Waking Up in Hillary Clinton’s America

Written on October 28th, 2016 in politics Comments Off

Published on ZNet (first on TomDispatch), by Nomi Prins, Oct 27, 2016.

As this endless election limps toward its last days, while spiraling into a bizarre duel over vote-rigging accusations, a deep sigh is undoubtedly in order. The entire process has been an emotionally draining, frustration-inducing, rage-inflaming spectacle of repellent form over shallow substance. For many, the third debate evoked fatigue. More worrying, there was again no discussion of how to prevent another financial crisis, an ominous possibility in the next presidency, whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton enters the Oval Office — given that nothing fundamental has been altered when it comes to Wall Street’s practices and predation … //

… Exploring a Two-Faced World: … //
… Glass-Steagall and Bernie Sanders: … //
… Go Regulate Yourselves: … //

… Among the emails sent to John Podesta that were posted by WikiLeaks is an article I wrote for TomDispatch on the Clintons’ relationships with bankers. “She will not point fingers at her friends,” I said in that piece in May 2015. She will not chastise the people who pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop to speak or the ones who have long shared the social circles in which she and her husband move.” I also suggested that she wouldn’t call out any CEO by name. To this day she hasn’t. I said that she would never be an advocate for Glass-Steagall. And she hasn’t been. What was true then will be no less true once she’s in the White House and no longer has to make gestures toward the platform on which Bernie ran and so can once again more openly embrace the bankers’ way of conducting business.

There’s a reason Wall Street has a crush on her and its monarchs like Goldman Sachs CEO and Chairman Lloyd Blankfein pay her such stunning sums to offer anodyne remarks to their employees and others. Blankfein has been coy about an official Clinton endorsement simply because he doesn’t want to rock her campaign boat, but make no mistake, this Wall Street kingpin’s silence is tantamount to an endorsement.

To date, $10 trillion worth of assets sits on the books of the Big Six banks. Since 2008, these same banks have copped to more than $150 billion in fines for pre-crisis behavior that ranged on the spectrum of criminality from manipulating multiple public markets to outright fraud. Hillary Clinton has arguably taken money that would not have been so available if it weren’t for the ill-gotten gains those banks secured. In her usual measured way, albeit with some light admonishments, she has told them what they want to hear: that if they behave — something that in her dictionary of definitions involves little in the way of personalized pain or punishment — so will she.

So let’s recap Hillary’s America, past, present, and future. It’s a land lacking in meaningful structural reform of the financial system, a place where the big banks have been, and will continue to be, coddled by the government. No CEO will be jailed, no matter how large the fines his bank is saddled with or how widespread the crimes it committed. Instead, he’s likely to be invited to the inaugural ball in January. Because its practices have not been adequately controlled or curtailed, the inherent risk that Wall Street poses for Main Street will only grow as bankers continue to use our money to make their bets. (The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act was supposed to help on this score, but has yet to make the big banks any smaller.)

And here’s an obvious corollary to all this: the next bank-instigated economic catastrophe will not be dealt with until it has once again crushed the financial stability of millions of Americans.

The banks have voted with their dollars on all of this in multiple ways. Hillary won’t do anything to upset that applecart. We should have no illusions about what her presidency would mean from a Wall Street vs. Main Street perspective. Certainly, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon doesn’t. He effectively endorsed Hillary before a crowd of financial industry players, saying, “I hope the next president, she reaches across the aisle.”

For Wall Street, of course, that aisle is essentially illusory, since its players operate so easily and effectively on both sides of it. In Hillary’s America, Wall Street will still own Main Street.

(full long text).

(Nomi Prins, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of six books. Her most recent is All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books). She is a former Wall Street executive. Special thanks go to researcher Craig Wilson for his superb work on this piece [Talk Today]).

Links:

Gier statt Reue, kommt die Banken-Krise zurück? 62.51 min, von PolMed2016 am 27. Okt 2015 bei Maybrit Illner;

Zur Polizei: Michael Krons und Ulf Küch – im Dialog, 29.34 min, von phoenix, wird im TV phoenix am 28.10.2016 um 22.30 Uhr gesendet;

The danger of Germany’s current account surpluses, results of the CFM and CEPR Survey, on VOXeu.org, by Wouter den Haan, Martin Ellison, Ethan Ilzetzki, Michael McMahon, Ricardo Reis, Oct 27, 2016;

Quantitative spatial economics, a framework for evaluating regional policy and shocks in the real world, on VOXeu.org, by Stephen Redding, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Oct 27, 2016;

School in Syria’s Idlib province not hit by airstrike, drone photos show – Russian MoD, on RT, Oct 27, 2016: the Russian Defense Ministry says that it dispatched a drone to analyze the site of Wednesday’s alleged bombing of a school in Idlib, Syria. The ministry says that the aircraft spotted no evidence of airstrikes, and accused the White Helmets of faking digital images of the attack;
( see again: We don’t hide it: White Helmets openly admit being funded by Western govts: a chief liaison officer of the White Helmets has acknowledged to RT that his organization, which claims to be “non-governmental” and “neutral,” receives funding and equipment from several western states, including the US, the UK and Germany);

Black turnout key to House fight, on The Hill, by Mike Lillis, Oct 27, 2016;

US: Who Controls Our Schools? How Billionaire-Sponsored Privatization Is Destroying Democracy and Enriching the Charter School Industry, on AlterNet, by Don Hazen, Elizabeth Hines, Steven Rosenfeld, Stan Salett, Oct 26, 2016: a report/ebook on the corporate takeover of K-12 schools;

zu Donald Trump: Emotionen statt Fakten, u.a. mit Oskar Lafontaine & Martin Schulz, 59.42 min, von Minotheras am 26. Sept 2016 bei Anne Will;

My 22-Year-Old Daughter Died Because She Didn’t Have Health Insurance - the Enduring Nightmare of America’s Health Care System, on AlterNet, by Tana Ganeva, Oct 25, 2016: it can happen to anyone;

… and this:

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