THERE IS NO BANKSTER TUCKING MORE STOLEN MONEY INTO THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY JOB BIDEN’S POCKETS THAN BLACKROCK’S LARRY FINK.
IF YOU’VE WONDERED IF JOE BIDEN, THE CLOWN WHO STAGES HIMSELF AS A BLUE COLLAR POPULIST, IS ANYTHING BUT BOUGHT AND OWNED BY WALL STREET’S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS, LOOK AGAIN! JOE WILL BE BAILING THEM OUT FIRST!!!
Faced with a disaster when the markets re-opened, Mnuchin, Powell and Fink were engaged in a series of discussions over the weekend of March 21–22 to devise a rescue package. According to the Times report, Mnuchin spoke to Fink five times over the two days, more than anyone else, other than Powell with whom he spoke nine times.
According to the article, Larry Fink, the
CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest
asset management firm, was “in frequent
touch” with US Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and Fed chair Jerome
Powell “in the days before and after many
of the Fed’s emergency programs were
announced in late March.”
World’s largest asset management firm
BlackRock was “front and center” of Fed’s
Wall Street bailout
“In his new post, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, Mr. Deese of BlackRoack will play a lead role in implementing Mr. Biden’s economic agenda,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Monday.
The closeness of the relationship between
Blackrock and the financial and economic
arms of the state, the US Treasury and the
Fed, were highlighted in a comment by
William Birdthistle, of the Chicago-Kent
College of Law and the author of a book
on funds, cited in the article.
He said Blackrock was “about as close to
a government arm as you can be, without
being the Federal Reserve.”
Democrats let US eviction moratorium expire, pushing millions of families to the brink
Alongside the latest surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths, another social crisis is set to erupt as the federal moratorium on evictions issued in September will come to an end over the weekend. Millions are threatened with losing their homes, adding to the already dire situation Americans face as the pandemic enters a new deadly stage.
The Biden administration announced Thursday that it would allow the nationwide ban on evictions to expire on Saturday declaring that it was up to Congress, with just two days to go, to extend the measure. The White House claimed that the President’s hands are tied, and there was nothing Biden could do for the more than six million families that have fallen behind on rent, citing the Supreme Court’s decision last month to only allow a moratorium extension until the end of July.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, approximately 6.4 million households were behind on their rent by the end of March. As of July, roughly 3.6 million people in the US reported they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
A New York Times analysis of the survey data found 250 counties where at least 20 percent of renters are behind on their payments, threatening a severe spike in homelessness across the country. Some counties in the rural South present a more worrying trend, with more than one in four renters being behind. Nationwide, rent debt stands at an estimated $23 billion, with the average household being $3,800 in arrears.
In the 84 most populous urban counties, renters owe a collective bill of $13 billion. Almost 300,000 renters in Los Angeles County owe an average of $5,300 in back rent. More than 400,000 renters in New York City owe a collective $2 billion. Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Diego all have at least 55,000 families at risk of being put out on the streets.
Congress has allocated nearly $47 billion in federal Emergency Rental Assistance funds through the CARES Act, but only a minute fraction has been distributed to renters in need. According to state and federal data from June, only about $3 billion of the first $25 billion in relief has been distributed by states and localities. Some states like New York have distributed almost nothing, while several have only approved a few million dollars.
For example, only $158 million has reached renters in California, while residents applied for over $1 billion in rental aid. South Carolina is faring far worse: under $1 million has been disbursed, out of $39 million requested, accounting for less than one percent of funds being spent. By mid-July, the state’s emergency rental assistance program had only processed 226 applications for rental assistance. Meanwhile, 29 percent of renters in South Carolina reported being behind on rent, the highest percentage in the country.
An NBC News survey found that 26 out of 41 US states surveyed had distributed less than 10 percent of their first round of Emergency Rental Assistance, with many states only beginning to hand out money in June. Experts point to numerous reasons aid has yet to reach tenants, including a lack of federal guidelines for distribution, application processes that are too complicated and excessive documentation requirements to prove one’s need.
Exacerbating the issue is a large eligibility gap, with half of the families facing eviction falling outside of eligibility for federal assistance due to their income. As a result, funds are reaching only a small fraction of those who need them most.
A 2020 report from the Aspen Institute found that nearly a quarter of all US households spent more than half of their monthly income on rent. Tenants in this category were far more likely to be at or below the federal poverty line. These households represent millions of workers struggling to live paycheck to paycheck, or one accident or unfortunate event away from financial ruin. Already ravaged by the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic, these workers and their families, anywhere from 30 to 40 million people, face eviction, putting them at heightened risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19.
On an individual level, evicted families will not be able to easily recover from being thrown out. An eviction is a stain that can haunt a person for years. Landlords often discriminate against individuals with an eviction on their credit history and deny them lodging.
At the same time, the confluence of the rapid spread of the Delta variant with tens of millions possibly being evicted in the coming weeks bodes a social catastrophe.
The Biden administration’s patchwork vaccination campaign has left people in many parts of the country still vulnerable to the virus and its various mutations. The Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operation Research (PHICOR) organization estimates that more than 40 percent of Americans may not be sufficiently protected against the fast-spreading Delta variant.
The organization also estimates that more than 98 percent of US residents live in counties where less than 70 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. Additionally, 82 percent of residents live in localities with less than 60 percent of the population fully vaccinated.
Even those who are vaccinated remain vulnerable, as the Delta variant has demonstrated the ability to evade vaccine-granted immunity. And across the US, children under the age of 12 are ineligible for vaccination, further ensuring the spread of the disease as the Biden administration pushes for the full reopening of schools.
The White House issued a limp statement claiming Biden’s sympathy for renters facing a moment of “heightened vulnerability,” with Biden meekly calling on “Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.”
“Given the recent spread of the Delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability,” the White House said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”
The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 majority last month to allow the eviction ban to continue through the end of July. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the court’s “liberal” wing in the decision, made clear he would block any additional extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.”
Democrats in the House introduced a last-minute bill Thursday to extend the moratorium to the end of the year, but this has only been to save face. The Democrats are fully aware that the bill would immediately die once it reached the Senate, where Democrats intended to pass a one-month extension through a voice vote. However, a single Republican objection would instantly kill the legislation. Considering the vast majority of Republicans and many “moderate” Democrats oppose an extension, there is no question about the fate of the bill.
The impending eruption of evictions is not merely the result of the ongoing pandemic, but rather stems from the conscious policy of the financial elite. Every decision made regarding pandemic policy has been predicated on the interests of Wall Street and American imperialism. Determined to ensure the continued extraction of profit from the working class, the ruling class has eviscerated and abandoned any serious measures to contain COVID-19.
In response to the abandonment of social distancing measures and the forced reopening of schools and businesses, the stock markets have surged, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P hitting record highs this week. Over the course of the pandemic, the world’s billionaires have seen their fortunes skyrocket in conjunction with the growing number of deaths which have now surpassed four million globally.
The unfolding social crisis in the United States stands as an indictment of the capitalist system, its inability to deal with social crisis, and the ultimate need for building a working-class movement seeking to reorganize society based on human need and not the drive for profit.
10 Million Face Evictions And Foreclosures In 2021 As Federal Moratorium Ends
Get Ready! The Housing Crisis Starts in 3 Days
NOW WATCH AS BIDEN'S TECH BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND CRONIES ON WALL STREET DO JUST FINE DURING THE LOOMING DEPRESSION
Core Inflation Hits Highest Level in 30 Years
A key measure of inflation reached a 30-year high last month, data released Friday by the Commerce Department showed.
Excluding food and energy, consumer prices were 3.5 percent higher last month than they were in June 2020, the briskest pace of inflation since the summer of 1991 and an acceleration from a month ago.
The data comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ personal consumption expenditure price index, which is the index used by the Fed in its inflation targeting and projections.
The better-known Consumer Price Index, which is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, came in at 4.5 percent in June. That was also nearly a 30 year high.
The two indexes tend to follow the same path over time, although they are composed using different data sets on divergent bundles of goods and services. The Fed switched from CPI to the PCE two decades ago after deciding that it was a better gauge of prices in the economy. CPI tends to show more inflation than the PCE index.
The overall PCE index rose 4 percent from a year ago, matching the rise in May at the highest since 2008.
STAB IN THE HEAD ANY DEMOCRAT POLITICIAN YOU CATCH PERFORMING THEIR POPULIST CRAP!
Chris Hedges | How Bankers ROBBED and ENSLAVED America
Chris Hedges | America's RIGGED Justice System
8 Signs That The US Is Heading To 21st Century Great Depression: Prepare Your Self For The Worst!
Bank Meltdown Is Coming As Latest Data Reveals Something Is Terminally Broken In The US Bank System
Shockingly Bad Home Sales Data Derail The Fed's Tapering Plans
Chris Hedges | The HORRIFIC State of the American Empire
HOW THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY JOE BIDEN HELPED STRIP BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION FROM MILLIONS JUST BEFORE THE RECESSION THE BIG BANKSTERS CAUSED
Biden and Elizabeth Warren have been fighting each other since the 2005 bankruptcy bill.
BY LUKE DARBY
During the most recent Democratic presidential primary debate, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren had an awkward and tense exchange over the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The friction between the two of them goes back quite a ways, long before Biden was vice president and Warren became a senator in Massachusetts. The two first butted heads over Biden's support of bankruptcy reform in the late 1990s and early 2000s, back when he represented Delaware in the Senate.
The key detail is the difference between the two kinds of bankruptcy a person can declare: Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Chapter 7 is known as liquidation bankruptcy and is meant for people with limited income. It allows them sell off what assets they can to pay creditors and then discharge most of the rest of their debts relatively quickly. In contrast, Chapter 13, reorganizing bankruptcy, puts the debtor on a payment plan, so a portion their future income is guaranteed to go to paying back their creditors. If you're a creditor, this is the option you would rather someone take when they owe you money, since you're going to get more out of them over the long run.
The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was meant, on paper, to prevent people from abusing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It accomplished that through means testing, making it harder for people to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy versus Chapter 13. If a person's income exceeds a certain threshold, they're ineligible for declaring Chapter 7. The bill also required people to complete a credit counseling course no more than 180 days before they declare bankruptcy. It also limits the kinds of debt a person can discharge through bankruptcy: If they use a credit card to spend too much money on "luxury goods" or withdraw too much in cash advances, that credit line can't be erased. And, gallingly, the bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt. It may very well be the single piece of legislation most responsible for putting the U.S. in the current student debt crisis.
Biden was one of the bill's major Democratic champions, and he fought for its passage from his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He had pushed for two earlier bankruptcy reform bills in 2000 and 2001, both of which failed. But in 2005, BAPCPA made it through, successfully erecting all kinds of roadblocks for Americans struggling with debt, and doing so just before the financial crisis of 2008. Since BAPCPA passed, Chapter 13 filings went from representing just 24 percent of all bankruptcy filings per year to 39 percent in 2017. Melissa Jacoby, a University of North Carolina law professor specializing in bankruptcy, told Politico, "I doubt that the bill reined in the abuses that the bill was premised on, in part because they didn’t necessarily exist in the first place."
Unions, consumer protection groups, and the National Organization for Women all opposed the BAPCPA, but it had heavy support from the credit card industry. Delaware is essentially a domestic tax haven for corporations, and as a result financial institutions like credit card companies hold tremendous power in the state. As political writer Alexander Cockburn once wrote, "The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work."
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Biden at the time stressed that he wasn't acting on behalf of the credit card companies, and as Matt Ygelsias writes at Vox, Biden's camp claims now that BAPCPA was an effort to get some concessions out of a Republican bill that would have been a bigger disaster without his intervention. But to his critics, there were red flags. For example, one of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden's son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry's top priorities. Biden's interests were so aligned with MBNA's that in 1999 he was forced to defend himself by declaring, "I am not the senator from MBNA." But even without the shadows of impropriety, critics of Biden's support for bankruptcy reform had plenty of fodder.
One of Biden's biggest antagonists was none other than Elizabeth Warren. Back when she was a mere Harvard law professor specializing in bankruptcy law, Warren questioned the entire rationale of bankruptcy reform, telling The Washington Post in 1998, "Those who want to say the way to solve rising consumer bankruptcy is by changing the law are the same people who would have said during a malaria epidemic that the way to cut down on hospital admissions is to lock the door." In the 2003 book she co-wrote with her daughter, The Two-Income Trap, she took special aim at Biden's efforts to make it harder for Americans to declare bankruptcy and framed it as an issue that disproportionally effects women:
This year, more women will file bankruptcy papers than will receive college diplomas. More women with children will search for a bankruptcy lawyer than will seek subsidized day care. And in a statistic with special significance for Senator Biden, more women will be victimized by predatory lenders than will seek protection from an abusive husband or boyfriend... The point is simply that family economics should not be left to giant corporations and paid lobbyists, and senators like Joe Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening. Middle-class women need help, and right now no one is putting their economic interests first.
Two years after Warren wrote that, BAPCPA overwhelmingly passed with Biden's support—while bankruptcy reform had been dead on arrival just a few years earlier, 18 Senate Democrats chose to side with all 55 Republicans and the lone independent to vote in favor of the bill. Then president George W. Bush promptly signed it into law, and 14 years later BAPCPA is still making it more costly and cumbersome to declare bankruptcy. With the U.S. likely heading for another recession and credit card debt at a record $870 billion, millions more Americans could end up struggling with mountains of debt than they would otherwise had Biden not fought so hard to strip them of bankruptcy protection.
BIDEN WAS SELECTED BY BANKSTER-OWNED OBAMA BECAUSE OF HIS LONG HISTORY OF SERVING THE BANKSTERS!
Biden backed brutal bankruptcy bill in 2005
By Chris Talgo
In 1999, then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) declared, “I’m not the senator from MBNA.” Apparently, Biden felt it was necessary to clarify that he did not exclusively represent credit card giant MBNA because his constituents were thoroughly confused, based on his track record of being a shill for credit card companies located in the First State.
Then, six years later, Biden inserted his foot directly into his mouth (again) when he championed the notorious (and ill-named) Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). A more appropriate name could have been the Act to Protect Credit Card Companies and Shaft Students and Workers.
In short, BAPCPA was a terrible bill that favored credit card companies, big banks, and millionaires over working-class borrowers. It also is solely responsible for the fact that student loan debt is totally impossible to dismiss -- even after one has declared bankruptcy.
Wait a minute, I thought Joe Biden was the consummate defender and advocate of the working class and oppressed. Far from it. In reality,Biden’s political career of more than four decades was predicated upon protecting the interests of credit card companies.
And he and his son, Hunter, were compensated handsomely for doing so. According to a 2019 GQ article titled “How Biden Helped Strip Bankruptcy Protection From Millions Just Before a Recession” -- “one of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden's son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry's top priorities.” Can you say, quid pro quo, Joe?
As if the backroom deals and “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” shenanigans that Biden blatantly engaged in before, during, and after BAPCPA was passed were not bad enough, the bill wrought untold damage among the very people Biden constantly claims to protect.
According to Adam J. Levitin, professor of law at Georgetown University, BAPCPA “was perhaps the most anti-middle class piece of legislation in the past century.” And, as Levitin writes, “Biden used his clout to push for the law’s passage and to defeat amendments to shield servicemembers, women, and children from its harsh treatment. When votes were taken, ‘Middle-Class Joe’ was no friend to the middle class.” It sure seems that Biden abandoned his Lunchbox Joe persona when it came to voting in favor of BAPCPA, not to mention that he strongly supported amendments that made the bill even more hostile to the middle class!
And adding insult to injury, Biden also voted against several amendments that were specifically meant to help several “underprivileged” groups. As Levitin writes, “He voted against three amendments to ease bankruptcy requirements for consumers whose financial troubles stem from medical expenses. He voted against an amendment that would have helped seniors keep their homes. He voted against exempting servicemembers and widows of servicemembers killed in action from the law’s eligibility restrictions. He voted against an amendment to exempt women whose financial troubles stemmed from deadbeat husbands’ failure to pay child support or alimony. And Biden even voted against an amendment that would have ensured that children of debtors could still be given birthday and Christmas presents. Biden also voted against allowing debtors to pay their union dues during bankruptcy, potentially imperiling their employment and ability to achieve financial rehabilitation.” Could Biden’s voting record on this bill get any worse? Actually, yes.
Not only did Biden strongly oppose BAPCPA amendments aimed to
help “disadvantaged” groups, he voted
for two giant loopholes that effectively
allowed millionaires to shield their
assets from collectors after they filed
for bankruptcy. What a joke, Joe.
As a senator, Biden vigorously voted for several similar bills. In short, based on his voting record, Joe Biden is not (and never was) a champion of disadvantaged Americans, unless you consider multi-billion-dollar credit card corporations and millionaires “disadvantaged.”
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is an editor at The Heartland Institute.
SOCIOPATH LYING LAWYER JOE BIDEN HAS ALWAYS BEEN UP THE BANKSTERS' ASSES.
HE IS SO CORRUPT THE BANKSTERS' RENT BOYS, LAWYER BARACK OBAMA AND LAWYER ERIC HOLDER WANTED HIM TO BE A PART OF THE BANKSTER REGIME OF LAWYER BARACK OBAMA, LAWYER JOE BIDEN AND LAWYER ERIC HOLDER!
Biden's Cozy Relations With Bank Industry
With Sen. Joe Biden joining the Democratic ticket, there's renewed scrutiny of Biden's connections to the credit card industry. Biden has been particularly cozy with MBNA, a financial services company from Delaware, and now a subsidiary of Bank of America.
Over the past 20 years, MBNA has been Biden's single largest contributor. And as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal note, Biden's son Hunter was hired out of law school by MBNA and later worked as a lobbyist for the company.
The Times also details just how helpful Biden has been to MBNA and the credit card industry. The senator was a key supporter of an industry-favorite bill -- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" -- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.
As the Times notes, Biden was one of the first Democratic supporters of the bill and voted for it four times until it finally passed in March 2005. A spokesman for Sen. Obama told the Times, "Senator Biden took on entrenched interests and succeeded in improving the bill for low-income workers, women and children."
Yet the Times actually looked at the legislative record and paints a different picture:
[Biden] was one of five Democrats in March 2005 who voted against a proposal to require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Mr. Obama voted for it.
Mr. Biden also went against Mr. Obama to help defeat amendments aimed at strengthening protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military; Mr. Biden argued that the amendments were unnecessary because the legislation already carved out exemptions for those debtors. And he was one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Mr. Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.
The Washington Post's David Broder detailed other industry-friendly aspects of the bill back in 2005. One proposed amendment to the bill would have stopped corporations from "judge-shopping" and going to the most-friendly venues for their bankruptcy cases. The amendment was introduced by Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and appeared to have wide bipartisan support. But it never passed. Broder writes that Biden helped kill it.
Joe Biden Worked with Credit Card Companies to Make Bankruptcy Harder for Consumers
Former Vice President Joe Biden sided with his top donor, the one-time credit card giant MBNA Corp., against consumers on bankruptcy reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Starting in 1996, when Biden was seeking a fifth term representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate, MBNA’s top leadership began donating heavily to his campaign coffers. From 1996 to 2006, individuals employed by the company gave more than $212,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The sum was large enough to make the company Biden’s largest campaign contributor throughout his nearly 40-year career in public office.
The money would not have drawn interest, let alone controversy, if not for the manner and timing of the contributions. In total, more than $63,000 went to Biden between April and October 1996. The total was by far the largest given to any Democrat by MBNA that cycle.
As Byron York detailed in a widely publicized The American Spectator exposé — titled, “The Senator from MBNA” — in 1998, the donations arrived in what looked to a be a coordinated pattern.
On April 16 MBNA executive vice-president and chief technology officer Ronald Davies sent in $1,000. Kenneth Boehl, another top executive, also sent in $1,000 on the 16th. And senior vice-president Gregg Bacchieri. And William Daiger, another executive vice-president. And David Spartin, the vice-chairman and company spokesman. The next day, April 17, vice-chairman and chief financial officer Scot Kaufman sent $1,000, as did Bruce Hammonds, MBNA’s vice-chairman and chief operating officer. And John Hewes, senior executive vice-president of MBNA’s credit division. And vice-chairman and chief administrative officer Lance Weaver. On April 18, MBNA general counsel John Scheflen sent in $1,000. On April 20, group president David Nelms sent in $1,000, as did vice-chairman Vernon Wright. On April 22, John Cochran sent in $1,000. So did senior executive vice-president Peter Dimsey. And finally, on April 26, Charles Cawley sent in his $1,000.
York noted a similar pattern emerged after Biden had won his primary campaign that August and was preparing for the general election against a little known Republican. A review of Biden’s campaign finance filings from the time by Breitbart News shows the money flowed mainly in $1,000 increments, the maximum then allowed by Federal Election Commission guidelines.
Since Biden had sworn off political action committees in his bid to pass campaign finance reform, MBNA would have only been able to donate through individuals under its employ. Luckily, as the Wilmington News-Journal reported in 1995, the company already had a protocol in place for exactly such a purpose.
“MBNA Corp. crashed onto the political money scene in 1994 by distributing more than $1 million in campaign contributions, much of it raised through carefully worded memos advising its top executives to give to the bank’s favorite candidates in Delaware and in key races across the country,” the article states.
The memos raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts, as they seemed to skirt the limits in place on how much corporations could donate to candidates. MBNA defended its conduct, claiming it had not violated any federal laws or forced its employees to donate against their will. The latter, however, was viewed skeptically, as MBNA had not only requested proof of contributions, but also reasons for refusing to donate.
“The memos were from John W. Scheflen, MBNA’s general counsel,” the News-Journal reported. “He kept records of the contributions and requested confirmation. Instructions read in boldface: ‘Please send me a copy of each of your checks.’”
According to the paper, Scheflen requested in a follow-up memo “to know in writing who wasn’t giving: ‘If you do not plan to make any suggested contributions, I would appreciate it if you would so note.’”
Biden’s 1996 campaign appears to be the first time MBNA made a concerted effort to see him reelected. Despite having relocated its headquarters to Delaware in 1982, MBNA or its employees did not donate to Biden’s campaigns in 1990 or 1984, according to FEC filings. Campaign filings dating back to Biden’s 1972 and 1978 races were not readily available, as the FEC has archived reports from more than 40-years-ago.
Even more interesting is that Biden was one of the few Democrats that MBNA favored with its donation. From 1992 until its sale to Bank of America, MBNA and its employees never donated less than 73 percent of their contributions to Republicans. The company’s employees gave more than $575,000 to see President George W. Bush elected in both 2000 and 2004.
Starting in 2000, when Biden took a keener interest in bankruptcy reform, MBNA’s employees began contributing to him regardless of whether he was on the ballot or not. That year, Biden received more than $69,000 from MBNA, even though he was not seeking reelection for another two years. Similarly, MBNA contributed more than $49,000 to Biden in 2004, albeit he was not on the ballot again until 2008.
Although it is impossible to tell what impact the money had on Biden’s views — especially as he supported efforts to tighten student loan bankruptcy laws throughout the 1970s and 1980s — it is clear that after 1996 he championed MBNA’s legislative agenda with vigor.
In 1999, Biden was one of the lead backers of an initial bankruptcy reform package that held many of the provisions that would eventually end up in the 2005 bill. The legislation was a top priority for MBNA and a conglomerate of other credit card and banking interests.
Biden, along with a cadre of business-friendly Democrats and Senate Republicans, labored to pass the bill in the face of opposition from liberals and consumer advocates. Among those on the opposing side was then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy expert who argued the measure favored companies like MNBA over working families.
After an intense back and forth, Biden’s side prevailed and the bill passed in late 2000. It was not signed into law, though, as President Bill Clinton opted to pocket veto the measure on his way out of office.
Biden and allies were not dispirited, instead seizing the opportunity presented by the incoming-Republican president to pass a bill more favorable to banking interests. They ultimately succeeded in 2005 after MNBA and financial institutions bankrolled an intense lobbying campaign.
The following year, the law’s results were evident when bankruptcy filings fell by more than 70 percent across the country.
Credit Card Joe’: Biden Sided with Top Donor to Make Bankruptcy Harder
Former Vice President Joe Biden
sided with his top donor, the one time
credit card giant MBNA Corp., against
progressives like Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D-MA) on bankruptcy
reform during the late 1990s and
early 2000s.
Biden, who has long sought to portray himself as “affable” and “middle class,” has recently come under fire from other 2020 Democrats for his ties to the banking and credit card industries.
Opponents, particularly Warren, have attacked Biden for working to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The legislation, which tightened regulations making bankruptcy more difficult, is widely seen to have benefited credit card companies and banks at the expense of consumers. Some have even suggested the law only served to hasten and aggravate the recession of the late 2000s.
Despite the renewed focus, few have drawn lines between Biden’s legislative advocacy and his ties to MBNA, which, prior to its purchase by Bank of America in 2006, was the nation’s largest issuer of credit cards.
Starting in 1996, when Biden was seeking a fifth term representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate, MBNA’s top leadership began donating heavily to his campaign coffers. From 1996 to 2006, individuals employed by the company gave more than $212,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The sum was large enough to make the company Biden’s largest campaign contributor throughout his nearly 40-year career in public office.
The money would not have drawn interest, let alone controversy, if not for the manner and timing of the contributions. In total, more than $63,000 went to Biden between April and October 1996. The total was by far the largest given to any Democrat by MBNA that cycle.
As Byron York detailed in a 1998 widely publicized The American Spectator exposé — titled, “The Senator from MBNA” — the donations arrived in what looked to a be a coordinated pattern.
On April 16 MBNA executive vice-president and chief technology officer Ronald Davies sent in $1,000. Kenneth Boehl, another top executive, also sent in $1,000 on the 16th. And senior vice-president Gregg Bacchieri. And William Daiger, another executive vice-president. And David Spartin, the vice-chairman and company spokesman. The next day, April 17, vice-chairman and chief financial officer Scot Kaufman sent $1,000, as did Bruce Hammonds, MBNA’s vice-chairman and chief operating officer. And John Hewes, senior executive vice-president of MBNA’s credit division. And vice-chairman and chief administrative officer Lance Weaver. On April 18, MBNA general counsel John Scheflen sent in $1,000. On April 20, group president David Nelms sent in $1,000, as did vice-chairman Vernon Wright. On April 22, John Cochran sent in $1,000. So did senior executive vice-president Peter Dimsey. And finally, on April 26, Charles Cawley sent in his $1,000.
York noted a similar pattern emerged after Biden had won his primary campaign that August and was preparing for the general election against a little known Republican. A review of Biden’s campaign finance filings from the time by Breitbart News shows the money flowed mainly in $1,000 increments, the maximum then allowed by Federal Election Commission guidelines.
Since Biden had sworn off political action committees in his bid to pass campaign finance reform, MBNA would have only been able to donate through individuals under its employ. Luckily, as the Wilmington News-Journal reported in 1995, the company already had a protocol in place for exactly such a purpose.
“MBNA Corp. crashed onto the political money scene in 1994 by distributing more than $1 million in campaign contributions, much of it raised through carefully worded memos advising its top executives to give to the bank’s favorite candidates in Delaware and in key races across the country,” the article states.
The memos raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts as they seemed to skirt the limits in place on how much corporations could donate to candidates. MBNA defended its conduct, claiming it had not violated any federal laws or forced its employees to donate against their will. The latter, however, was viewed skeptically, as MBNA had not only requested proof of contributions, but also reasons for refusing to donate.
“The memos were from John W. Scheflen, MBNA’s general counsel,” the News-Journal reported. “He kept records of the contributions and requested confirmation. Instructions read in boldface: ‘Please send me a copy of each of your checks.'”
According to the paper, Scheflen requested in a follow-up memo “to know in writing who wasn’t giving: ‘If you do not plan to make any suggested contributions, I would appreciate it if you would so note.'”
Biden’s 1996 campaign appears to be the first time MBNA made a concerted effort to see him reelected. Despite having relocated its headquarters to Delaware in 1982, MBNA or its employees did not donate to Biden’s campaigns in 1990 or 1984, according to FEC filings. Campaign filings dating back to Biden’s 1972 and 1978 races were not readily available, as the FEC has archived reports from more than 40-years ago.
Even more interesting is that Biden was one of the few Democrats that MBNA favored with its donation. From 1992 until its sale to Bank of America, MBNA and its employees never donated less than 73 percent of their contributions to Republicans. The company’s employees gave more than $575,000 to see President George W. Bush elected in both 2000 and 2004.
Starting in 2000, when Biden took a keener interest in bankruptcy reform, MBNA’s employees began contributing to him regardless if he was on the ballot or not. That year, Biden received more than $69,000 from MBNA, even though he was not seeking reelection for another two years. Similarly, MBNA contributed more than $49,000 to Biden in 2004, albeit he was not on the ballot again until 2008.
Although it is impossible to tell what impact the money had on Biden’s views — especially as he supported efforts to tighten student loan bankruptcy laws throughout the 1970s and 1980s — it is clear that after 1996 he championed MBNA’s legislative agenda with vigor.
In 1999, Biden was one of the lead backers of an initial bankruptcy reform package that held many of the provisions that would eventually end up in the 2005 bill. The legislation was a top priority for MBNA and a conglomerate of other credit card and banking interests.
Biden, along with a cadre of business-friendly Democrats and Senate Republicans, labored to pass the bill in the face of opposition from liberals and consumer advocates. Among those on the opposing side was then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy expert who argued the measure favored companies like MNBA over working families.
After an intense back and forth, Biden’s side prevailed and the bill passed in late 2000. It was not signed into law, though, as President Bill Clinton opted to pocket veto the measure on his way out of office.
Biden and his allies were not dispirited, instead seizing the opportunity presented by the incoming-Republican president to pass a bill more favorable to banking interests. They ultimately succeeded in 2005 after MNBA and financial institutions bankrolled an intense lobbying campaign. The following year, the law’s results were evident when bankruptcy filings fell by more than 70 percent across the country.
Although Warren lost the bankruptcy battle in Congress to Biden, she has already signaled an intention to wage it again on the campaign trail.
“At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hardworking families,” Warren said earlier this year, “Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”
THERE IS NO BANKSTER TUCKING MORE STOLEN MONEY INTO THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY JOB BIDEN’S POCKETS THAN BLACKROCK’S LARRY FINK.
IF YOU’VE WONDERED IF JOE BIDEN, THE CLOWN WHO STAGES HIMSELF AS A BLUE COLLAR POPULIST, IS ANYTHING BUT BOUGHT AND OWNED BY WALL STREET’S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS, LOOK AGAIN! JOE WILL BE BAILING THEM OUT FIRST!!!
Faced with a disaster when the markets re-opened, Mnuchin, Powell and Fink were engaged in a series of discussions over the weekend of March 21–22 to devise a rescue package. According to the Times report, Mnuchin spoke to Fink five times over the two days, more than anyone else, other than Powell with whom he spoke nine times.
According to the article, Larry Fink, the
CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest
asset management firm, was “in frequent
touch” with US Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and Fed chair Jerome
Powell “in the days before and after many
of the Fed’s emergency programs were
announced in late March.”
World’s largest asset management firm
BlackRock was “front and center” of Fed’s
Wall Street bailout
“In his new post, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, Mr. Deese of BlackRoack will play a lead role in implementing Mr. Biden’s economic agenda,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Monday.
The closeness of the relationship between
Blackrock and the financial and economic
arms of the state, the US Treasury and the
Fed, were highlighted in a comment by
William Birdthistle, of the Chicago-Kent
College of Law and the author of a book
on funds, cited in the article.
He said Blackrock was “about as close to
a government arm as you can be, without
being the Federal Reserve.”
SHOCKING! OR IS IT? BIDEN HAS BEEN THE SAME BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS!
Chris Hedges | Voting BIDEN was WRONG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RjnohdjH5E
Chris Hedges: The Ruthless Corporate destruction of our Nation, Culture and Ecosystem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eQV0IuYQ2U&list=WL&index=12
LOW DOWN ON BIDEN'S REAL PAYMASTERS - JOE RECIEVED MORE THAN $76 MILLION DOLLARS FROM WALL STREET'S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS. THE BIGGEST PART OF THAT CAME FROM BLACKROCK. HERE'S MORE:
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream⎜WHY POVERTY?⎜(Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6niWzomA_So&list=WL&index=83&t=33s
BlackRock & Wall Street: US Housing Market TAKEOVER (Fact or Fiction?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCHS4IW0LBo
David Sirota: Blackrock, Koch ROBBING Future Homeowners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFjxvrJvWwQ
BlackRock - The company that owns the world? Sure as hell they own Joe Biden!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4foal20UTA
How BlackRock exploited the COVID-19 pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96sAffLWy_8
"Along with Obama (LAWYER) Biden (LAWYER), Pelosi and Schumer (LAWYER) are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
Add the Banksters’ rent boy Eric Holder (LAWYER) and the up and coming Swamp Empress Kamala Harris (LAWYER)…but keep counting….(LAWYER) Brian Deese, Obama-Biden’s loot-for-Wall Street guy.
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.
BLOG EDITOR: WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THE PARASITE LAWYERS?!?
“But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.”
Big Tech and Big Law dominate Biden transition teams, tempering progressive hopes
Alexander Nazaryan administration takes office in January.
WASHINGTON — For six years, Brandon Belford worked as an economic policy adviser to President Barack Obama in the White House and federal agencies. He moved to the Bay Area when Donald Trump became president, part of a massive flight of Obama officials from Washington to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood. He took high-ranking positions with Apple and then Lyft, where he is currently the ride-sharing company’s chief of staff.
Now Belford is back, as part of one of the “transition teams” named by President-elect Joe Biden to restock a federal government that has been battered after four years of Trump by hiring new officials and advising the incoming administration on what its first governing steps should be.
Those steps could be timid, judging by the composition of those teams, where Obama-era centrism prevails. That has some progressives worried that Biden represents nothing more than a return to normal, at a time when many of them believe the nation is ready to embrace policy ideas well to the left of center.
“The status quo is killing us,” says former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, who now hosts a podcast called “Bad Faith.”
Belford is joined by dozens of other Democratic operatives who have spent the past four years working at prestigious law firms and think tanks. On these “agency review teams” are high-ranking executives from Amazon, partners at white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling and enough experts from D.C. center-left think tanks — including six from the Brookings Institution alone — to fill a center-left think tank.
Progressives knew this was coming. “I am very concerned about the role Uber executives would play in this administration,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-N.Y., told Yahoo News. Even though she also effusively praised the appointment of Ron Klain as the incoming White House chief of staff, Ocasio-Cortez vowed that corporate America would not “pull the wool over our eyes” when it came to crafting the Biden presidency.
Some have put it less bluntly. “Biden’s transition team is full of wealthy corporate executives who are completely disconnected from the struggles of the working class,” complains left-leaning activist Ryan Knight, whose Twitter handle is @ProudSocialist.
App-based drivers from Uber and Lyft protest in a caravan in front of City Hall in Los Angeles on October 22, 2020 where elected leaders hold a conference urging voters to reject on the November 3 election, Proposition 22, that would classify app-based drivers as independent contractors and not employees or agents. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)More
He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to
the 40 or so members of the Biden transition
who are current or recent lobbyists.
The agency review teams are not exactly settling into their cubicles just yet. For one, President Trump has not yet conceded the election, and the transition has been hindered in part by Republican operatives at the General Services Administration. And agency review is an enormously complex process, one that actually began months ago. The transition teams are supposed to ensure a “smooth transfer of power,” in large part by making sure that capable officials are ready to get to work in their respective agencies the moment Biden lifts his hand from the Lincoln Bible.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one member of the Biden campaign working on agency-related matters says teams were primarily tasked with surveying the landscape of the federal bureaucracy. She says that the transition teams would make some hiring recommendations, but only as a secondary function.
With a single exception, the agency review team members mentioned in this article did not respond to requests for comment.
One with a typically impressive biography is that of Aneesh Chopra, who served as the U.S. chief technology officer for Obama before starting his own medical data logistics company, CareJourney. Now he is on the transition team for the U.S. Postal Service, where he will presumably work to undo the alleged damage by another logistics maven: Trump appointee Louis DeJoy.
Of course, most progressives are glad that there’s a Biden transition to speak of, instead of a second Trump term. But they also recognize their own role in the Democratic candidate’s victory.
“Everyone fell into line and did everything they could to get Joe Biden elected,” says Max Berger, a progressive activist who worked for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign and Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Ocasio-Cortez to the House in 2018.
Berger recognizes that progressives will be a “junior partner” to the establishment Democrats with whom Biden has been ideologically and temperamentally aligned for a good half-century. They want to be partners all the same, not just the loyal opposition.
Many are cheered by some of the agency review teams. For one, they are notably more diverse, a stark contrast to Trump’s reliance on white males for so much of his advice. On the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is Jedidah Isler, the Dartmouth professor who in 2014 became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in astrophysics from Yale. The transition team for the Small Business Administration includes Jorge Silva Puras, a political leader in Puerto Rico who also teaches entrepreneurship at a community college in the Bronx.
“The presence of labor officials throughout many of the groups is notable,” says David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect. In the Department of Education team, for example, are several executives from the American Federation of Teachers.
He called the Federal Reserve and Treasury teams “all-stars,” a sentiment shared by other progressives interviewed for this article. On the Treasury team is Mehrsa Baradaran, a progressive economist who has written on the racial wealth gap. She is also on the Federal Reserve team, along with Reena Aggarwal, a corporate governance expert.
Progressive strategist Elizabeth Spiers says the
finance-related teams are not “not quite Elizabeth
Warren levels of aggressiveness but also not stuffed
with finance people.” Biden’s advisers appear to
have learned the lessons of his former boss.
During Obama’s first year, he relied on banking
executives to help quell the financial crisis. They
did so in ways that steered the new president
away from progressive proposals, such
as nationalizing those very same banks.
There is not a single current executive from Citibank or Goldman Sachs on any of the transition teams. Bank of America has also been shut out. JPMorgan can boast a single toehold in the agency review process: Lisa Sawyer of the Pentagon team. A spokesman for JPMorgan told Yahoo News that the bank was “following the appropriate election laws” and that Sawyer was “not on an agency review team that will touch any banking issues.”
“I think the Biden administration is going to be surprising to progressives in some ways and disappointing in others, and the agency review teams reflect that,” Dayen says. During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America.
Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official
Washington.
“I have to be cautiously optimistic,” says Waleed Shahid, communications director for the Justice Democrats.
Relatively young progressives like Shahid are less likely to wax romantic about the way things were in Washington. They are less interested in experience than conviction. But for many in Biden’s camp, a lack of experience was among the several fatal flaws of the Trump years.
“Everyone — right or left — has made the mistaken assumption for years that governing is easy,” says “The Death of Expertise” author Tom Nichols, who teaches at the Naval War College and is an ardently anti-Trump Republican.
“After having a bunch of nitwits and cronies loose in the government,” Nichols wrote in an email, “I think a lot of people on the left are really giving in to the assumption that as long as you’re not Trump, or not a complete idiot, anyone can do it.”
Given the title and theme of his book, Nicholas cautioned against that approach. “It’s a childish and silly approach to government, but it’s a bipartisan problem,” he told Yahoo News.
While progressive may not see their stars like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren occupying the Treasury Department, they do very much hope that a Biden presidency amounts to more than a third Obama term. It was unaddressed economic inequality, they believe, that bred the populist resentment that gave Trump an opening in 2016. The coronavirus has only made that inequality worse. That will only increase populist resentment, they worry, to be exploited by a Trump acolyte — or perhaps Trump himself, again — in 2024.
Addressing that inequality, for now, falls to transition team officials like Mark Schwartz of Amazon and Ted Dean of Dropbox, as well as Arun Venkataraman of Visa and David Holmes of defense contractor Rebellion Defense, in which Eric Schmidt of Google is an investor. Many of these officials are veterans of the Obama administration or Democratic offices on the Hill.
“There is a lot of corporate influence there,” says Maurice Weeks, co-founder of the Action Center on Race and the Economy. “And that is troubling.” But he is encouraged by the presence of “hard-core progressives” like Sarah Miller, a former Treasury deputy who is both an anti-Facebook activist and the executive of the American Economic Liberties Project, which seeks to curb corporate power. She is now on the Treasury transition team.
In some ways, the difference is between former Obama officials who, like Miller, went on to become activists and those who moved on to become rich. The latter did only what many government officials had done before them. But at a time of mass unemployment, a stint at the corporate law firm Latham & Watkins (three transition team members) may not seem as impressive as it may have when Obama was president.
“We don’t just want to rewind the clock by four years,” Weeks says.
For many progressives, Trump was a singular threat to important institutions of the federal government, but rebuilding those institutions is simply not as important as rebuilding entire communities shattered by economic, social and racial inequalities.
It doesn’t help matters that, today, tech giants are distrusted by conservatives and progressives alike. Firms that were run out of Palo Alto garages now chafe at antitrust laws like the railroad companies of a century ago.
And like those companies, they know how to use their influence. In 2019 alone, two of the biggest and most influential technology firms — Amazon and Facebook — each spent $17 million on “government affairs,” better known as lobbying.
Ocasio-Cortez’s reference to Uber may have been a subtle warning to the incoming administration: The brother-in-law of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is Tony West, who worked for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton and is now the chief counsel at Uber. Jake Sullivan, another top Biden adviser, also worked for Uber.
The company recently won a major victory in California with Proposition 22, a successful response to legal efforts to make Uber drivers and other “gig workers” employees, not contractors. That’s exactly the kind of labor policy, Ocasio-Cortez says, the Biden administration must avoid.
Many top Obama staffers went to Silicon Valley in 2017. They could be returning to Washington with a new appreciation for free market capitalism at a time when “socialism” is no longer a dirty word.
“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.
That’s exactly what worries Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks what Trump has called, without much affection, “the swamp.” He notes that the transition team for the Office of Management and Budget appears to have borrowed rather avidly from Silicon Valley, with team members hailing from Lyft, Airbnb and Amazon.
The budget office wields an “enormous amount of power,” says Hauser, including in both how congressionally appropriated money is doled out and how certain rules are implemented. Though it had a supporting role in Trump’s impeachment drama over foreign aid, OMB is otherwise obscure, making it a perfect site for covert exercises of federal power.
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.
Watching the transition, Gray, the former Sanders adviser, recalled an old saying: “The fish rots from the head.” The head, in this case, is Joe Biden, of whom Gray has long been a skeptic.
“He’s a fundamentally conservative man,” Gray says. She reasons that if Biden was “unmoved by the largest protest movement in American history” to endorse Medicare for All, he can’t be trusted to do much for conservative causes like a $15 minimum wage and the Green New Deal.
Still, she believes that Biden can be made to hear the voices of progressives — if, Gray says, they are loud enough. She points out that there is widespread support for progressive legislation like the $15 minimum wage in Florida, even though Trump won the state.
Biden easily won Oregon, but a push to legalize small amounts of drugs, known as Measure 110, was even more popular than he was.
She sees that as evidence that progressive ideas are more popular than Biden himself. “Progressives should never stop screaming that reality from the rooftops,” Gray told Yahoo News. And she vowed to keep fighting, even with Trump gone and a Democratic president in the Oval Office once again.
“I don’t accept resignation,” she said.
Cover thumbnail photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
THE LONG HISTORY OF OBAMA-BIDENomics:
The “managed bankruptcy” of GM and Chrysler ordered by the Obama administration set into motion the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, including 35,000 GM production jobs in the US alone, the shuttering of dozens of assembly and parts plants and the closing of more than 1,000 car dealerships. Obama worked with the United Auto Workers to slash the wages of new hires in half, abolish the eight-hour day, ban strikes for six years and relieve the corporations of retiree health care obligations by handing the provision and cutting of retiree medical benefits to the UAW.
The executive from the giant investment firm BlackRock played a leading role in the destruction of autoworkers’ jobs and living standards during the 2009 restructuring of GM and Chrysler.
Who is Biden’s top economic adviser Brian
Deese?
President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly selected Brian Deese, an executive at the Wall Street investment firm BlackRock, as director of the National Economic Council, according to several major news outlets. “In his new post, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, Mr. Deese will play a lead role in implementing Mr. Biden’s economic agenda,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Monday.
While Deese was not among those Biden introduced Tuesday as his “economic team,” an announcement is expected soon. Deese, the Global Head of Sustainable Investment at BlackRock, would be the second executive chosen by the incoming administration from the world’s largest asset manager, which controls $7 trillion in assets and is a major shareholder in Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Apple, Microsoft and other global corporate giants.
On Tuesday, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, a former chief of staff to BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, was named top deputy to Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve Chairwoman who Biden picked for Secretary of the Treasury. Tom Donilon, chairman of BlackRock Investment Institute and brother of Biden’s chief campaign political strategist, had been considered for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Donilon decided to stay in the “private sector.”
Brian Deese (Source: BlackRock)
The selection of Deese and Adeyemo—who both previously served in the Obama administration—exemplifies the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, DC, which operates constantly, regardless of which party controls the White House.
It is a further signal to the financial oligarchy that a Biden administration will dispense with its rhetoric about raising taxes on the wealthy and continue funneling trillions into the stock markets. “By picking folks with deep ties to large asset managers,” Tyler Gellasch, executive director of investor trade group Healthy Markets Association, told the Journal, “the administration can help assuage financial executives’ concerns. It sends a clear signal to the industry to breathe easier: They can plan for stability without likely facing massive new regulatory or tax risks.”
After working on Obama’s 2008 election campaign, Deese was appointed Special Assistant to the President for economic policy and served on the National Economic Council as Obama took over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) from the outgoing George Bush administration, and pumped massive resources into the same banks and financial institutions whose criminal activities had crashed the economy.
Deese, who had no formal training as an economist, then made a name for himself for being the most aggressive advocate of throwing General Motors and Chrysler Corp. into bankruptcy in 2009.
In a May 2009 New York Times article, headlined “The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M.,” David Sanger wrote, “It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.
BLOG EDITOR: WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THE PARASITE LAWYERS?!?
“But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.”
Deese was part of the White House Auto Task Force, which was made up of Wall Street asset strippers, including billionaire investor and Democratic Party fundraiser Steven Rattner and Ron Bloom, another Wall Street “turnaround specialist” with a long history of collaborating with the unions during the bankruptcy restructuring of the airline and steel industry.
While publicly claiming that they wanted to avoid bankruptcy, court document would show that Deese and others in Obama’s inner circle were determined to force the auto companies into a forced restructuring from the earliest days of the new administration.
After Rick Wagoner, GM’s former chief executive, said publicly that bankruptcy was not a viable option, the administration would fire him and threaten to withhold any further money from GM unless it imposed far more “painful” cuts than outlined in its initial plan, which called for the elimination of 47,000 jobs worldwide, including 21,000 hourly workers in the US.
The “managed bankruptcy” of GM and Chrysler ordered by the Obama administration set into motion the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, including 35,000 GM production jobs in the US alone, the shuttering of dozens of assembly and parts plants and the closing of more than 1,000 car dealerships. Obama worked with the United Auto Workers to slash the wages of new hires in half, abolish the eight-hour day, ban strikes for six years and relieve the corporations of retiree health care obligations by handing the provision and cutting of retiree medical benefits to the UAW.
As the wrote at the time, “Obama’s Auto Task Force has focused on one thing from the beginning: how to exploit the crisis of the auto industry to create conditions for Wall Street to reap huge profits. Its leading figures—Secretary Treasurer Timothy Geithner and White House economic [adviser] Lawrence Summers—played a key role in the Wall Street bailout, opposing the slightest restrictions on compensation paid to banking executives receiving public money. When it has come to the auto industry, however, they have demanded the most brutal job cuts and wage and benefit concessions from autoworkers.
“The outcome of the dismantling of the auto industry,” the continued, “will mean that the industrial base of the US will shrink even more and the economy will be further dominated by the type of reckless and socially destructive speculation that is responsible for the worst economic and social crisis since the 1930s.”
A year after the forced bankruptcies, Citi Investment Research analyst Itay Michaeli boasted that GM’s fixed cost per vehicle would drop from $10,400 in 2009 to $7,280 in 2010 and fall to $5,772 by 2012. In the five years following, labor costs at GM and Chrysler—which declared bankruptcy on April 30, 2009—were predicted to be lower than any Japanese automaker operating nonunion plants in the US, making it profitable for the company to build small cars in the US, rather than in Mexico.
The auto restructuring became a template for the decimation of wages throughout the working class during the eight years of the Obama administration, which oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to top in US history up until today.
Deese’s “success” during the auto restructuring earned him a rapid set of promotions in the Obama White House. He was soon named deputy direct of the National Economic Council and then the deputy director and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. In 2015, he helped negotiate the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act.
After finding limitless funds to bail out Wall Street, the Obama administration would insist there was no money to bail out states and municipalities, which had laid off hundreds of thousands of educators and other public employees during the Great Recession.
When Biden introduced his economic team Tuesday, he claimed that “help was on the way” to the tens of millions of workers, small business owners and unemployed who are facing an unprecedented economic and social catastrophe. But his selection of Deese, Yellen, Adeyemo and others directly from Wall Street make it clear that a Biden administration will be committed to austerity and back-to-work campaign aimed at forcing workers to pay for the corporate bailout no matter how many lives are needlessly lost to the pandemic.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
Joe Biden’s Pick for Economic
Adviser Tied to Delphi
Pension-Slashing Scheme
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
30 Nov 2020316
4:35
Democrat Joe Biden’s pick to be his top economic adviser in the White House served on the Obama-appointed team that helped slash pensions for roughly 20,000 Americans in the auto bailout.
This week, Biden announced that Obama alum Brian Deese, now an executive at the investment management firm BlackRock, will serve as his top economic adviser should he enter the White House.
Deese previously served as a special assistant to Obama for economic policy and played a role in the administration’s bailout of the auto industry, which ultimately led to slashed pensions for 20,000 non-union workers at the Delphi Corporation, an auto parts supplier to General Motors (GM).
In 2009, as part of the Obama-Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded bailout of GM, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) terminated the pension plans of non-unionized Delphi workers. In some cases, workers had their pensions gutted by as much as 75 percent.
A federal report in 2013 detailed that the Delphi workers would likely have their pensions cut by an estimated $440 million. Meanwhile, GM topped off unionized Delphi workers’ pensions at a cost of about $1 billion.
Deese, along with agency heads like Timothy Geithner and top advisers like Ron Bloom, was named in that federal report, having had been involved in multiple conversations about the Delphi pensions:
In July 2009, internal Government emails between the Auto Team and Advisor to the President Brian Deese discussed GM’s need to address issues with Delphi’s “splinter unions.” Auto Team officials did not recall details related to the emails. When Senator Charles Schumer took a position that GM should assume the Delphi salaried retiree pensions, Mr. Deese emailed Mr. Rattner this “may complicate the optics of doing anything for the splinters.” Other emails from Mr. Deese stated, “We will continue to face intense scrutiny on this issue. The politics of terminations is quite intense” and “we need to work on a clear rationale for the outcomes we’re moving toward, as well as an explanation of respective roles.” Mr. Rattner emailed members of the Auto Team that he had spoken with Fritz Henderson about “our logic on the splinters, which he [Henderson] was fine with. [Auto Team Analyst] Sadiq [Malik] should speak to Janice [Uhlig] about the details, particularly how the reallocation of the $417mm would work.” Auto Team member Feldman emailed members of the Auto Team about health care/pension benefit changes for IUE and USW employees, and Mr. Deese responded that the company’s organizing principle was parity between GM salaried and non-UAW hourlies. Mr. Deese referenced a discussion about health care costs and the “credible fairness arguments to augment the hourlies’ recovery based on the pension disparity, but that for all the reasons we discussed that would not be possible. However, I think the logic of that conclusion strongly counsels in favor of bringing the top-up through. Otherwise, we’re moving in the opposite direction from a position that we all agreed was itself on the edge of fairness.”
In October, President Trump signed a memorandum to devise a plan to restore the pensions of the Delphi workers. Biden has not said if he supports the memorandum.
Former Delphi workers told Breitbart News in interviews how the pension-slashing scheme uprooted their livelihoods. One retiree said she lost her home, and her retirement plans to move to the Florida coast have been squashed.
Another retiree said his wife died in the process, as he was forced to find work in order to pay for her medical bills. He had assumed that after 30 years at Delphi, he and his wife would have a good healthcare plan in their retirement. That ended when his pension was cut by about 30 percent.
Delphi, which has since split into Aptiv and Delphi Technologies, announced in 2006 that it would shutter 21 of its 29 plants in the United States — offshoring some 20,000 U.S. jobs to Mexico, China, and other foreign countries.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
YOU WONDERED WHY BIDEN HAS VOTED FOR EVERY WAR FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS???
JOE BIDEN'S GLOBAL WAR MACHINE TO BE RUN BY WALL STREET CRONIES
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/biden-names-national-security-team-of.html
Biden names national security team of right-wing militarists
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.
Hostile Takeover: Wall Street Assumes Command of Joe Biden Transition Team
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-biden-i-need-secretary-of-treasury.html
Wall Street and the biggest U.S. banks, after spending a fortune to unseat President Trump, are getting key spots in Democrat Joe Biden’s transition team that he has devised before the presidential election is certified.
Many of the big banks with links to Biden transition team members were major donors to the former vice president.
JOE BIDEN SAYS MUCK PROGRESSIVES, I MADE MY DIRTY MONEY SERVING WALL STREET!
“Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.”
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-bidens-america-to-be-ruled-by-wall.html
“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.”
“He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.”
“During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.”
KAMALA HARRIS - I CAN CON THEM! I'M A LAWYER, IT'S WHAT I HAVE DONE MY ENTIRE BRIBES SUCKING LEGAL CAREER!
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/09/kamala-harrs-i-can-con-them-im-lawyer.html
All of this is, if we can be permitted to use Biden’s catchphrase, “malarkey.” Harris has already proven herself as a trusted servant of the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class. The Wall Street Journal wrote last week that Wall Street financers had breathed a “sigh of relief” at Biden’s pick of Harris. Industry publication American Banker noted that her steadiest stream of campaign funding has come from financial industry professionals and their most trusted law firms.
There is something fitting in the selection of Harris to co-lead the Democrats’ ticket. The response of the Democrats to the mass multi-racial and multi-ethnic protests against police violence that erupted earlier this year was to divert them into the politics of racial division, using the reactionary and false claim that what was involved was a conflict between “white America” and “black America,” rather than a conflict between the working class and capitalism.
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA
KAMALA HARRIS AND HER GOLDMAN SACHS BANKSTER STEVEN MNUCHIN
A tidy corrupt partnership
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-looting-of-america-kamala-harris.html
She also declined to prosecute OneWest, run by now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from 2009-2015, after her own prosecutors said they discovered over a thousand violations of foreclosure law committed by the bank. (OneWest donated $6,500 to Harris' attorney general campaign in 2011, and Mnuchin himself donated $2,000 to her Senate campaign in 2016.)
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream⎜WHY POVERTY?⎜(Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6niWzomA_So&list=WL&index=19
The close collaboration between the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the multi-billion dollar asset management firm Blackrock in devising the March 2020 rescue operation for Wall Street has been revealed in an article published in the New York Times yesterday.
World’s largest asset management firm was “front and center” of Fed’s Wall Street bailout
The close collaboration between the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the multi-billion dollar asset management firm Blackrock in devising the March 2020 rescue operation for Wall Street has been revealed in an article published in the New York Times yesterday.
According to the article, Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest asset management firm, was “in frequent touch” with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed chair Jerome Powell “in the days before and after many of the Fed’s emergency programs were announced in late March.”
World’s largest asset management firm was
“front and center” of Fed’s Wall Street bailout
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The extent of the collaboration is revealed in new emails obtain by the newspaper together with information that has been previously made public.
In one newly obtained email, Fink refers to planning for the rescue measures as “the project” that he and the Fed were “working on together.”
As the article notes, “America’s top economic officials were in constant contact with a Wall Street executive whose firm stood to benefit financially from the rescue,” showing “how intertwined Blackrock has become with the federal government.”
Blackrock’s close collaboration with the Fed and Treasury came at a crucial point in the development of a crisis in financial markets which began with the onset of the pandemic in March and fears in corporate circles over the response in the working class amid walkouts by workers insisting that safety measures be out in place.
The Fed responded to the initial turbulence in the markets by cutting interest rates. But these measures proved to be insufficient and the potential for a major meltdown in the markets emerged in the week ending March 20 when the $21 trillion US Treasury bond market—the bedrock of the US and global financial system—froze.
Instead of providing a “safe haven” for investors it moved to the centre of the crisis as Treasuries were sold off and no buyers could be found as the sell-off extended to all areas of the financial system.
Faced with a disaster when the markets re-opened, Mnuchin, Powell and Fink were engaged in a series of discussions over the weekend of March 21–22 to devise a rescue package. According to the Times report, Mnuchin spoke to Fink five times over the two days, more than anyone else, other than Powell with whom he spoke nine times.
One of the most significant features of the rescue measures announced on Monday March 23 was the decision by the Fed, for the first time ever, to buy corporate bonds which, as the Times noted, “were becoming nearly impossible to sell as investors sprinted to convert their holdings to cash.”
Blackrock had already closely collaborated with the Fed developing its response to the 2008 financial crisis was thereby set to play a key role in the March intervention.
The article pointed out that, while Blackrock signed a non-disclosure agreement on March 22 restricting officials from sharing information about the upcoming measures, the way in which the rescue package was devised “mattered to Blackrock.”
The decision of the Fed to buy corporate bonds and provide an underpinning for the market was significant and involved two key areas of Blackrock’s operations. One of the ways it makes profit is by managing money for clients charging a preset fee. But assets under management were contracting as investors went for cash and its business model was under threat.
Blackrock is also a major player in the short-term debt markets which were coming “under intense stress” as investors moved their holdings to cash.
Electronic Traded Funds (ETFs), which track market indexes but which trade like a stock, were also severely impacted.
In the words of the Times article: “Corporate bonds were difficult to trade and near impossible to issue in mid-March 2020. Prices on some high-grade corporate ETFs, including one of Blackrock’s, were out of whack relative to the value of the underlying assets.”
As Gregg Gelenzis, associate director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress told the Times: “This was the first time that ETFs came under stress in a really systemic way.”
In the rescue package the Fed committed itself to buying already existing debt as well as new bonds and also decided it would purchase ETFs with the result that the “bond market and fund recovery was nearly instant.”
As the Times article notes, while practically all of Wall Street benefited from the Fed’s intervention, and other financial firms were “consulted” apart from Blackrock “no other company was as front and center.”
The closeness of the relationship between Blackrock and the financial and economic arms of the state, the US Treasury and the Fed, were highlighted in a comment by William Birdthistle, of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and the author of a book on funds, cited in the article.
He said Blackrock was “about as close to a government arm as you can be, without being the Federal Reserve.”
The Fed makes every effort to cover up that relationship in order to try to preserve the fiction that it is not beholden to Wall Street and operates as an independent public authority concerned above all with the state of the economy and the welfare of the population.
The Times article recalled a news conference in July 2020 in which Powell was asked about the discussions with Fink.
“I can’t recall exactly what those conversations were,” he said, “but they would have been about what he is seeing in the market and things like that.
He said there were not “very many” conversations and that the Blackrock chief was “typically trying to make sure that we are getting good service from the company he founded the leads.”
Powell’s claim that, in the midst of the most significant crisis since the meltdown of 2008—with a potential to go even further, as the freeze in the Treasury market showed—he could not recall those conversations simply does not pass muster.
The value of every crisis, it has been rightly said, is that it reveals the real relations that are obscured and covered over in “normal” times.
And that is the case here. The economic arms of the capitalist state are not some independent authority but function every day in the interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy, servicing its needs and interests above all else.
Coal Miners Protest Wall Street’s BlackRock: ‘Invest in the American People!’
28 Jul 2021244
4:08
Coal miners from across Alabama, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania protested outside the Wall Street firms like BlackRock, the biggest shareholder in Warrior Met Coal, on Wednesday in a fight for better union contracts.
For nearly five months, about 1,100 coal miners with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) have been on strike against Warrior Met Coal demanding a better contract.
In 2016, Warrior Met Coal filed for bankruptcy and in order to keep the company afloat, the UMWA agreed to pay cuts, fewer healthcare benefits, and less time off for coal miners with the promise that they would be rewarded once the company climbed its way out of the bankruptcy.
UMWA representatives, though, said upper-level management was paid bonuses even as the coal miners accepted pay cuts. Now, after the agreement saved Warrior Coal Met $1.1 billion over the last five years along with $4.3 billion in profits, the coal miners are asking for a contract that rewards them for helping the company’s finances get back in order.
“You have sacrificed enough, you have made this company profitable,” a union representative said outside of BlackRock, Warrior Met Coal’s biggest shareholder. “And when they sit at the table and they tell you ‘The price is too high,’ I tell them that the cost is too much to bear for your families and your communities and for you not to get the contract that you deserve.”
“If they don’t like us in these streets, then they need to get us a contract, you hear that BlackRock,” another union representative said:
Get us a fair contract and we’ll go back to work in those coal mines where we should be. We road up here on buses to tell you your investment needs to be put to use in these guys’ salaries, in these guys’ benefits, these guys that have earned you profits that you’re making from these coal mines.
The union representative continued:
Every time America gets in a war, they come down to a coalfield to get people to fight those wars. In Vietnam, more West Virginians lost their lives per capita than any other state in the union. America owes a great deal to coal miners. We fought in World War I, World War II, Korea, the Middle East, Vietnam. Whenever America called on us, we answered. It is now time for our government to stand up for coal miners. [Emphasis added]
Actress Susan Sarandon spoke at the protest, slamming BlackRock as a “horrible smear on the vision of the United States.”
“I know what it’s like to be a union person who is struggling for what’s right, for what is owed to you,” Sarandon said:
Striking Alabama Coal Miners Protest at BlackRock Offices in New York City on July 28, 2021. Credit: Rainmaker Photos/MediaPunch /IPX
Striking Alabama Coal Miners Protest at BlackRock Offices in New York City on July 28, 2021. Credit: Rainmaker Photos/MediaPunch /IPX
Striking Alabama Coal Miners Protest at BlackRock Offices in New York City on July 28, 2021. Credit: Rainmaker Photos/MediaPunch /IPX
Will Attig with the Union Veterans Council said Warrior Coal Met “has stolen a billion dollars from each” coal miner, their community, and the “mom and pop shops that we’re supposed to be supporting” over the last five years.
“Right now, we see those politicians and CEOs taking those opportunities from our workers to pull themselves up and they’re cutting the bootstraps off before they can even tie them,” Attig said:
It is time for use to send these CEOs, conglomerates, and millionaires back to where they need to go — they need to come to the table. They need to say ‘We’re willing to fight for our country, we’re willing to fight for the workers in our communities, we’re willing to give this company a fair shake and a fair contract. That’s what they need to do … we’re calling on them to invest in the American people that they talk about.
One UMWA member called on the coal miners to pray, saying “We can’t do this without Jesus … cause it’s all about him. Whether you know it or not, it’s all about him.”
While on strike, the UMWA has been paying coal miners benefits and covering healthcare expenses through the union’s Strike Aid Fund. In the first three months of the strike, the union distributed $4.3 million to coal miners, including $3.1 million in benefits and $700,000 in healthcare expenses.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
How Biden Helped Strip Bankruptcy Protection From Millions Just Before a Recession
During the most recent Democratic presidential primary debate, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren had an awkward and tense exchange over the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The friction between the two of them goes back quite a ways, long before Biden was vice president and Warren became a senator in Massachusetts. The two first butted heads over Biden's support of bankruptcy reform in the late 1990s and early 2000s, back when he represented Delaware in the Senate.
The key detail is the difference between the two kinds of bankruptcy a person can declare: Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Chapter 7 is known as liquidation bankruptcy and is meant for people with limited income. It allows them sell off what assets they can to pay creditors and then discharge most of the rest of their debts relatively quickly. In contrast, Chapter 13, reorganizing bankruptcy, puts the debtor on a payment plan, so a portion their future income is guaranteed to go to paying back their creditors. If you're a creditor, this is the option you would rather someone take when they owe you money, since you're going to get more out of them over the long run.
The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was meant, on paper, to prevent people from abusing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It accomplished that through means testing, making it harder for people to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy versus Chapter 13. If a person's income exceeds a certain threshold, they're ineligible for declaring Chapter 7. The bill also required people to complete a credit counseling course no more than 180 days before they declare bankruptcy. It also limits the kinds of debt a person can discharge through bankruptcy: If they use a credit card to spend too much money on "luxury goods" or withdraw too much in cash advances, that credit line can't be erased. And, gallingly, the bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt. It may very well be the single piece of legislation most responsible for putting the U.S. in the current student debt crisis.
Biden was one of the bill's major Democratic champions, and he fought for its passage from his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He had pushed for two earlier bankruptcy reform bills in 2000 and 2001, both of which failed. But in 2005, BAPCPA made it through, successfully erecting all kinds of roadblocks for Americans struggling with debt, and doing so just before the financial crisis of 2008. Since BAPCPA passed, Chapter 13 filings went from representing just 24 percent of all bankruptcy filings per year to 39 percent in 2017. Melissa Jacoby, a University of North Carolina law professor specializing in bankruptcy, told Politico, "I doubt that the bill reined in the abuses that the bill was premised on, in part because they didn’t necessarily exist in the first place."
Unions, consumer protection groups, and the National Organization for Women all opposed the BAPCPA, but it had heavy support from the credit card industry. Delaware is essentially a domestic tax haven for corporations, and as a result financial institutions like credit card companies hold tremendous power in the state. As political writer Alexander Cockburn once wrote, "The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work."
Biden at the time stressed that he wasn't acting on behalf of the credit card companies, and as Matt Ygelsias writes at Vox, Biden's camp claims now that BAPCPA was an effort to get some concessions out of a Republican bill that would have been a bigger disaster without his intervention. But to his critics, there were red flags. For example, one of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden's son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry's top priorities. Biden's interests were so aligned with MBNA's that in 1999 he was forced to defend himself by declaring, "I am not the senator from MBNA." But even without the shadows of impropriety, critics of Biden's support for bankruptcy reform had plenty of fodder.
One of Biden's biggest antagonists was none other than Elizabeth Warren. Back when she was a mere Harvard law professor specializing in bankruptcy law, Warren questioned the entire rationale of bankruptcy reform, telling The Washington Post in 1998, "Those who want to say the way to solve rising consumer bankruptcy is by changing the law are the same people who would have said during a malaria epidemic that the way to cut down on hospital admissions is to lock the door." In the 2003 book she co-wrote with her daughter, The Two-Income Trap, she took special aim at Biden's efforts to make it harder for Americans to declare bankruptcy and framed it as an issue that disproportionally effects women:
Two years after Warren wrote that, BAPCPA overwhelmingly passed with Biden's support—while bankruptcy reform had been dead on arrival just a few years earlier, 18 Senate Democrats chose to side with all 55 Republicans and the lone independent to vote in favor of the bill. Then president George W. Bush promptly signed it into law, and 14 years later BAPCPA is still making it more costly and cumbersome to declare bankruptcy. With the U.S. likely heading for another recession and credit card debt at a record $870 billion, millions more Americans could end up struggling with mountains of debt than they would otherwise had Biden not fought so hard to strip them of bankruptcy protection.
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