Did you know that Hillary Clinton was the one who shot Osama Bin Laden? Neither did I until the other day.
From 2013 to 2015 Hillary Clinton sucked in nearly $3 million dollars from Wall St banks. In just 12 speeches.
Clinton’s most lucrative year was 2013, right after stepping down as secretary of state. That year, she made $2.3 million for three speeches to Goldman Sachs and individual speeches to Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments, Apollo Management Holdings, UBS, Bank of America, and Golden Tree Asset Managers.
The following year, she picked up $485,000 for a speech to Deutsche Bank and an address to Ameriprise. Last year, she made $150,000 from a lecture before the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
To put these numbers into perspective, compare them to lifetime earnings of the median American worker. In 2011, the Census Bureau estimated that, across all majors, a “bachelor’s degree holder can expect to earn about $2.4 million over his or her work life.” A Pew Research analysis published the same year estimated that a “typical high school graduate” can expect to make just $770,000 over the course of his or her lifetime.
During the time Hillary served as Secretary of State, Bill and Hillary raked in “$17 million in talks to banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, real estate businesses, and other financial firms.”
Yes THEY made $17 million while SHE was Secretary of State. They file taxes jointly, they earn jointly. She was handing out the favors while Bill was collecting for them.
Asked if she would release the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, Clinton laughed and turned away. There’s good reason for that. In 2013 Clinton gave a speech to Goldman Sachs in which she is reported to have said “banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish.”
And now she’s going to reform them? LOL we’ve heard this story before- in 2008, from Barack Obama. He also promised to prosecute those in Wall St who ripped this country apart in the financial crisis. He lied, and there is absolutely no reason to believe her now. She is owned by Wall St, despite her protestations.
A former Goldman Sachs banker knows this as well. He suggests Wall St is pouring money into Hillary’s and Bill’s pockets as insurance:
Banks lent trillions of dollars to home buyers on too loose of terms knowing that they could turn the resulting junk mortgages into AAA securities through the alchemy of CDOs and securitization and thus generate hundreds of billions of profit and leave the resulting mortgage mess to their investing clients.
But the financial crisis is behind us, right? Why would Wall Street shower Hillary Clinton with millions of dollars in speaking fees and tens of millions in campaign contributions?
I think it is an insurance policy. Wall Street wants a friend in the White House to protect the status quo, and if they can’t get a Republican elected, Hillary is the next best thing. I think they need a friend in government because the industry could not survive an investigation into how they actually make their profits.
There are all sorts of excuses for Hillary hoovering up Wall St cash. First Clinton tries to draw you away from her owing Wall St. Hillary would have you believing that Wall St is paying her millions because, well, first because health groups and auto dealers were interested in a complicated world:
“Why do you think one of these big banks paid you over $200,000 for a speech?” Todd asked.
“Look, I gave speeches to a wide array of groups from health care groups to auto dealers and many, many more, and I think what they were interested in, because what we talked about was the world coming off of four years as secretary of state in a complicated world, people were interested in what I saw, what I thought,” Clinton said. “You know, I think Americans who are doing business in every aspect of the economy want to know more about the world. I actually think it’s a good conversation for people to be having.”
“You don’t think they expect anything in return?” Todd asked.
“Absolutely not,” Clinton said.
Unless she was taking millions from Wall St because of 9-11 and like, she’s a girl.
Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, and I’m very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60%. [Cheers and applause.] So I— I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.
But now we learn that Hillary Clinton is taking millions from Wall St because big bankers want to hear about her participation in the Bin Laden raid:
TODD: “As you know, your opponent Senator Sanders has been hitting you on Wall Street contributions and including paid speeches you did for Goldman Sachs among other banks. Let me ask you this — why do you think one of these big banks paid you over $200,000 for a speech.”
CLINTON: “Look, I gave speeches to a wide array of groups from health care groups to auto dealers and many, many more and I think what they were interested in — because what we talked about was the world coming off of four years as secretary of state in a complicated world, people were interested in what I saw, what I thought, they asked questions about matters that were on their minds. A lot of interest in the bin Laden raid, how such a tough decision was made and what I advised the president. You know, I think Americans who are doing business in every aspect of the economy want to know more about the world. I actually think it’s a good conversation for people to be having.”
Make no mistake. Wall St loves Hillary:
According to a wide assortment of bankers and hedge-fund managers I spoke to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid support on Wall Street is not anything that can be dislodged based on a few seemingly off-the-cuff comments in Boston calculated to protect her left flank. (For the record, she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments about the failures of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that corporations don’t create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about Hillary,” says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. “Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a populist.”
A Wall St money manager said:
“The money is already behind her. “I don’t think it’s starting to line up behind her: It’s there for her if she wants it.”
She’s already been collecting and she owes them big. Hillary Clinton is irrevocably inter meshed with Goldman Sachs:
That will change if Clinton decides to run. For starters, as the former U.S. senator from New York, she is well known to many of Goldman’s leaders. They have seen her at numerous Goldman events over the years or at fundraisers in the Hamptons. Blankfein ran into the Clintons in August at a party in the Hamptons at Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s house, and there are the many pictures of Blankfein smiling broadly at her side during September’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York. A few weeks later, they spent time together at a dinner celebrating the Goldman Sachs “10,000 Women Initiative,” a Goldman-funded training and education program for female entrepreneurs.
Bill Clinton was led by the nose by Robert Rubin, the Goldman Sachs alum who convinced Clinton not to regulate derivatives, which was the linchpin of the financial crisis. When it came time for real Wall St. reforms, Clilnton stayed mostly mum:
She’s been fairly cagey about this issue, eager to assuage both sides. Where Obama blamed Wall Street—not inaccurately—for behavior that caused the 2008 financial crisis and championed new Wall Street regulations like the Volcker Rule and the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that really stick in the craw of money men—all while presiding over a veritable profit boon for the financial industry—Clinton said hardly a word on the topic of Wall Street shenanigans.
I will be really interested in seeing whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren sells out.
Above all else, sources close to Warren argue that Rubin and his followers put the interests of financial markets first and downplay the challenges facing the middle class.
In a debate with Sanders, Clinton admitted:
“I know how much money influences the political decision-making.”
Yes, she does. She is living proof of it.
When Bill Clinton admitted in 2010 that he allowed Wall St. to screw up the economy, he also said something about himself and his wife:
Their argument was that derivatives didn’t need transparency because they were “expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of people will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection,” Clinton said. “The flaw in that argument was that first of all, sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions and make it without transparency.”
That could not describe the Clinton’s any more accurately.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.