Trump to win?

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

For those who think most politicians are bought and owned by special interests (and I tend to think this way myself), why do presidents act basically the same way in their second term as they do in their first? You'd think that in their second term they'd be free to do anything they like (within the confines of what congress allows of course).

The payoff comes after the waveoff.

[GRG55]

Re: Trump to win?

The payoff comes after the waveoff.

Bingo. Didn't Clinton (Bill, not Hillary) make a LOT more money after he was done being President than he ever did before?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Trump to win?

The payoff comes after the waveoff.

Hey, those monies are "speaking fees"

The Clinton's came in to the presidency with about a million bucks net worth, not so much for a governor and a prominent attorney.
Today their combined net worth is about $110 million.
Leaving office as an elected US official does seem to include a pretty good payoff.
Er, I mean, pretty good speaking fees.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Trump to win?

Bingo. Didn't Clinton (Bill, not Hillary) make a LOT more money after he was done being President than he ever did before?

Yeah. Somewhere north of $100M, mostly from "speaking fees" if I'm remembering right. You ever felt the need to pay someone a quarter million dollars to yap for an hour? Bill did 53 of those in 2014. $250,000/hr fee isn't all. There's all sorts of riders about accommodations, security, and private jets to get there, etc. etc.

Especially for the corporate campuses that do it, it sometimes feels a lot like little more than thin veneer and a piece of paper that separates the American system of political bribery from the third-world one.

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

They all cash in:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/27/politi...-be-president/

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...cuit-windfall/

Even Al Gore got rich:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-maki...gore-got-rich/

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Trump to win?

Yeah. Somewhere north of $100M, mostly from "speaking fees" if I'm remembering right. You ever felt the need to pay someone a quarter million dollars to yap for an hour? Bill did 53 of those in 2014. $250,000/hr fee isn't all. There's all sorts of riders about accommodations, security, and private jets to get there, etc. etc.

Especially for the corporate campuses that do it, it sometimes feels a lot like little more than thin veneer and a piece of paper that separates the American system of political bribery from the third-world one.

No doubt.

Also, does anyone ever look at university donation and department chair endowment money, where it comes from, who it sets up for post government comfortable employment/retirement and what connects the dots?

It's like universities being used no different than a carwash to launder drug money.

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

Bingo. Didn't Clinton (Bill, not Hillary) make a LOT more money after he was done being President than he ever did before?

yeah, according to hillary when they left the white house they "were dirt poor" and "dead broke."

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump to win?

The only book I ever read by a president was Carter's An Hour Before Daylight (Memories of a Rural Boyhood). I highly recommend it.

[bpr]

Re: Trump to win?

... There's all sorts of riders about accommodations, security, and private jets to get there, etc. etc...

Security is handled by the taxpayers, via lifetime Secret Service detail.

[lektrode]

Re: Trump to win?

Yeah. Somewhere north of $100M, mostly from "speaking fees" if I'm remembering right. You ever felt the need to pay someone a quarter million dollars to yap for an hour? Bill did 53 of those in 2014. $250,000/hr fee isn't all. There's all sorts of riders about accommodations, security, and private jets to get there, etc. etc.

Especially for the corporate campuses that do it, it sometimes feels a lot like little more than thin veneer and a piece of paper that separates the American system of political bribery from the third-world one.

and THEN we have their cheerleaders in the lamerstream media who seem to think this is all somehow OK ?

i mean - just imagine for a sec if it was a Republican who pulled the 'foundation' scam - while his wife was sec of state?

No doubt.

Also, does anyone ever look at university donation and department chair endowment money, where it comes from, who it sets up for post government comfortable employment/retirement and what connects the dots?

It's like universities being used no different than a carwash to launder drug money.

why methinks we ought to bring back another 'feature' of the great depression - to 'celebrate' its '2nd coming' -
seeing as the Dems all seem to be celebrating 'the great recovery' an all

howzabout 90% TAXRATES ON ANY INCOME THE POLITICAL CLASS GENERATES AFTER THEY LEAVE OFFICE (esp to become lobbyists)

since any income from any sources they 'earned' that wasnt part of their earnings BEFORE they went into politix
IS NOT THEIR INCOME

its OURS, since they DO NOT OWN THEIR OFFICES - WE DO!

so WE, The People should get the diff, ANY DIFF, tween their income before being elected and after they leave office.

by taxing it 90%

WE NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION - NOW!
and f__k em if they dont like it

[Techdread]

Re: Trump to win?

Hey, those monies are "speaking fees"

The Clinton's came in to the presidency with about a million bucks net worth, not so much for a governor and a prominent attorney.
Today their combined net worth is about $110 million.
Leaving office as an elected US official does seem to include a pretty good payoff.
Er, I mean, pretty good speaking fees.

They are only getting paid for what the cynical tax payer refuses to.
How can heads of countries get paid fractions of what CEO's get?

[gnk]

Re: Trump to win?

They are only getting paid for what the cynical tax payer refuses to.
How can heads of countries get paid fractions of what CEO's get?

I never understood high CEO pay. No skin in the game, poor performance often overlooked, and still fat bonuses. Maybe CEO pay is out of wack as well? Maybe CEO pay has been artificially increased in our now decades long bubbilicious credit era?

And yes, all too often, the highest campaign contributors derive their wealth from Wall Street.

Vicious cycle or coincidence?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump to win?

I never understood high CEO pay. No skin in the game, poor performance often overlooked, and still fat bonuses. Maybe CEO pay is out of wack as well? Maybe CEO pay has been artificially increased in our now decades long bubbilicious credit era?

And yes, all too often, the highest campaign contributors derive their wealth from Wall Street.

Vicious cycle or coincidence?

Don’t not watch this even though the first 2 minutes will put you off. It’s all about baseball at first and money, but soon gets on to hedge fund managers, etc. There's quite a bit I don't agree with, but it's interesting history of sky high pay for marginal talent.

http://video.newyorker.com/watch/mal...e-inequality-1

[lektrode]

Re: Trump to win?

now HERE'S a smoking gun - heh - more like the ARSENAL of smoking guns - if there ever was such:

altho i'm beginning to reach the conclusion that VOTING FOR BERNIE maybe the only 'hope for change' - diverting votes from and thus DENYING HITLERY a 2nd 'opportunity' at SCREWING THE REST OF US - while they fill the coffers of their 'foundation' - which exists only to pay fat salaries+expenses to their merry band of parasitical 'do gooders'

count me as part of The ABC Vote - aka: ANYBODY BUT CLINTON
Former Citi Trader Exposes How Wall Street Came To Own The Clintons

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Former FX trader at Citigroup, Chris Arnade, just penned a poignant and entertaining Op-ed at The Guardian detailing how Wall Street came to own the Democratic Party via the Clintons over the course of his career. While anyone reading this already knows how completely bought and paid for the Clintons are by the big financial interests, the article provides some interesting anecdotes as well as a classic quote about a young Larry Summers.
Here are some choice excerpts from the piece:

I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from a party against Wall Street to a party of Wall Street.

That is why when I recently went to see Hillary Clinton campaign for president and speak about reforming Wall Street I was skeptical. What I heard hasn’t changed that skepticism. The policies she offers are mid-course corrections. In the Clintons’ world, Wall Street stays at the center, economically and politically. Given Wall Street’s power and influence, that is a dangerous place to leave them.

The administration’s economic policy took shape as trickle down, Democratic style. They championed free trade, pushing Nafta. They reformed welfare, buying into the conservative view that poverty was about dependency, not about situation. They threw the old left a few bones, repealing prior tax cuts on the rich, but used the increased revenues mostly on Wall Street’s favorite issue: cutting the debt.

Most importantly, when faced with their first financial crisis, they bailed out Wall Street.

That crisis came in January 1995, halfway through the administration’s first term. Mexico, after having boomed from the optimism surrounding Nafta, went bust. It was a huge embarrassment for the administration, given the push they had made for Nafta against a cynical Democratic party.

Money was fleeing Mexico, and much of it was coming back through me and my firm. Selling investors’ Mexican bonds was my first job on Wall Street, and now they were trying to sell them back to us. But we hadn’t just sold Mexican bonds to clients, instead we did it using new derivatives product to get around regulatory issues and take advantages of tax rules, and lend the clients money. Given how aggressive we were, and how profitable it was for us, older traders kept expecting to be stopped by regulators from the new administration, but that didn’t happen.

When Mexico started to collapse, the shudders began. Initially our firm lost only tens of millions, a large loss but not catastrophic. The crisis however was worsening, and Mexico was headed towards a default, or closing its border to money flows. We stood to lose hundreds of millions, something we might not have survived. Other Wall Street firms were in worse shape, having done the trade in a much bigger size. The biggest was rumored to be Lehman, which stood to lose billions, a loss they couldn’t have survived.

As the crisis unfolded, senior management traveled to DC as part of a group of bankers to meet with Treasury officials. They had hoped to meet with Rubin, who was now Treasury secretary. Instead they met with the undersecretary for international affairs who my boss described as: “Some young egghead academic who likes himself a lot and is wide eyed with a taste of power.”

That egghead was Larry Summers who would succeed Rubin as Treasury Secretary.

The bailout worked, with Mexico edging away from a crisis, allowing it to repay the loans, at profit. It also worked wonders on Wall Street, which let out a huge sigh of relief.

The success encouraged the administration, which used it as an economic blueprint that emphasized Wall Street. It also emphasized bailouts, believing it was counterproductive to let banks fail, or to punish them with losses, or fines or, God forbid, charge them with crimes, and risk endangering the economy.

The use of bailouts should have also been a reason to heavily regulate Wall Street, to prevent behavior that would require a bailout. But the administration didn’t do that; instead they went the opposite direction and continued to deregulate it, culminating in the repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999.

It changed the trading floor, which started to fill with Democrats. On my trading floor, Robert Rubin, who had joined my firm after leaving the administration, held traders attention by telling long stories and jokes about Bill Clinton to wide-eyed traders.

Wall Street now had both political parties working for them, and really nobody holding them accountable. Now, no trade was too aggressive, no risk too crazy, no behavior to unethical and no loss too painful. It unleashed a boom that produced plenty of smaller crisis (Russia, Dotcom), before culminating in the housing and financial crisis of 2008.

But hey…




For related articles on Hillary’s long standing Wall Street love affair, see:


Peak Desperation – Clinton Campaign Deploys Strategist for Wall Street Mega Banks to Attack Bernie Sanders



A New Low – Hillary Clinton Claims 9/11 is the Reason She’s Owned by Wall Street



COMPROMISED – How Two of Hillary Clinton’s Top Aides Received Golden Parachutes from Wall Street



Who’s the Real Progressive? A Side by Side Comparison of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s Lifetime Donors



Here Come the Cronies – Buffett and Blackstone President Launch $33,400 a Plate Hillary Clinton Fundraiser

[shiny!]

Re: Trump to win?

yeah, according to hillary when they left the white house they "were dirt poor" and "dead broke."

If I asked her nicely do you think she'd trade me her "dirt poor and dead broke" for my "dirt poor and dead broke"?