Hillary Clinton’s Speech to Goldman Sachs

February 26, 2016

by K.J. Noh

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/hillary-clintons-speech-to-goldman-sachs/

The following is a leaked transcript of Hillary Clinton’s first speech to Goldman Sachs delivered on 6/04/2013.   Two other speeches are also rumored to be in circulation awaiting publication. This is the full transcript. Secretary Clinton received $225,000 for this speech. The speech has not been confirmed or authenticated.

CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Lloyd [Blankfein], and thanks to everyone at Goldman Sachs for welcoming me today. I’m delighted to be back among friends, colleagues, collaborators, supporters, kindred spirits…

Let me jump right in. You know, over the past few months, there have been popular concerns about an economy that still isn’t delivering for the majority of Americans. It’s not “delivering” the way that they feel it should, that they feel entitled to. Most Americans that you speak to, speak a populist rhetoric that claims it is stacked for those at the top, that those of you here have it too good.

(Laughter)

But we know the hopes that the little people have for their future — things like school, job, food, clothing on their backs– all of those little things would not be possible without your leadership and innovation. Since the time of the Medicis, even before, and the financing of the first joint stock companies in the transatlantic slave trade, we know that finance and banking is what makes our capitalist economy not just grow but tick…

Previous generations of Americans built this economy and a middle class on a collective illusion: that they do productive work, this creates wealth, and that this builds the economy. We all know how misguided that is. We know that it’s really due to your investing, credit, and economic stewardship, that they have been able to work at all, that they are able to put food on their tables. It’s due to you and other banking, trading, investment houses that we have an economy that works at all. You are why we are a truly 21st century economic power.

(Applause)

You, Lloyd, and your colleagues, have been instrumental in that. People say you are overpaid or even parasitic, parasites on the economic body, and they quote a long line of seemingly “unethical behavior”. They equate with you everything that is wrong and immoral with Capitalism, they charge that you have acted ruthlessly and unethically, “rigging every major market bubble since the Great Depression”.

(Hissing)

But I—contrary to populist, hysterical demonizing–firmly believe that what you do is essential and critical: you help allocate our investment, direct our economic development, hedge risks, and create power, policies, and alliances in ways that make our country stronger, richer, more powerful, more innovative, competitive, and yes, more “democratic”. You underwrite our elections and our political process—taking on the huge cost of enabling democratic dialogue at its biggest, broadest capacity. Your tireless work adds true value, and without you, we would still be struggling helplessly against industrial powerhouses in Asia and across the world trying to compete with them on the level of industry, technology, innovation, and hard work, at which they would beat us hands down. It’s your financial innovation, your speculative tools, which allow us new ways of creating value without sweat or struggle, that gives us the competitive advantage. It’s this vision, this technological innovation, this financial wizardry, this is what makes America great and powerful.

(Applause)

For decades, people have argued that if we give more wealth to those at top by cutting taxes and letting you and other corporations write the own rules, it will trickle down, it will trickle down to everyone else. And it has! My speech here is an example!

(Cackles, Waves Check)  

(Laughter).

But seriously, I believe that the work of Goldman Sachs is critical for us, and without you, America would be a faint shadow of its current greatness. Your work in innovating finance, in creating new sources of wealth and investment, your tireless efforts stimulating the creation of new financial instruments, in lobbying politicians, in monopolizing the treasury and cabinet, in setting and binding the parameters of financial regulation that allows fluidity and flexibility in investment and speculation, this allows us to create wealth—almost out of thin air. It’s this alchemy, this genius, this Midas touch—which is one of the most under-appreciated and under-acknowledged contributions in modern economic history.

(Applause)

It’s fair to say that you have transformed the solid, clunky, friction-laiden trading of traditional commodity speculation into responsive, intelligent, liquid flows, that have vaporized every barrier and transformed into an expansive, responsive, endlessly expanding gas that fills every atom of our productive economic space that generates immeasurable value everywhere it goes, and everything it touches. Who cares that it’s a little chaotic or “unethical”? That it seems tied to every financial scandal and crisis and economic catastrophe in history? Not me. “Creative Destruction” is all part of the game, and you are masters of it.

(Applause)

Some will say that you are simply parasitic on those who labor at menial physical production—these are people who still subscribe to 18 Century notions of value production–and that you skim off profit without doing anything meaningful or of value. Those people are misguided: we know that if money never sleeps, that’s because you keep it awake! You have—if I may use a metaphor–injected money with caffeine, Adderal, crack, meth, with LSD so that it can dance the crazy dance and grow a crazy thousand psychedelic feet tall in a rainbow minute!   Money was a lazy b*tch, until you put it to work! And look how it works! Look how it grows! Materializes out of nowhere!

(Waves check again, dances, cackles).

Some people have said that it was your irresponsible financial engineering, risk-taking, and profit-seeking, that led to the 2008 crash; that you shorted your own toxic mortgages in the most brazen securities fraud in financial history, dynamiting and imploding the global economy; and that the exorbitant bonuses paid from tax payer money, the financial bailouts, the non-prosecutions created moral hazard, rewarded avarice, incompetence, corruption and vice. You and I know it is nothing of the sort. As leaders, innovators, captains of finance, you will always be subject of the jealous resentment, the petty tantrums of the unwashed masses, the insolvent, the irresponsible, the invidious, the losers. They will envy you, your successes, they will despise you, but they secretly want to be like you!

(Laughter)

As you know, my husband tried very hard to change the culture of this misbegotten underclass, by kicking them off the government teat, by poisoning their milk with harsh, bitter regulation, and by disciplining them with the most arbitrary, racist, punitive, devastating criminal laws in US history, laws which Richard Nixon, the Southern strategists, the slave catchers, could only have dreamed of. He also passed NAFTA, which told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to discipline themselves as workers, and learn to be competitive in the global sweatshop, or face certain extinction. But they have not learned their lesson.

(Hissing)

The effects prove themself. Under President Clinton — I like the sound of that!— America saw the longest, most prodigious reaming of the undesirable classes in our history, putting them firmly in their places. And they loved it! He felt their pain! And relished it! Because he was inflicting it!

(Applause)

And I will too!

(Applause)

Now today — today, another capitalist crisis looms, bigger and more dangerous than 2008, and again we hear sentimental cries for populist reform. I believe we have to stave off these demands to reform the banking and the financial system, and restructure the economy more equitably. You can’t build an economy without the smart people—the Titans and Gods of Finance—like you–to direct the economy, and for the smart people to do their work, you need to be rewarded for your efforts, and you need a free hand to exercise your brilliance.

(Applause)

Books like “The Spirit Level” and organizations working for equality, certain politicians, spew a ridiculous myth of populism and the benefits of equality. But the fact is, we can’t create profitable businesses without exploitation, and we can’t grow the economy without speculation and inequality, and we certainly can’t boost our economy into the stratosphere without allowing you to exercise your amazing financial intelligence and acumen in fiscal number-crunching, speculation, numbers-running and fraud!

(Applause)

Just think of this: can you imagine a football game without gambling? It would be dull, mind-numbing—who would watch steroid-addled jocks rut and slam into each other mindlessly without having put down money on the outcome? Who would pay the huge salaries for these vapid idiots? It’s only because you have bet on the outcome that people become excited about the sport: it becomes life-and-death-thrilling! It becomes paint-your-face-get-shit-faced exciting! Act-stupid-exciting! That’s what you do: you add excitement, thrill, value, and enthusiasm to the dull, dirty job of growing the economy, you make the game exciting, sexy, which draws more money into the game, the casino, that expands the excitement, grows the customer base, develops the economy, and that’s priceless! You speculate, stimulate, titillate, dynamize, satyriasize the entire economy! I am such a fan! Go Goldman Sachs!

(Does little cheerleading number, complete with hand gestures)

Gooold-Maaan-Sachs!

(Applause)

Let’s tell the truth: America is struggling—despite the endless fabrication about “the recovery”– because we are not yet running the way we should. Banks are still over regulated. It’s over-regulation that creates financial catastrophe! Despite your huge paychecks and squirreled away assets, I know that you are worried: worried that some “socialist” demagogue might come along and confiscate it all and put you all in jail. With president Obama, you were in good hands: he’s one of us. (Good thing you ponied up $981K for his campaign). He took good care of you, had your back, covered your financial rear. But populist sentiment is rising up again, more strongly than before, and the unwashed masses are full of resentment, anger, jealousy. They are angry that they don’t have jobs, that they are in debt, that they can’t scrape a living together, even though they are working, 2,3,4 jobs to put shelter over their heads. That their children are starving. That they cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel. They are angry about the 100 million people driven into the brink of starvation and the global food riots that they claim you caused with your commodity futures speculation. The $5Trillion of value lost from the markets that they claim you collapsed. The millions who lost their homes and are now on the verge of homelessness. The trillions funneled to you in loans, write-offs, bribes to keep the system going. Even when I was working for Barry (Goldwater), I felt that same irrational resentment. Now it’s at an all time high. Irresponsible single mothers, uneducated immigrants, lead-drinking ghetto-strutters, homeless, crying, babies, starving senior citizens, obnoxious, entitled African Americans who object to having bullets pumped into their bodies by police: all these people are angry, entitled, and making noise, and they are endangering our democracy and economy, our greatness.

(Hissing)

I hear this everywhere I go. A single mother, with three children—wants to go to college, find enjoyable, well-paid work and also enjoy the emotional luxuries of motherhood—all at the same time. Everyone feels entitled to everything. She even wants housing. Now even I couldn’t do all these things, despite my incredible privilege and intelligence. But they want it all, now. Three children?

(Booing)

A grandmother, playing with children—it makes her happy like a cow, but she still feels entitled to be paid. Because she wants to feed her drug habit, she wants to sell them for more money….she wants it all!

(Booing)

A student, with an unmarketable degree in women’s studies, specializing in medieval feminist villanelles, wants debt forgiveness, and a high-paid job putting her non-existent skills analyzing romance language texts to use and profit in a rewarding cause. She also wants a pony, a sensitive but dominant lover, a villa on the Riviera, and World Peace!

(Cackles).

(Laughter)

Millions of working sad-sack Americans have similar fantasies.   They want more money.   More pay. Decent wages for hard work. They think it grows on trees. They think that money will grow and nuzzle up to them in their sleep, when they have no money-appeal. They think they can tax Other People’s Money to get what they want. They don’t realize Money has to be jacked up the ass, stuck in the veins with meth, dragged out and pimped to make more! You have figured out how to make your money work, turned it into a profit-generating prostitute!  The future expected earnings of a profit-generating prostitute! That you’ve shorted! These people, idiots, all of them, they expect money to come to them! Without Scheming! Without reaming others! By working hard and being good! Like puppies and ponies! Like flowers after a downpour! Like the lilies of the valley! Like utopian visions of a drug-addled socialist!

(Laughter)

Wages need to be kept down, and people just need to work harder. Damn harder. At least as hard as Bill worked to keep Haiti down.

(Applause)

We must lower incomes for low-value working schmucks, so they give up on any notions of a middle-class life. But more than that, we must reduce the slick, unsustainable bigotry of expectation: the profit-sucking cage of entitlement, expectation, and imagination. We must drive income down steadily and siphon that surplus wealth to you, the captains of finance, so that we can build a strong economy that is innovative, powerful, that acknowledges and rewards your acumen…

(Applause)

And that will be my mission, from the first day I am president to the last. I…

(Applause)

I will get up every day thinking about you, the hard-working Wizards of Finance, Lords of Capital, Economic Giants of Innovation, Noble Titans that make us strong and powerful!

(Applause)

I came from a petit-bourgeois family with a drapery business that exploited workers to give me good middle-class life, a first-class education, and my incorrigibly elitist beliefs. It put me on third base, instead of striking out. As I try to steal home, I will be thinking about all the Wall Street bankers that I represented in New York and the “advice” that they gave me, and I will work with them—for you– to give them the maximum freedom to do what’s best for them. Because what’s best for Wall Street is what’s best for the US. What’s best for Goldman Sachs is what’s best for the planet. I promise to take on this challenge against the clamoring, whining, agitating babies demanding for major changes in our economy and the global economy, demanding for equity and justice. These demands are stupid beyond belief.

(Laughter)

As you know, advances in financial technology and global trade have created new areas of commercial activity and opened new markets for our exports. Too often policy wonks want to resort to protectionist measures because they don’t realize that these treaties are designed to suck wealth out of the third world and suck it into your portfolios. These people suffer from a lack of big-picture thinking. They believe that they are still going to be building widgets in a factory if it were not for the 1 billion Chinese stealing their jobs. They don’t understand that we are sucking the lifeblood out of both of the Chinese and all workers—the vampire squid with the blood funnel—creating value, wealth, growth!

(Cackles)

Today’s marketplace focuses on the short-term, instantaneous financial trading, and short-term earnings reports, and that’s just how it should be. Those who are struggling need to rent out their living rooms, garages, bathrooms, dog houses, sell trinkets on EBay, sell themselves, their time and their bodies in the gig economy. All of this creates exciting, dynamic extra wealth, which should go to you, the geniuses of the universe, because you are the ones driving this with your investments, speculations, deregulation, policy capture, and of course outright bribes. There’s no problem that a little more liberalization and deregulation can’t make better!

(Takes out check and cackles)

But all of these trends are temporary, and artificial, and unless we push really hard to make them happen, they won’t continue. The choices we make as a nation matter. The choices we make will set the stage for what American life will be like in this 21st century: will we have a nation of namby-pamby socialistic commies whining and demanding every little privilege while our nation crashes down around our ears, and we are reduced to becoming serfs for the Chinese? Or will we have a powerful country, bristling with guns and weapons, capable of putting everyone in their place? Capable of invading countries on a whim? Of unleashing chaos and violence gratuitously?  Of violating a leader’s body orifices with sharp objects with impunity?

(Cackles).

Of manipulating the world economy on a dime, without sweating any labor?

(Applause)

As president, I will work with you to turn the tide of populism, to make these currents of change infeasible, impossible. We don’t hide from change; we subvert, hijack it, appropriate it.

(Applause)

But it will take money. Lots of it. This is a good start.

(Waves check again, smiles, coyly).

The measure of our success must be how much incomes rise for you, the elite, the 0.0001%, not some just arbitrary growth targets tethered to people’s unwarranted and undeserved notions of “equity”, and “justice”.

(Applause)

I want to see our economy work for the top, the leaders, the Gods, the Masters of the Universe like you. We’re not going to find all the answers we need in the playbooks of the past, we can’t go back to the policies of social equity that failed completely…

Today is not 1968. The sixties are so over. And it’s not 1917. The Bolshies are so over. It’s not 1789.   No more liberty, equality, fraternity. No more freedom fries. Non Merci! ça suffit! People need to accept the fact that finance capital is a reality, that the interests of the capital markets drives the world, that it can’t be turned back, and that it’s the final solution for all the challenges we face now, including the unending catastrophes that it’s creating, including the burning, fiery apocalyptic end of the planet.

So today, I’m proposing an agenda to give you what you deserve, an agenda for unlimited financial deregulation, growth, wealth accumulation and concentration. It’s the least we can offer you given the undeserved contempt and abuse you’ve suffered over the past years.

More concentration means more jobs and more new businesses catering to you. More jobs give people more opportunities to service you, toady up to you, vampire squid and all.

(Waves check suggestively).

Full employment is completely unnecessary, so 19th Century; the desperation of potential unemployment keeps people working hard to keep their jobs, so their productivity and toadying should be absolutely top notch! No more disrespect!

We know that Finance creates most of the wealth in this country, so that has to be THE top priority.

Let me tell you straight: I want to be the presidency of, by, for Goldman Sachs, and I mean it. I’ll make sure to line my cabinet with your people, like everyone else. Lloyd, name your position!

(Wild Applause)

And throughout the upcoming campaign, I’m going to be sending lots of dog-whistle messages about how to empower you with less red tape, less regulation, less taxes, easier access to free, risk-free money, simplification, easy access to me, all the while talking populist claptrap….

(Takes out dog whistle and blows to utter silence)

(Loud laughter)

Don’t be thrown off by the populist rhetoric. You know that’s just how we play the game. You know I’m your gal…a Goldman Sachs gal….

(Brushes check wistfully over lips)

(Laughter)

Just don’t tell anyone what I said….

(Laughter)

I’ll push for tax incentives to spur speculation, giving you loopholes that you can drive your jumbo private jet or yacht through! Show us how innovative, creative thinking you are!

(Wild applause)

And I know it’s not always how we think about this, but another engine of strong growth should be the TPP and the TTIP, and the TISA.

(Applause)

I want you to hear this. Creating a global neo-liberal enclosure of the entire world economy that pretends to be about “free trade” won’t do much for the total economy—perhaps a tiny percentage point of growth—but I guarantee it will line your pockets like nothing else. Think trillions in your coffers. Quadrillions, once we force all the Asian-Pacific economies to suspend their financial uptightness restricting wild casino gambling! Financial liberalization forced on Asia will result in Quadrillions! Bazillions! And remember, the house—that’s us—we write the rules—never loses!

(Wild Applause)

These are the new policies that will help change the world order. It’s not just about these United states, or even the Asia-Pacific that I’m pushing for in the Pacific Pivot. We need to change the planet, before the planet changes us, gets back at us for abusing it so deeply. It’s the planetary endgame, and we want to have a big blast before our toys are taken away….

When I get started, we get our country moving in the direction that we want. Money that can channel more public and private funds to the top leadership—that’s you and me…

(Applause)

… channel those funds to finance and speculation!

(Applause)

So let’s built those faster trading algorithms and make sure they work faster, bigger, riskier, and trade sums larger than they have ever before!

(Applause)

And really, there’s no excuse not to make wilder, greater investments in speculative trading right now.

(Wild applause)

Our economy obviously runs on finance, and the time is long overdue to make America the ultimate financial superpower. Weapons of financial mass destruction? Bring them on! They are our weapons! Some may worry Finance may destroy millions of jobs, put billions into penury, kill billions of starvation, send the economy into a crazy tailspin, but it will make us—that’s you and me—rich and powerful beyond imagination. Let’s be real here. Isn’t that what matters?

(Cackles)

(Laughter)

Let’s fund the mathematical research that spawns breathtakingly risky trading algorithms and creates entire new areas of fictitious capital, an equation to model every aspect of human greed and fantasy and desire! I can put my support behind that! A mathematical copula that really copulates the unwashed masses!

(Laughter)

(Wild Applause)

I will set ambitious goals in all of these areas in the months ahead.

But today, let me emphasize again, that I will institute the key ingredient of strong growth that often goes overlooked… I will break down all global non-tariff barriers so we can do what we did to our economy all over the world.  We are equal opportunity crisis-makers!

(Applause)

Watch what I do, not what I say!

(Lifts dog whistle to lips)

(Loud laughter)

We are in a global competition, as I’m sure you have noticed.

I’m starting to repeat myself, but I’m on a roll.

We can’t afford to leave finance on the benches. That’s exactly what we’re doing today with Glass-Steagall-type regulation. When we leave money on the bench, we not only shortchange its power, and we lose the game, and we shortchange our country and our future.

The movement of hot, speculative money into real estate during the past 20 years was responsible for trillions funneled into your pockets. But that progress is beginning to stall out.

Studies show that nearly this decline is happening because we’re trying to stop real fictitious growth, considering valorizing people over profits. What an absurdity!

We should be making it easier for speculative finance to make money and innovate. To develop bubbles and create trillion dollar valuations out of thin air! And to short them at will! This is how we pump up our economy like a hydrogen bomb! Speculators who want to speculate without limit should be able to do so without worrying that they may find themselves inside a federal resort working on their abs and pecs.

You know, last year –

(Applause)

You know, all this speculation adds up. And for you, it’s trillions every day. Now I am well aware that for far too long these practices have been challenged by socialistic demagogues.
Well, those days are over.

(Applause)

Free speculation, and free money, no taxes, and no restrictions, here or anywhere else in the world: this is essential to our competitiveness and our growth and my ego! And I can do this in a way that doesn’t alarm or outrage the unwashed masses! As president, I’ll fight to put you first, just like I have my entire career. Just remember the dog whistle!

(Lifts to whistle to lips)

(Laughter)

Just watch!

(Applause)

The trader who stands on his feet all day, shrieking his heart out, or the quant who is driving his synapses into overdrive trying to make an unforgiving algorithm match the fluctuations in a chaotically fibrillating market, or the hedge fund manager, who has loses sleep over the global economy, these people do not need regulation! They do not need a lecture! They do not need the planet’s animosity. They need more rewards, for the hard, crucial, essential, brilliant, world-changing work they are doing!

(Applause)

The truth is the current rules for our economy do not reward financial risk-taking enough.   r

(Applause)

Alongside gutting taxes, it’s time to stand up to efforts across our country to restrict the power of finance, which has been proven again and again to destroy an economy, and make you sad….Socialist demagogues like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have made their names stomping and vilifying you….

(Hissing)

I will fight back against these mean-spirited, misguided attacks.   But I will do with subtlety and finesse and subterfuge! Just like when I was a Goldwater girl! Now I’m a Goldman Sach’s girl!

(Rubs check suggestively)

(Laughter)

In the years leading up to the “crash”, financial firms innovated risk away, but regulators in Washington either could not or would understand this. I was alarmed when they took the punchbowl away.

The current President Obama gave you and your colleagues 17 Trillion of free money, and endless zero-rate loans, but he still had to pretend to take you and your colleagues to the woodshed. Dodd-Frank. Sarbanes-Oxley. The return of Glass-Steagall. Other annoying, pesky legislation and regulations. Too many of you are bound and wrapped in red tape: shadow banking, money laundering, hedge funds, high-frequency trading, non- bank financing, interest rate manipulation, all done in the shadows, because of vicious, irrational regulations that marginalize and oppress you.

(Hissing)

Even when you have already pocketed the gains, and gotten away scott-free, there is social approbation, contempt, and this is painful, this is wrong. I feel your pain! On my watch this will all change. Over the course…

(Applause)

… over the course of my campaign, I will offer plans to unleash your endless creativity and risk-taking. I will make sure that you will not pay the price of those risks: I want to encourage you to take them. Just as limited liability allowed early capitalism to grow, back-stopping your risks will be my charge and duty. We’ll make sure that Wall Street and stock markets explode in growth for you! Profits for you! We will assume the Risks! For you, the financial innovators! Captains! Lords! Titans! Gods of finance!

I will appoint you to every regulatory position of power! Too big to fail is too big not to give control over the entire government!

(Applause)

I will ensure that no one will ever be prosecuted. Those who shout for decriminalization of drugs fail to understand that decriminalizing financial crime will bring it out of the shadows into the mainstream economy, boosting it into the stratosphere!

(Applause)

Government has to be smarter, smaller, more focused on supporting speculative investments than the convenient politics of justice, and be a better servant of the private sector. Washington has to be a better steward—servant–of your power!  The media has to respect you! Please, let’s get back to making decisions that pay due deference to power and money!

(Applause)

That’s what I’ll do as president. I will seek out and welcome any good idea that is accompanied by a large check!

(Brushes check suggestively against cheek)

(Laughter)

I confess, maybe it’s just the bean counter in me, but I believe that public service is about planting trees for (slave) labor to harvest, and the vision I’ve laid out here today for strong growth for you, your bonuses rising through the stratosphere again, will help finance get ahead and stay ahead forever!

And I’m inviting everyone to please join me to do your part.

(Waves check).

(Laughter).

That’s what great countries do. That’s what our country always has done. We follow the money. It’s not about left, right or center; it’s about the money. We take our orders from money. Yes, we do!

I’m running for president to build an America for you, for Global Finance. An America built on Financialized Capital, an America where if you do your part, you will reap the rewards, the rich rewards you deserve…even if the planet collapses in total chaos….

(Waves check suggestively)

(Laughter)

Where we take care of our own….

(Laughter)

And where we get rid of our enemies….

(Nervous laughter)

Forever…

(More Nervous Laughter)

Thank you all. Thank you. I just want to leave you with one more thought. I want every banker, financier, trader, hedge fund manager to reach their God-given potential to rule the universe.   Please join me in that mission — let’s do it together!

(Applause)

Thank you all so much.

(Applause)

And now, unless someone writes another check, I’ll be onto the next gig…

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K.J. Noh is a long time activist, writer and teacher.  He can be reached at k.j.noh48@gmail.com