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Related: About this forumHillary and Wall Street: A Love Story
While the GOP wants to focus on Clintons involvement or as they say, lack of involvement over Benghazi, the real thing we should be focusing on with Hillary is her time in the White House in the 1990s.
Full text at Ring of Fire.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Bernie isn't super rich, but he isn't in the pay of the banks either. Go, Bernie.
This is not negative campaigning. It is the truth. Every word of it.
Hillary has made her bed by cozying up to and taking money from bankers, now . . . . .
If you think I am being snarky, I am not. It is important that voters recognize on whose side Hillary will really be on if elected.
Nothing against bankers who do no wrong and care for investors' and depositors' and government money responsibly. But . . . . huge speaking fees from bankers? How can you seriously claim to oppose Citizens United after taking so many of them?
onecaliberal
(35,101 posts)peacebird
(14,195 posts)stonecutter357
(12,759 posts)peacebird
(14,195 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)stonecutter357
(12,759 posts)corkhead
(6,119 posts)I see your and raise you a
daleanime
(17,796 posts)Divernan
(15,480 posts)When Bill Clinton was president, he had his allies in Congress pass the Financial Services Modernization Act, which repealed the Glass Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking. This resulted in a spree of mergers and growth that involved a huge growth in the size of the nations biggest banks and their profits.
It wasnt long after this that longtime Clinton friend and leader of the Treasury Robert Rubin left the administration to go work for Citigroup, where he began earning around $10 million dollars a year. Once he left office, Bill Clinton was no stranger to giving speeches at events hosted and paid for by the big banks, with speaking fees starting around $125,000 an hour.
At the same time that Clinton was raking in cash on the bank-sponsored speaking circuit, Hillary was serving as a US Senator, where she actually voted in favor of George Bushs bankruptcy bill that made it more difficult for struggling citizens to have their debts wiped out through bankruptcy. In other words, the legislation that Clinton favored in spite of being warned about the impacts of the legislation by then-consumer advocate and law professor Elizabeth Warren meant that people filing for bankruptcy would have their credit and basically their lives destroyed, but they still had to pay back the greedy bankers.
After she left the State Department, Hillary hit the speaking circuit like her husband, where she would get paid around $200,000 per speech by the big banks her first two speeches were for Goldman Sachs. These banks also helped finance her Senate campaign, which is why she ignored Warrens advice and voted in favor of the anti-consumer, pro-banker bankruptcy bill.
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2015/05/hillary-and-wall-street-a-love-story/
Over the years Hillary Clinton was in the Senate, the financial industry paid millions of dollars to the couple's shared bank account. In 2004, Bill Clinton was paid a quarter million dollars to speak to Citigroup in Paris; the same year, Goldman Sachs paid him $125,000 for an address in New York City. The following year, Goldman paid him $125,000 for a speech in South Carolina, a quarter million to speak in Paris and $150,000 to speak in Greensboro, Georgia. This is just a small snippet of what the Clintons were paid.
As Secretary Clinton presided over our nation's foreign policy, her husband continued to rake in millions of dollars for the couple from domestic and foreign corporations. In particular, foreign firms in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership paid her husband $1.5 million.
After departing the State Department, Hillary decided to join the lecture circuit herself. Although we don't have any comprehensive financial disclosures for 2013, it is telling that two of her first addresses were for the Goldman Sachs megabank, where she reportedly earned $200,000 per address.
In 2014, the year Clinton was elevated to an all-but-certain presidential candidate, the power couple brought in enormous amounts of money from Wall Street. Bill Clinton gave an address to Bank of America in London that netted $500,000. Recall that this was a bank that netted $45 billion from taxpayers, thanks to a bailout package Hillary supported. That's an 8,999,990 percent return on investment.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/clintons-made-wall-street-richer-and-it-returned-favor
Divernan
(15,480 posts)The Clintons made the financial sector even richer, and in return, the financial sector made the Clintons go from being in debt when they lived in the White House to being in the top .01% of all American income earners. From deregulation of the big banks, to tightening personal bankruptcy laws, to supporting unfair and unfettered bailouts, the Clintons, to steal a phrase from Donna Summer, worked hard for the money.
Although Hillary has been cast in the media as running to the left by altering her previous positions on an array of social issues, her fundraising base is virtually the same as in 2008. In 2008, one of her first financiers was Alan Patricoff, a private equity kingpin who was critical of government regulations put in place after the Enron scandal. This year, Patricof is again a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. While she talks about representing everyday Americans, it is estimated she raised a million dollars from just three fundraisers in New York City, one of them at the home of Steve Rattner, a financier who had to pay $10 million as part of a settlement related to kickbacks (he also campaigns to cut Social Security and Medicare).
In contrast, Bernie Sanders is said to have raised $4 million from a total of 100,000 donors. Sanders opposed the deregulation of Wall Street and the bailouts. He can't call a group of Wall Street friends and raise a million dollars in a weekend from enough people to fill three rooms.
The symbiotic relationship between the Clintons and high finance exists because America is a country where anybody can make it, if they just decide to help make the rich richer. The question is, where does this relationship leave the rest of us?
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/clintons-made-wall-street-richer-and-it-returned-favor
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)the people's message out.
MissDeeds
(7,499 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)Most top GOP fundraisers and donors on Wall Street wont say this kind of thing on the record for fear of heavy blowback from party officials, as well as supporters of Cruz and Rand Paul. Few want to acknowledge publicly that the Democratic front-runner fills them with less dread than some Republican 2016 hopefuls. And, to be sure, none of the Republican-leaning financial executives are so far suggesting theyd openly back her.
But the private consensus is similar to what Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said to POLITICO late last year when he praised both Christie before the bridge scandal and Clinton. I very much was supportive of Hillary Clinton the last go-round, he said. I held fundraisers for her.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)She also pledged to be more appeasing to the republicans than Obama has been. I'm not sure how, exactly, but that's what she said
NorthCarolina
(11,197 posts)it's payback time.