking firm Advertising Analytics, the Biden campaign spent $17 million in
television and digital advertising in nine battleground states during the week
of September 3, compared to $4 million by the Trump campaign.
The Clinton campaign
outspent Trump by similar margins in 2016, but Trump campaign aides had boasted
they would not face such a deficit in 2020. Trump has hinted he would seek to
make up the difference from his personal fortune, but there has been no sign
yet of any direct outlay by the billionaire to back his own campaign.
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