Re: [blind-democracy] The Clintons' $93 Million Romance With Wall Street

My income comes from three sources, Social Security, State Retirement
and the Department of Education. The source of my income has no
bearing on the fact that I am very pro social security, strongly in
favor of our state retirement program, and an advocate of the US
Department of Education.
Yes siree, if any of them did anything suspect I would be among the
first to call for an investigation, and if they were found to be
guilty, I'd advocate appropriate penalties, after all appeals were
exhausted.

Carl Jarvis


On 3/15/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > The Clintons' $93 Million Romance With Wall Street
> ________________________________________
> The Clintons' $93 Million Romance With Wall Street
> By Richard Behan [1] / AlterNet [2]
> March 11, 2016
> For 24 years Bill and Hillary Clinton have courted Wall Street money with
> notable success. During that time the New York banks contributed:
> . $11.17 million to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992.
> . $28.37 million for his re-election in 1996.
> . $2.13 million to Hillary Clinton's senatorial campaign in 2002.
> . $6.02 million for her re-election in 2006.
> . $14.61 million to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008.
> . $21.42 million to her 2016 campaign.
> The total here is $83.72 million for the six campaigns,i [3] ii [4]
> disbursed from 11 banks: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, Bank of
> America/Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Barclay's, JP Morgan Chase, CIBC,
> Credit
> Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley.iii [5] iv [6]
> Then there were the speeches. Sixteen days after leaving the White House in
> 2001, Mr. Clinton delivered a speech to Morgan Stanley, for which he was
> paid $125,000. That was the first of many speeches to the New York banks.
> Over the next 14 years, Mr. Clinton's Wall Street speaking engagements
> earned him a total of $5,910,000:v [7]
> . $1,550,000 from Goldman Sachs.
> . $1,690,000 from UBS.
> . $1,075,000 from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
> . $770,000 from Deutsche Bank.
> . $700,000 from Citigroup
> After she resigned as Secretary of State in 2012, Hillary Clinton took to
> the lecture circuit as well. Some of her income has come to light during
> the
> current presidential campaign, like the $675,000 she was paid for three
> speeches to Goldman Sachs. That disclosure, however, belittles her
> financial
> achievement and the scope of her audiences. She also addressed the Bank of
> America/Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Ameriprise,
> Apollo Management Holdings, CIBC, Fidelity Investments, and Golden Tree
> Asset Management, earning another $2,265,000.vi [8]
> No other political couple in modern history has enjoyed so much money
> flowing to them from Wall Street for such a long time-$92.57 million over a
> quarter century.
> During a CNN forum on February 3, Anderson Cooper wondered if Goldman
> Sachs'
> $675,000 might impact her prospective presidential decisions. Defending her
> integrity with undisguised indignation, she described her independence from
> the banks:
> Anybody who knows me, who thinks that they can influence me, name anything
> they've influenced me on. Just name one thing. I'm out here every day
> saying
> I'm going to shut them down, I'm going after them. I'm going to jail them
> if
> they should be jailed. I'm going to break them up.vii [9]
> Her campaign website confirms her fierce determination to oversee the banks
> and hold them strictly to account. "Wall Street must work for Main Street,"
> the website claims, outlining her program for "Wall Street Reform":
> . Veto Republican efforts to repeal or weaken Dodd-Frank
> . Tackle dangerous risks in the big banks and elsewhere in the
> financial system.
> . Hold both individuals and corporations accountable when they break
> the law.viii [10]
> $675,000 might be insufficient to elicit Ms. Clinton's sympathetic ear, but
> a quarter century of accepting tens of millions of dollars is not so easily
> dismissed. It might have some impact on the Clintons' sense of gratitude
> and
> certainly on their social, cultural and political environments.
> Over that period of time, while one or the other held public office almost
> continuously, the couple accumulated a net worth of $125 million.ix [11] x
> [12] Measured by family wealth, this inserted the couple into the top 1% of
> American families by a factor of 16 ($7.88 million is the threshold).
> In New York, their home upon leaving the White House, the Clintons moved
> easily among other multimillionaires, the celebrated, wealthy, and
> accomplished people of the city, such as Lloyd Blankfein, Robert Rubin and
> Henry Paulson, CEOs of the benefactor Wall Street banks. The couple could
> scarcely avoid adopting the mindset and political perspectives of the
> people
> who now constituted their peer group.
> Breaking up banks, jailing the lawless executives, forcing Wall Street to
> work for Main Street: Hillary Clinton's stern proclamations of impartial
> law
> enforcement and strict regulation are difficult to take seriously.
> Wall Street doesn't. One bank executive assured his clients, "We continue
> to
> believe Clinton would be one of the better candidates for financial firms."
> He was quoted in a CNN Money article, "Wall Street Isn't Worried about
> Hillary Clinton's Plan," which stated,
> Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Street's
> excesses. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug.xi [13]
> There is good reason for the banks' sanguine view. Over the 24 years of the
> romance, the Clintons first reoriented their political party, gave it a new
> name, the New Democratic Party, and put it at Wall Street's service. Then
> they engineered financial opportunities for the New York banks of immense
> value, running into the hundreds of billions. And through the years as
> president, senator and secretary of state, the Clintons supported Wall
> Street's interests at every necessary turn.
> In the early 1990s, chairing the Democratic Leadership Council, Bill
> Clinton
> ushered in the centrist, triangulating New Democratic Party, explicitly to
> be more business-friendly and to attract the financial support of corporate
> America. Wall Street supported his 1992 campaign handsomely, and Bill
> Clinton became the first president under the new banner, with Hillary
> Clinton at his side.
> When he appointed Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs as Secretary of the
> Treasury
> Department, Clinton established a precedent. For the next 24 years, every
> administration would find Wall Street executives to serve in the position.
> But the working families of America and the African-American and Hispanic
> communities-the party's historic constituencies-were betrayed and
> abandoned,
> deprived of effective representation in Washington. The Clintons' political
> campaigns over the next decades became monumental hypocrisies, Bill donning
> sunglasses to play his saxophone for Arsenio Hall, Hillary visiting black
> churches to hug the parishioners. They speak warmly to the traditional
> constituencies with carefully scripted political rhetoric, currying their
> favor, depending on them for electoral victory, but effectively obscuring
> the truth of their betrayal.
> On taking office Mr. Clinton announced, "The era of big government is
> over."
> On that cue he co-opted two issues long used by Republicans to mask their
> party's racism: "welfare" and "crime." To address the issues, two laws were
> passed in Clinton's first term that savaged the betrayed constituencies.
> The first was the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
> Reconciliation Act, which fulfilled Clinton's promise to "end welfare as we
> know it." Since the end of the Clinton administration, poverty in the U.S.
> has nearly doubled: "...the number of Americans living in high-poverty
> areas
> rose to 13.8 million in 2013 from 7.2 million in 2000, with African
> Americans and Latinos driving most of the gains."xii [14]
> To show how tough on crime he could be, Clinton next guided the Violent
> Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 through Congress. A flurry of
> prison construction quickly followed, an industry of private for-profit
> prisons took hold and flourished, and a skyrocketing population mostly of
> young black males soon filled them, most frequently charged with nonviolent
> drug offenses.
> Sixteen years later, the effects of the law were described by Michelle
> Alexander in her searing book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
> Age of Colorblindness. Alexander well understands how the Clintons and
> their
> creation, the New Democratic Party, left working families and communities
> of
> color without a political voice. Her latest work is an article, "Black
> Lives
> Shattered," in the Feb. 29, 2016 issue of The Nation, in which she details
> how the two Clinton laws have devastated African-American families and sent
> millions to prison. In the article's caption, she asks, "The Clinton's
> legacy has been the impoverishment of black America-so why are we still
> voting for them?"
> From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted-and
> Hillary Clinton supported-decimated black America. Hillary Clinton now
> apologizes for the laws, suggesting they are no longer quite so
> appropriate.
> But she has not, cannot and will not mention two other laws passed at the
> bidding of President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin. These laws
> enriched the Wall Street banks by hundreds of billions of dollars, but they
> too devastated working families, African Americans and Latinos.
> The first was the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, repealing
> the Glass-Steagall legislation of 1933. Now it was legal once more for
> financial institutions to mix commercial and investment banking. Goldman
> Sachs et al. could now use depositor's funds, insured by the Federal
> Deposit
> Insurance Corporation, to buy up "subprime" mortgages, the high-interest
> debt obligations of typically low-income, black and Latino families.
> The next law was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Now Goldman Sachs
> et al. could transform packages of those subprime mortgages into
> complicated
> derivatives called mortgage-backed-obligations, have them fraudulently
> rated
> as AAA investments, and sell them around the world, without limit,
> restriction or regulation, at immense profit.
> For eight years the bubble inflated, and then it collapsed in the last year
> of George Bush's administration. Real estate values plummeted. The stock
> market was hammered. So was the U.S. economy. And so tragically were many
> low-income, African American and Latino families. $13 trillion in household
> wealth vaporized. Nine million workers lost their jobs. Five million
> families were evicted from their homes.xiii [15]
> This is what the Clinton administration, and the New Democratic Party, had
> wrought. The banks were caught with hundreds of billions in mortgage-backed
> derivatives still in the pipeline, the market values dropping like stones.
> Wall Street's prospective losses were horrific; bankruptcies loomed. But
> George Bush's Treasury Secretary was the obligatory Wall Streeter: Hank
> Paulson, recently CEO of Goldman Sachs. In a heartbeat, Paulson rammed
> through Congress the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It was
> known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and it handed Paulson $700
> billion of taxpayers' money to buy the near-worthless securities from the
> banks.
> Hillary Clinton, now the U.S. senator from New York, voted for the bill,
> telling a New York radio station the next day, "I think the banks of New
> York...are probably the biggest winners in this."xiv [16]
> Paulson started buying, typically paying the banks half again the market
> value of the "troubled assets."xv [17] But a presidential campaign was
> underway, and soon he would have to stop.
> Barack Obama, overcoming Hillary Clinton in the primaries, was elected as
> the second president from the New Democratic Party. Obama's campaign
> contributions from Wall Street:
> . Goldman Sachs: $1,034,615
> . JP Morgan Chase: $847,855
> . Citigroup: $755,057
> . Morgan Stanley: $528,182
> The total is $3.7 million.xvi [18] (Hillary Clinton's campaign, apparently
> thought more likely to succeed, was supported with $14.6 million from the
> banks.xvii [19])
> President Obama's choice of Wall Street bankers to head his Treasury
> Department was Timothy Geithner, lately the president of the Federal
> Reserve
> Bank of New York. Geithner wasted no time in resuming the troubled asset
> purchases, and his execution of the program was no less profitable for the
> banks than Paulson's.xviii [20]
> Wall Street's grip on the New Democratic Party, however, and its influence
> in the Obama administration, appeared in the Department of Justice as well.
> Eric Holder joined the administration from the law firm of Covington
> Burling, which represents in Washington most of the Wall Street banks.
> Charged with prosecuting their criminal behavior, Holder found the banks
> "too big to fail." Instead of criminal indictments and lawsuits, Holder
> negotiated with each of the banks a financial penalty to be paid from
> corporate funds. No corporate executives were jailed, no personal fines
> levied, no records of criminal conduct filed, no salaries reduced, no
> bonuses denied.
> Today the Wall Street banks are larger and more powerful than ever, and
> Holder has returned to Covington Burling. President Obama-of the New
> Democratic Party-has provided no similar relief to the working families and
> communities of color. Their struggles continue, the crime and welfare laws
> have not been repealed, and the title of a recent study tells the tragic
> truth: "During Obama's Presidency, Wealth Inequality has Increased and
> Poverty Levels are Higher."xix [21]
> i [22]"Two Clintons. 41 years. $3 Billion," Washington Post, November 19,
> 2015
> ii [23]"Occupy Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Speeches," Huffpost Politics,
> February 28, 2016
> iii [24]"Hillary Clinton. Top 20 Contributors, 1999-2002,"
> http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php/type==C&cid [25].
> iv [26]"Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush Still Favorites of Wall Street Banks,"
> Huffpost Politics, October 22, 2015
> v [27]"$153 Million in Bill and Hillary Speaking Fees, Documented," Robert
> Yoon, CNN, Updated February 6, 2016.
> vi [28]"Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks That Most of
> Us Earn in a Lifetime,"
> https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-spee
> ches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/ [29]
> vii [30]"Clinton Defends Wall Street Speeches at CNN Town Hall," Time,
> February 4, 2016
> viii [31]From Hillary Clinton's campaign website, under "Wall Street
> Reform," http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street [32]
> ix [33]"Hillary Clinton net worth: $45 Million,"
> http://www.celebritynetworth.com/ [34]
> x [35]"Bill Clinton net worth: $80 Million,"
> http://www.celebritynetworth.com/ [34]
> xi [36]"Wall Street Isn't Worried about Hillary Clinton's Plan," CNN
> Money,
> October 8, 2015.
> xii [37]"Poverty Has Nearly Doubled Since 2000 in America," International
> Business Times, August 9, 2015
> xiii [38]"Wall Street Reform: Wall Street must work for Main Street,"
> http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street [32]
> xiv [39]"Hillary Clinton's Tough Talk on Wall Street,"
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/13/hillary-clinton [40]..
> xv [41]"Troubled Asset Relief Program," Wikipedia
> xvi [42]"Barack Obama. Top Contributors, 2008 Cycle,"
> http;//www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php/cid= [43]...
> xvii [44]Washington Post, "Two Clintons. 41 Years. $3 Billion"
> xviii [45]See Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main
> Street While Rescuing Wall Street, by Neil Barofsky, passim.
> xix
> [46]http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/during-obamas-presidency-wealth-i
> nequality-has-increased-and-poverty-levels-are-higher/ [47]
>
> Richard Behan lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He can be reached at
> rwbehan(at)comcast.net [48].
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
>
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [49]
> [50]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clintons-93-million-romance-wall-stree
> t
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/richard-behan
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote1sym
> [4] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote2sym
> [5] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote3sym
> [6] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote4sym
> [7] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote5sym
> [8] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote6sym
> [9] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote7sym
> [10] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote8sym
> [11] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote9sym
> [12]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote10sym
> [13]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote11sym
> [14]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote12sym
> [15]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote13sym
> [16]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote14sym
> [17]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote15sym
> [18]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote16sym
> [19]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote17sym
> [20]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote18sym
> [21]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote19sym
> [22] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote1anc
> [23] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote2anc
> [24] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote3anc
> [25] http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php/type==C&amp;cid
> [26] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote4anc
> [27] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote5anc
> [28] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote6anc
> [29]
> https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-spee
> ches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/
> [30] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote7anc
> [31] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote8anc
> [32] http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street
> [33] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote9anc
> [34] http://www.celebritynetworth.com/
> [35]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote10anc
> [36]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote11anc
> [37]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote12anc
> [38]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote13anc
> [39]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote14anc
> [40] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/13/hillary-clinton
> [41]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote15anc
> [42]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote16anc
> [43] http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php/cid=
> [44]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote17anc
> [45]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote18anc
> [46]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote19anc
> [47]
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/during-obamas-presidency-wealth-inequ
> ality-has-increased-and-poverty-levels-are-higher/
> [48] http://comcast.net/
> [49] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Clintons&#039; $93
> Million Romance With Wall Street
> [50] http://www.alternet.org/
> [51] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > The Clintons' $93 Million Romance With Wall Street
>
> The Clintons' $93 Million Romance With Wall Street
> By Richard Behan [1] / AlterNet [2]
> March 11, 2016
> For 24 years Bill and Hillary Clinton have courted Wall Street money with
> notable success. During that time the New York banks contributed:
> . $11.17 million to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992.
> . $28.37 million for his re-election in 1996.
> . $2.13 million to Hillary Clinton's senatorial campaign in 2002.
> . $6.02 million for her re-election in 2006.
> . $14.61 million to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008.
> . $21.42 million to her 2016 campaign.
> The total here is $83.72 million for the six campaigns,i [3] ii [4]
> disbursed from 11 banks: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, Bank of
> America/Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Barclay's, JP Morgan Chase, CIBC,
> Credit
> Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley.iii [5] iv [6]
> Then there were the speeches. Sixteen days after leaving the White House in
> 2001, Mr. Clinton delivered a speech to Morgan Stanley, for which he was
> paid $125,000. That was the first of many speeches to the New York banks.
> Over the next 14 years, Mr. Clinton's Wall Street speaking engagements
> earned him a total of $5,910,000:v [7]
> . $1,550,000 from Goldman Sachs.
> . $1,690,000 from UBS.
> . $1,075,000 from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
> . $770,000 from Deutsche Bank.
> . $700,000 from Citigroup
> After she resigned as Secretary of State in 2012, Hillary Clinton took to
> the lecture circuit as well. Some of her income has come to light during
> the
> current presidential campaign, like the $675,000 she was paid for three
> speeches to Goldman Sachs. That disclosure, however, belittles her
> financial
> achievement and the scope of her audiences. She also addressed the Bank of
> America/Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Ameriprise,
> Apollo Management Holdings, CIBC, Fidelity Investments, and Golden Tree
> Asset Management, earning another $2,265,000.vi [8]
> No other political couple in modern history has enjoyed so much money
> flowing to them from Wall Street for such a long time-$92.57 million over a
> quarter century.
> During a CNN forum on February 3, Anderson Cooper wondered if Goldman
> Sachs'
> $675,000 might impact her prospective presidential decisions. Defending her
> integrity with undisguised indignation, she described her independence from
> the banks:
> Anybody who knows me, who thinks that they can influence me, name anything
> they've influenced me on. Just name one thing. I'm out here every day
> saying
> I'm going to shut them down, I'm going after them. I'm going to jail them
> if
> they should be jailed. I'm going to break them up.vii [9]
> Her campaign website confirms her fierce determination to oversee the banks
> and hold them strictly to account. "Wall Street must work for Main Street,"
> the website claims, outlining her program for "Wall Street Reform":
> . Veto Republican efforts to repeal or weaken Dodd-Frank
> . Tackle dangerous risks in the big banks and elsewhere in the
> financial system.
> . Hold both individuals and corporations accountable when they break
> the law.viii [10]
> $675,000 might be insufficient to elicit Ms. Clinton's sympathetic ear, but
> a quarter century of accepting tens of millions of dollars is not so easily
> dismissed. It might have some impact on the Clintons' sense of gratitude
> and
> certainly on their social, cultural and political environments.
> Over that period of time, while one or the other held public office almost
> continuously, the couple accumulated a net worth of $125 million.ix [11] x
> [12] Measured by family wealth, this inserted the couple into the top 1% of
> American families by a factor of 16 ($7.88 million is the threshold).
> In New York, their home upon leaving the White House, the Clintons moved
> easily among other multimillionaires, the celebrated, wealthy, and
> accomplished people of the city, such as Lloyd Blankfein, Robert Rubin and
> Henry Paulson, CEOs of the benefactor Wall Street banks. The couple could
> scarcely avoid adopting the mindset and political perspectives of the
> people
> who now constituted their peer group.
> Breaking up banks, jailing the lawless executives, forcing Wall Street to
> work for Main Street: Hillary Clinton's stern proclamations of impartial
> law
> enforcement and strict regulation are difficult to take seriously.
> Wall Street doesn't. One bank executive assured his clients, "We continue
> to
> believe Clinton would be one of the better candidates for financial firms."
> He was quoted in a CNN Money article, "Wall Street Isn't Worried about
> Hillary Clinton's Plan," which stated,
> Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Street's
> excesses. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug.xi [13]
> There is good reason for the banks' sanguine view. Over the 24 years of the
> romance, the Clintons first reoriented their political party, gave it a new
> name, the New Democratic Party, and put it at Wall Street's service. Then
> they engineered financial opportunities for the New York banks of immense
> value, running into the hundreds of billions. And through the years as
> president, senator and secretary of state, the Clintons supported Wall
> Street's interests at every necessary turn.
> In the early 1990s, chairing the Democratic Leadership Council, Bill
> Clinton
> ushered in the centrist, triangulating New Democratic Party, explicitly to
> be more business-friendly and to attract the financial support of corporate
> America. Wall Street supported his 1992 campaign handsomely, and Bill
> Clinton became the first president under the new banner, with Hillary
> Clinton at his side.
> When he appointed Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs as Secretary of the
> Treasury
> Department, Clinton established a precedent. For the next 24 years, every
> administration would find Wall Street executives to serve in the position.
> But the working families of America and the African-American and Hispanic
> communities-the party's historic constituencies-were betrayed and
> abandoned,
> deprived of effective representation in Washington. The Clintons' political
> campaigns over the next decades became monumental hypocrisies, Bill donning
> sunglasses to play his saxophone for Arsenio Hall, Hillary visiting black
> churches to hug the parishioners. They speak warmly to the traditional
> constituencies with carefully scripted political rhetoric, currying their
> favor, depending on them for electoral victory, but effectively obscuring
> the truth of their betrayal.
> On taking office Mr. Clinton announced, "The era of big government is
> over."
> On that cue he co-opted two issues long used by Republicans to mask their
> party's racism: "welfare" and "crime." To address the issues, two laws were
> passed in Clinton's first term that savaged the betrayed constituencies.
> The first was the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
> Reconciliation Act, which fulfilled Clinton's promise to "end welfare as we
> know it." Since the end of the Clinton administration, poverty in the U.S.
> has nearly doubled: "...the number of Americans living in high-poverty
> areas
> rose to 13.8 million in 2013 from 7.2 million in 2000, with African
> Americans and Latinos driving most of the gains."xii [14]
> To show how tough on crime he could be, Clinton next guided the Violent
> Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 through Congress. A flurry of
> prison construction quickly followed, an industry of private for-profit
> prisons took hold and flourished, and a skyrocketing population mostly of
> young black males soon filled them, most frequently charged with nonviolent
> drug offenses.
> Sixteen years later, the effects of the law were described by Michelle
> Alexander in her searing book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
> Age of Colorblindness. Alexander well understands how the Clintons and
> their
> creation, the New Democratic Party, left working families and communities
> of
> color without a political voice. Her latest work is an article, "Black
> Lives
> Shattered," in the Feb. 29, 2016 issue of The Nation, in which she details
> how the two Clinton laws have devastated African-American families and sent
> millions to prison. In the article's caption, she asks, "The Clinton's
> legacy has been the impoverishment of black America-so why are we still
> voting for them?"
> From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted-and
> Hillary Clinton supported-decimated black America. Hillary Clinton now
> apologizes for the laws, suggesting they are no longer quite so
> appropriate.
> But she has not, cannot and will not mention two other laws passed at the
> bidding of President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin. These laws
> enriched the Wall Street banks by hundreds of billions of dollars, but they
> too devastated working families, African Americans and Latinos.
> The first was the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, repealing
> the Glass-Steagall legislation of 1933. Now it was legal once more for
> financial institutions to mix commercial and investment banking. Goldman
> Sachs et al. could now use depositor's funds, insured by the Federal
> Deposit
> Insurance Corporation, to buy up "subprime" mortgages, the high-interest
> debt obligations of typically low-income, black and Latino families.
> The next law was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Now Goldman Sachs
> et al. could transform packages of those subprime mortgages into
> complicated
> derivatives called mortgage-backed-obligations, have them fraudulently
> rated
> as AAA investments, and sell them around the world, without limit,
> restriction or regulation, at immense profit.
> For eight years the bubble inflated, and then it collapsed in the last year
> of George Bush's administration. Real estate values plummeted. The stock
> market was hammered. So was the U.S. economy. And so tragically were many
> low-income, African American and Latino families. $13 trillion in household
> wealth vaporized. Nine million workers lost their jobs. Five million
> families were evicted from their homes.xiii [15]
> This is what the Clinton administration, and the New Democratic Party, had
> wrought. The banks were caught with hundreds of billions in mortgage-backed
> derivatives still in the pipeline, the market values dropping like stones.
> Wall Street's prospective losses were horrific; bankruptcies loomed. But
> George Bush's Treasury Secretary was the obligatory Wall Streeter: Hank
> Paulson, recently CEO of Goldman Sachs. In a heartbeat, Paulson rammed
> through Congress the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It was
> known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and it handed Paulson $700
> billion of taxpayers' money to buy the near-worthless securities from the
> banks.
> Hillary Clinton, now the U.S. senator from New York, voted for the bill,
> telling a New York radio station the next day, "I think the banks of New
> York...are probably the biggest winners in this."xiv [16]
> Paulson started buying, typically paying the banks half again the market
> value of the "troubled assets."xv [17] But a presidential campaign was
> underway, and soon he would have to stop.
> Barack Obama, overcoming Hillary Clinton in the primaries, was elected as
> the second president from the New Democratic Party. Obama's campaign
> contributions from Wall Street:
> . Goldman Sachs: $1,034,615
> . JP Morgan Chase: $847,855
> . Citigroup: $755,057
> . Morgan Stanley: $528,182
> The total is $3.7 million.xvi [18] (Hillary Clinton's campaign, apparently
> thought more likely to succeed, was supported with $14.6 million from the
> banks.xvii [19])
> President Obama's choice of Wall Street bankers to head his Treasury
> Department was Timothy Geithner, lately the president of the Federal
> Reserve
> Bank of New York. Geithner wasted no time in resuming the troubled asset
> purchases, and his execution of the program was no less profitable for the
> banks than Paulson's.xviii [20]
> Wall Street's grip on the New Democratic Party, however, and its influence
> in the Obama administration, appeared in the Department of Justice as well.
> Eric Holder joined the administration from the law firm of Covington
> Burling, which represents in Washington most of the Wall Street banks.
> Charged with prosecuting their criminal behavior, Holder found the banks
> "too big to fail." Instead of criminal indictments and lawsuits, Holder
> negotiated with each of the banks a financial penalty to be paid from
> corporate funds. No corporate executives were jailed, no personal fines
> levied, no records of criminal conduct filed, no salaries reduced, no
> bonuses denied.
> Today the Wall Street banks are larger and more powerful than ever, and
> Holder has returned to Covington Burling. President Obama-of the New
> Democratic Party-has provided no similar relief to the working families and
> communities of color. Their struggles continue, the crime and welfare laws
> have not been repealed, and the title of a recent study tells the tragic
> truth: "During Obama's Presidency, Wealth Inequality has Increased and
> Poverty Levels are Higher."xix [21]
> i [22]"Two Clintons. 41 years. $3 Billion," Washington Post, November 19,
> 2015
> ii [23]"Occupy Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Speeches," Huffpost Politics,
> February 28, 2016
> iii [24]"Hillary Clinton. Top 20 Contributors, 1999-2002,"
> http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php/type==C&cid [25].
> iv [26]"Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush Still Favorites of Wall Street Banks,"
> Huffpost Politics, October 22, 2015
> v [27]"$153 Million in Bill and Hillary Speaking Fees, Documented," Robert
> Yoon, CNN, Updated February 6, 2016.
> vi [28]"Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks That Most of
> Us Earn in a Lifetime,"
> https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-spee
> ches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/ [29]
> vii [30]"Clinton Defends Wall Street Speeches at CNN Town Hall," Time,
> February 4, 2016
> viii [31]From Hillary Clinton's campaign website, under "Wall Street
> Reform," http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street [32]
> ix [33]"Hillary Clinton net worth: $45 Million,"
> http://www.celebritynetworth.com/ [34]
> x [35]"Bill Clinton net worth: $80 Million,"
> http://www.celebritynetworth.com/ [34]
> xi [36]"Wall Street Isn't Worried about Hillary Clinton's Plan," CNN Money,
> October 8, 2015.
> xii [37]"Poverty Has Nearly Doubled Since 2000 in America," International
> Business Times, August 9, 2015
> xiii [38]"Wall Street Reform: Wall Street must work for Main Street,"
> http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street [32]
> xiv [39]"Hillary Clinton's Tough Talk on Wall Street,"
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/13/hillary-clinton [40]..
> xv [41]"Troubled Asset Relief Program," Wikipedia
> xvi [42]"Barack Obama. Top Contributors, 2008 Cycle,"
> http;//www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php/cid= [43]...
> xvii [44]Washington Post, "Two Clintons. 41 Years. $3 Billion"
> xviii [45]See Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main
> Street While Rescuing Wall Street, by Neil Barofsky, passim.
> xix
> [46]http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/during-obamas-presidency-wealth-i
> nequality-has-increased-and-poverty-levels-are-higher/ [47]
> Richard Behan lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He can be reached at
> rwbehan(at)comcast.net [48].
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [49]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[50]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clintons-93-million-romance-wall-stree
> t
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/richard-behan
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote1sym
> [4] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote2sym
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> [24] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote3anc
> [25] http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php/type==C&amp;cid
> [26] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote4anc
> [27] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote5anc
> [28] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote6anc
> [29]
> https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-spee
> ches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/
> [30] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote7anc
> [31] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote8anc
> [32] http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/wall-street
> [33] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote9anc
> [34] http://www.celebritynetworth.com/
> [35]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote10anc
> [36]
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/4/#-2077643131_1335065318_sdendnote11anc
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> [40] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/13/hillary-clinton
> [41]
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> [42]
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> [47]
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/during-obamas-presidency-wealth-inequ
> ality-has-increased-and-poverty-levels-are-higher/
> [48] http://comcast.net/
> [49] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Clintons&#039; $93
> Million Romance With Wall Street
> [50] http://www.alternet.org/
> [51] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
>