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In reply to the discussion: Goldman Sachs CEO Key Investor in Hillary's Son-In-Law's Hedge Fund [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)69. It has everything to do with Hillary and Bill being millionaires.
Friends of Bill and Hillary are billionaires.
Evidence of an American Plutocracy: The Larry Summers Story
Trickle Down, now in its 34th year...
"You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice." -- President Reagan, 1/31/84, on Good Morning America, defending his administration against charges of callousness.
You want more Trickle-Down Voodoo Reaganomics?
Then Friend Larry Summers.
Evidence of an American Plutocracy: The Larry Summers Story
By Matthew Skomarovsky
LilSis.org
Jan 10, 2011 at 19:31 EST
EXCERPT...
Another new business model Rubin and Summers made possible was Enron. Rubin had known Enron well through Goldman Sachss financing of the company, and recused himself from matters relating to Enron in his first year on the Clinton team. He and Summers went on to craft policies at Treasury that were essential to Enrons lucrative energy trading business, and they were in touch with Enron executives and lobbyists all the while. Enron meanwhile won $2.4 billion in foreign development deals from Clintons Export-Import Bank, then run by Kenneth Brody, a former protege of Rubins at Goldman Sachs.
Soon after Rubin joined Citigroup, its investment banking division picked up Enron as a client, and Citigroup went on to become Enrons largest creditor, loaning almost $1 billion to the company. As revelations of massive accounting fraud and market manipulation emerged over the next years and threatened to bring down the energy company, Rubin and Summers intervened. While Enrons rigged electricity prices in California were causing unprecedented blackouts, Summers urged Governor Gray Davis to avoid criticizing Enron and recommended further deregulatory measures. Rubin was an official advisor to Gov. Davis on energy market issues at the time, while Citigroup was heavily invested in Enrons fraudulent California business, and he too likely put pressure on the Governor to lay off Enron. Rubin also pulled strings at Bushs Treasury Department in late 2001, calling a former employee to see if Treasury could ask the major rating agencies not to downgrade Enron, and Rubin also lobbied the rating agencies directly. (In all likelihood he made similar attempts in behalf of Citigroup during the recent financial crisis.) Their efforts ultimately failed, Enron went bust, thousands of jobs and pensions were destroyed, and its top executives went to jail. Its hard to believe, but there was some white-collar justice back then.
SNIP...
Summers also starting showing up around the Hamilton Project, which Rubin had just founded with hedge fund manager Roger Altman. Altman was another Clinton official who had come from Wall Street, following billionaire Peter Peterson from Lehman Brothers to Blackstone Group, and he left Washington to found a major hedge fund in 1996. The Hamilton Project is housed in the Brookings Institution, a prestigious corporate-funded policy discussion center that serves as a sort of staging ground for Democratic elites in transition between government, academic, and business positions. The Hamilton Project would go on to host, more specifically, past and future Democratic Party officials friendly to the financial industry, and to produce a stream of similarly minded policy papers. Then-Senator Obama was the featured political speaker at Hamiltons inaugural event in April 2006.
Summers joined major banking and political elites on Hamiltons Advisory Council and appeared at many Hamilton events. During a discussion of the financial crisis in 2008, Summers was asked about his role in repealing Glass-Stegall, the law that forbade commercial and investment banking mergers like Citigroup. I think it was the right thing to do, he responded, noting that the repeal of Glass-Stegall made possible a wave of similar mergers during the recent financial crisis, such as Bank of Americas takeover of Merrill Lynch. He was arguing, in effect, that financial deregulation did not cause the financial crisis, it actually solved it. We need a regulatory system as modern as the markets, said Summers quoting Rubin, who was in the room. We need a hen house as modern as the food chain, said the fox.
CONTINUED...
http://blog.littlesis.org/2011/01/10/evidence-of-an-ame... /
These are the richest times in history, with seven-eighths of all wealth ever, per David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's own Budget Director. Until we see economic fairness restored through fiscal and other government policies, laws and regulations; the rich will keep getting richer, the middle class will continue dissolving into the new poor, and the poor will become the super-majority. Of course, as money pays for lobbyists who write the laws and speech and cash are the same thing when it comes to elections, the majority perspective on policy will be silent as the grave.
Can you imagine that, stevenleser?
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Yeah, and how many degrees of separation can you claim from anyone engaged in wrongdoing?
stevenleser
Feb 2015
#55
Who's ''us?'' And how many degrees of separation are needed to gain or lose one's integrity?
Octafish
Feb 2015
#59
It has everything to do with the issue, because tagging Hillary with this is stupid
stevenleser
Feb 2015
#66
No, it doesn't, any more than the conduct of your third cousin twice removed
stevenleser
Feb 2015
#71
Oh. If you're asking me how many degrees of separation from me to the banksters, a lot.
Octafish
Feb 2015
#63
Look up the concept of six degrees of separation. It will explain everything. Nt
stevenleser
Feb 2015
#72
NO GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MOONLIGHT FOR PRIVATE COMPANIES.
JDPriestly
Feb 2015
#89
I heard his cousin was also best friends in elementary school with Chelsea's neighbor's uncle
alcibiades_mystery
Feb 2015
#3
These connections between bankers and politicians have been well documented for quite some time
btrflykng9
Feb 2015
#32
Chelsea Clinton's Husband Suffers Massive Hedge Fund Loss On Greek Investment
Ichingcarpenter
Feb 2015
#4
So you are outraged that Chelsea Clinton married someone without getting your approval first? nt
geek tragedy
Feb 2015
#8
Yeah no big deal that the undeclared Democratic candidate is in bed with the very people that
ChosenUnWisely
Feb 2015
#9
Your friend is trying--he/she is trying to bowl you over with his/her "vehicular!"
MADem
Feb 2015
#27
agree that mm's pretense of not knowing the meaning of 'in bed with' was manipulative ==
ND-Dem
Feb 2015
#93
What specific personal relations and relevant careers of in-laws should be used to disqualify
LanternWaste
Feb 2015
#12
And a similar question, how many degrees of separation do you need from anyone accused of wrongdoing
stevenleser
Feb 2015
#54
Is it safe to assume you'd react the same if this story was about a republican candidate's family?
whatchamacallit
Feb 2015
#44
Yes. Whom Chelsea Clinton marries is none of my--or your--fucking business.
geek tragedy
Feb 2015
#45
Normally, I'm willing to give some of these stories the benefit of the doubt when there's a lot of
hughee99
Feb 2015
#10
Yeah, this is silly. Son in Law? Is that to what the anti-Hillary crowd has reduced themselves?
stevenleser
Feb 2015
#43
Nothing to see here. It's not like all of us other progressives don't have Goldman investing in us.
Scuba
Feb 2015
#15
+100. and we all have friends and relatives who are crooks, too. (just not as successful at
ND-Dem
Feb 2015
#95
So he pays himself $2M/yr to lose his investor's money, while similar hedge funds made
Faryn Balyncd
Feb 2015
#17
If Hillary is like my mother-in-law, this would be bad for the Goldman Sachs CEO
FLPanhandle
Feb 2015
#20
Well, you would certainly know about indefensible messengers, octafish of DU...
SidDithers
Feb 2015
#105