Behind Closed Doors, Hillary Clinton Sympathized With Goldman Sachs Over Financial Reform

David Dayen

October 11 2016

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/behind-closed-doors-hillary-clinton-sympathized-with-goldman-sachs-over-financial-reform/

EXCERPTS OF HILLARY CLINTON’S previously secret speeches to big banks and trade groups in 2013 and 2014 show her exalting the work of her hosts, hardly a surprise when these groups paid her up to $225,000 an hour to chat them up.

Far from chiding Goldman Sachs for obstructing Democratic proposals for financial reform, Clinton appeared to sympathize with the giant investment bank. At a Goldman Sachs Alternative Investments Symposium in October 2013, Clinton almost apologized for the Dodd-Frank reform bill, explaining that it had to pass “for political reasons,” because “if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it’s all the fault of Wall Street, you can’t sit idly by and do nothing.”

Clinton added, “And I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all.”

Clinton praised Deutsche Bank in a 2014 speech for “the work that the Bank has done in New York City on affordable housing.”

While Deutsche Bank has given to anti-homelessness campaigns in the past, it was also cited in a New York State Senate report in January for refusing to maintain foreclosed properties in New York City neighborhoods and costing those communities millions in unpaid fines. Deutsche is also about to face amulti-billion-dollar penalty from the Justice Department for defrauding investors with low-quality mortgage securities, leading to the housing meltdown.

Those excerpts were among many listed in an 80-page document prepared by the Clinton campaign, listing potentially damaging quotes from the Democratic nominee’s paid but at that point still secret speeches. The report landed in campaign chairman John Podesta’s email, which was hacked, and then posted by WikiLeaks last week.

In a November 2013 speech to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), Clinton pronounced herself proud to work with the trade group as a U.S. senator to “look for ways to help families facing foreclosure with concrete steps.”

NAR represents real estate agents, who had no authority to assist distressed homeowners. An April 2007 document lists NAR’s priorities in foreclosure mitigation, and they were able to get an amendment exempting mortgage debt forgiveness from being treated as earned income. But the rest amount to “urging” and “supporting” efforts to help homeowners that never happened.

Clinton has historically been far less critical of the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington than many other Democrats, and as secretary of state allowed two of her top aides — Tom Nides and Robert Hormats — to receive big payouts from their big-bank employers before entering public service.

“Thank you for lending me Tom Nides for the past two years,” Clinton said to a crowd at Morgan Stanley on April 18, 2013.

As The Intercept reported in July 2015, Nides moved from chief operating officer at Morgan Stanley into Clinton’s State Department, and when Clinton left Foggy Bottom, Nideswent right back to Morgan Stanley as a vice chairman.

Clinton joked about the “culture shock” for Nides, working a government job. “You should have seen his face when he learned there were no stock options at the State Department.

But he soon not only settled in very nicely, he became positively enthusiastic when I told him we did have our own plane.”

Clinton also gushed about Hormats, who joined her at State after a career at Goldman Sachs, in a 2014 speech at JPMorgan Chase.

In excerpts that got some attention last week, Clinton told bankers that financial reform “really has to come from the industry itself,” that “the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry,” and that blaming banks for the crisis was “an oversimplification.”

Her former Democratic presidential rival, Bernie Sanders responded in a statement, “Whatever Secretary Clinton may or may not have said behind closed doors on Wall Street, I am determined to implement the agenda of the Democratic Party platform which was agreed upon by her campaign,” and which “calls for breaking up the largest financial institutions in this country, re-establishing Glass-Steagall and prosecuting those many Wall Street CEOs who engaged in illegal behavior.”

The excerpts reveal that Clinton, when speaking to the financial industry, adopted their mindset and privileged their arguments. The question that arises is whether members of a possible Clinton administration will reflect this worldview, or whether the long primary with Sanders has made that untenable. Some aggressive advocates for progressive appointments believe the latter.

“At State and on the speaking circuit, Clinton was in an environment that encouraged her to view Wall Street bankers as fonts of economic wisdom,” said Jeff Hauser, Director of the Revolving Door Project. “But after 15 months running against a progressive populist like Sanders, Clinton knows that government conducted a by rotating stream of bankers is politically unacceptable.”

Hillary Clinton Privately Pitched Corporations on “Really Low” Tax Rate for Money Stashed Abroad

Jon Schwarz

October 10 2016

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/hillary-clinton-privately-pitched-corporations-on-really-low-tax-rate-for-money-stashed-abroad/

IN PUBLIC, TOP Hillary Clinton surrogate Neera Tanden said at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that there’s no need to cut the federal corporate tax rate from its current 35 percent.

But in private, Clinton says something quite different to corporations and trade groups.

An 80-page report compiled by Clinton’s own campaign of potentially damaging remarks she made behind closed doors was published by Wikileaks on Friday. It includes extensive comments on tax policy.

During an October 13, 2014, speech to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, Clinton told the audience that “A number of business leaders have been talking to my husband and me about an idea that would allow the repatriation of the couple trillion dollars that are out there. And you would get a lower rate — a really low rate — if you were willing to invest a percentage in an infrastructure bank.”

Clinton has repeatedly called for increased spending on U.S. infrastructure, but has never specified where the needed revenue would come from.

In a speech the previous month to the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Clinton also said that a lower rate for all corporate profits regardless of where they are earned “certainly could be on the table” as long as that was “part of a broader package.” However, she specified that “if all you do is lower the rates” that “there’s a price to pay” in terms of lower tax revenue.

American multinational corporations are currently stashing a staggering $2.4 trillion in profits — about 14 percent of the size of the entire U.S. economy — overseas. Multinationals are required by U.S. law to pay the statutory 35 percent tax on profits they earn anywhere on earth, but the tax is not assessed until the profits are brought back to the U.S.

This has allowed Corporate America to essentially hold U.S. tax revenue hostage, refusing to pay its taxes until Americans become so desperate that they will cut a deal giving multinationals a special new tax rate.

This strategy has already paid off once, in 2004, when multinationals got Congress to let them bring back $312 billion in profits at a one-time rate of about 5 percent. The legislation required that the cash be used to hire Americans or conduct research and development. Corporations ignored these provisions and instead used the money to enrich their executives and stockholders, while cutting U.S. jobs.

Both Hillary and Bill Clinton clearly envision cutting a similar deal during a Hillary Clinton presidency, although presumably they intend for the corporations to keep their part of the bargain this time.

Just last month, Bill Clinton told the audience at a Clinton Foundation Event that the corporate tax rate “should be lowered” with “X percent of [repatriated profits], whatever percent, [going] into buying investments in the national infrastructure program.” Clinton added, “This is just me now, I’m not speaking for …” and then trailed off.

Hillary Clinton said the same thing during a private August 2014 speech to the software storage company Nexenta: “I would like to find a way to repatriate the overseas earnings and I’ve read a really interesting proposal. … John Chambers and others … basically have said they would be willing to invest a percentage of their repatriated profits in an infrastructure bank … I thought that was a really intriguing idea.”

Chambers was the CEO of Cisco at the time, and a vociferous proponent of corporations refusing to bring their profits home until they receive such a sweetheart deal.

Donald Trump has a similar plan to slash corporate tax rates to 15 percent (with a special rate for repatriated profits of 10 percent) although without requirements for corporations to participate in funding an infrastructure bank.

Hillary Clinton Touted Her Record of Spreading Fracking in Secret, Paid Speeches

Lee Fang

October 10 2016

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/clinton-fracking-theworld/

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS on the paid speaking circuit, Hillary Clinton was far more candid than she has been in public about her prominent role as Secretary of State in exporting American-style hydraulic fracturing — the controversial, environmentally damaging technique best known as fracking — to countries all over the world.

“I’ve promoted fracking in other places around the world,” she declared during a 2013 paid talk to Deutsche Bank, adding that she launched a new wing of the State Department devoted to the initiative.

During a paid speech in Canada the following year, Clinton touted her role in “accelerating” natural gas development in Europe, calling attention to Poland’s embrace of fracking as a positive step.

The contrast with the rhetoric Clinton has used on the campaign trail is striking. Clinton has rarely spoken in public of her role selling fracking abroad, and at times positioned herself as a skeptic of the controversial drilling technique. In the lead-up to the New York Democratic primary, Clinton’s campaign released a television advertisement that gave the impression that she has worked to discourage fracking.

The remarks were quoted in an attachment to one of the hacked emails belonging to campaign chairman John Podesta that were posted by WikiLeaks on Friday. Two days after we asked Clinton in Manchester, N.H., in January to release her Goldman Sachs transcripts, Clinton campaign deputy research director Carter Hutchinson reviewed all her paid speech transcripts in an 80-page report highlighting potential political fallout. It was sent to Podesta and other top campaign aides by Tony Carrk, Clinton’s research director. Carrk did not respond to a request for comment.

Clinton’s decision to use fracking as a diplomatic tool has been chronicled by Mother Jones and The Intercept.

Earlier this year, we obtained emails from Clinton aides discussing plans to make Poland a “laboratory for testing whether U.S. success in developing shale gas can be repeated in a different country.” The emails also revealedefforts to partner with energy companies such as Chevron and Marathon Oil.

Starting early in her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton traveled the globe encouraging foreign countries to adopt fracking technology.

Clinton has both publicly and privately explained that she views fracking, under the right circumstances, as the most environmentally sound method of transitioning away from other fossil fuels such as oil and coal. She has also said that fracking can make the U.S. and other nations energy independent, a foreign policy goal that may weaken gas exporting countries such as Russia.

But in private, Clinton also asserted that there is a conspiracy of Russian-funded groups attempting to suppress fracking development.

During a speech to a group in Canada called tinePublic, Clinton claimed that there are “phony environmental groups” that are “funded by the Russians to stand against” fracking.

It wasn’t clear which groups Clinton was referring to during those remarks. The Clinton campaign has not responded to a request for comment.

The Coming Megadrought in the American Southwest

Posted on October 15, 2016 by Yves Smith

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By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. Originally published at at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive  here. Originally published at DownWithTyranny

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/gaius-publius-considering-the-coming-megadrought-in-the-american-southwest.html

I’ve written in the past about two of the most climate-vulnerable regions of the U.S., Florida and the American Southwest. (A third region, the Pacific Northwest, is vulnerable, but to a non-climate event, a magnitude 9.0 mega-earthquake.) Here I want to look again to the problems of California and the Southwest.

Much of the water that sustains California, southern Nevada, Arizona, and surrounding areas comes from the ever-drying Colorado River.

Just as it’s now clear that we’ve passed the tipping point for extreme weather, we’re also very likely passed the tipping point for the long-term habitability of the American Southwest.

The report is from NASA; the write-up is from EcoWatch (my emphasis):

NASA: Megadrought Lasting Decades Is 99% Certain in American Southwest

A study released in Science Advances Wednesday finds strong evidence for severe, long-term droughts afflicting the American Southwest, driven by climate change. A megadrought lasting decades is 99 percent certain to hit the region this century, said scientists from Cornell University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“Historically, megadroughts were extremely rare phenomena occurring only once or twice per millennium,” the report states.

“According to our analysis of modeled responses to increased GHGs, these events could become commonplace if climate change goes unabated.”

Rising temperatures will combine with decreased rainfall in the Southwest to create droughts that will be worse than the historic “Dust Bowl” of the 20th century and last far longer. The Dust Bowl lasted no longer than eight years, and affected 100 million acres around the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and adjacent lands in Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. Dust storms swept through large swaths of former farmland, depositing dust as far east as Chicago, New York and Washington. It is estimated that more than half a million people were made homeless, and some 3.5 million Dust Bowl refugees migrated west, in hopes of finding work.

Just a few thoughts.

First, a megadrought lasting decades is a once- or twice-in-a-millennium event. That’s once every 500 to 1000 years. The American Southeast had two “once in 500 year” storms in the last two years, and that following “Superstorm Sandy” in 2012. Obviously the frequency is changing, perhaps exponentially.

In the Southwest that megadrought could last for the next few decades. I did a major piece here — “California Drought, the “Bigger Water Crisis” & the Consumer Economy” — with a breakdown of elements that went into the current multi-year drought, and a look at the Colorado River basin and its condition. Some of the bottom lines include these:

 The social contract will break in California and the rest of the Southwest (and don’t forget Mexico, which also has water rights from the Colorado and a reason to contest them). This will occur even if the fastest, man-on-the-moon–style conversion to renewables is attempted starting tomorrow.

This means, the very very rich will take the best for themselves and leave the rest of us to marinate in the consequences — to hang, in other words. (For a French-Saudi example of that, read this. Typical “the rich are always entitled” behavior.) This means war between the industries, regions, classes. The rich didn’t get where they are, don’t stay where they are, by surrender.

 Government will have to decide between the wealthy and the citizenry. How do you expect that to go?

 Government dithering and the increase in social conflict will delay real solutions until a wake-up moment. Then the real market will kick in — the market for agricultural land and the market for urban property. Both will start to decline in absolute value.

If there’s a mass awareness moment when all of a sudden people in and out of the Southwest “get it,” those markets will collapse. Hedge funds will sell their interests in California agriculture as bad investments; urban populations will level, then shrink; the fountains in Las Vegas and the golf courses in Scottsdale will go brown and dry, collapsing those populations and economies as well.

Second, about the time frame, obviously there’s a possibility of a once-in-500-year multi-seasonal rainfall, but that’s not expected, to say the least. Will the region recover from this drought? If it lasts two decades, I think its livability, its habitability is finished. And when people figure that out, they’ll move, perhaps in droves, depending on whether something triggers panic-selling.

That is, the area will be livable, but by a lifestyle without modern infrastructure, since it takes a certain critical mass of population and wealth (economic activity) to keep modern infrastructure going. Think of the infrastructure in small towns, where people are leaving and populations are declining, versus the more viable lifestyle available to vigorous larger towns and cities, where there are jobs. Now add multi-decade drought to those small-town lives.

Where will the jobs be if Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas have no water? Where will California agriculture be if farms go dry? And finally, consider the Dust Bowl again. As many as 3.5 million refugees migrated west, to California. Where will those refugees go if they’re forced to leave California, the heart of the dry zone and pressed against the ocean? Utah? Unlikely. North perhaps, swamping the Pacific Northwest with people, or given a slower migration, back across the Rockies.

Civilizations have risen and died in the American Southwest. During the last megadrought, the Anasazi, or Pueblo culture, which was extensive in territory, completely disappeared. When the Mormons arrived in Utah, the Anasazi were identifiable only by their relics. EcoWatch again:

Megadroughts of 35 years are currently rare and have led to severe upheaval in the past. There’s evidence that the Pueblo people of what is now the south-west US were forced to abandon settlements in the 13th century due to a lengthy drought.

For the U.S. to compress and recede to a more habitable center while aggressively converting to zero-carbon is not the worst outcome in the world. Far from it, in fact.

There Is a Solution — A Zero Carbon Economy

I’ve been writing for a few years that there is likely a five-to-ten year window, and only that, in which we could start a crash program toward a zero-carbon economy, what I like to call the Stop Now plan, and what others call a WWII-style mobilization or “man on the moon”-style program. That’s actually good news — that there’s still time — and I still believe it.

If we start in the first term of the next president, we can mitigate most of the disaster nationally, though maybe not all of it regionally.

From the Guardian’s report of the same NASA study:

The new report does proffer a crumb of hope – if greenhouse gas emissions are radically cut then the risk of megadrought will reduce by half, giving a roughly 50:50 chance that a multi-decade stretch of below-average rainfall would occur this century.

But the research found that the emissions cuts would have to be far steeper than those agreed to by nations in Paris last year, where a 2C limit on warming was pledged.

“We would need a much more aggressive approach than proposed at Paris, it’s not too late to do this but the train is leaving the station as we speak,” [Toby Ault, a scientist at Cornell University and lead author of the study,] said.

And one last point. The next president will be the last one with a clear chance to turn the ship. It looks like Hillary Clinton, barring the unforeseen, will be that president. She recently gave a very aggressive climate speech, with Al Gore at her side. Can she be brought to see, not just the extremity of the situation, but the extremity of the actions needed to address it? The jury is out on that, and that’s also the good news.

As long as there’s time on the clock, there’s hope. I don’t expect you or I will influence this election; the country is too far down that road, and perhaps not all the influential wild cards have been played. But we can influence the winner afterward, so long as that winner has a modicum of sense and so long as the evidence — megastorms, megadroughts — is incontrovertibly in front of her.

Come and see (full film)

Иди и смотри 1 серия




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDq9fL--Avw















V

Mladen Dolar: Between the One and the Two: Body and Alterity, part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEGbQi9nYdE&list=PL6Ma-dhtWIRTI05ofCMhfIvzszFPpPNib

The Quiet Desperation of Millennials

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/the-quiet-desperation-of-millennials.html

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Yves Smith

Even though Lambert and I dislike the use of marketer-created generational cohorts like Gen Y and Gen X, because age groups do not have political agency and the range of experiences within a group will be greater than across groups, a survey of 1200 Millennials by Ernst & Young and Economic Innovation Group shows how precarious their economic condition is. Admittedly, that is a long-standing feature of young adult life that is seldom discussed in polite, as in posturing-as-successful company. I recall two successful professionals in their 40s recounting how they lived paycheck to paycheck, on pasta, in their early-post college years, fearful that a personal emergency would leave them destitute (neither had relatives in the wings to bail them out; one was from a desperately poor family whose escape depended in part from someone making sure she got elocution lessons so as to eradicate her class markers; the other was estranged from his family by virtue of having come out). But for most college educated young adults in the post-World-War-II era, prior to the crisis, lean years in their 20s were a transition period, not a permanent status.

By contrast, this study shows that quiet desperation is a state of life for most Millennials. While the shock of the financial crisis did enormous damage to many people in all age groups, as anyone who lost their home to foreclosure will attest, Millennials faced a job market that left even normally-always employable new college grads out of work or employed at well below their potential as baristas, temps, or in low-level retail jobs. This has a huge impact on their lifetime earnings, not only by depressing income in their early years, but even when they find better-paid work, even then putting them on a lower income track than those that landed higher-quality roles straight out of school.

Read this short but important survey in full; it gives a grim picture. I’ve highlighted a few findings below (emphasis original).

Coming of age during a historic economic downturn has severely impacted Millennial life

30 percent of respondents live with their parents, which rises to 40 percent for single respondents.

Nearly one­-third believe their local community is still in a recession.

Stress levels run high for Millennials

78 percent of Millennials are worried about having good-­paying job opportunities.

74 percent are worried they won’t be able to pay their healthcare bills if they get sick.

79 percent are worried they will not have enough money to live on when they retire.

Only 6 percent of Millennials feel they are making a lot more than required to cover basic needs. For Millennial women, the figure is only 3 percent.

63 percent would have difficulty covering an unexpected $500 expense.

44 percent would dedicate $5,000 in lottery winnings to paying off bills and loans, signaling a struggle to launch, save, and invest.

One of the things I found sad is the degree to which Millennials have bought into societal hype about entrepreneurship. Historically, the most common trait of an entrepreneur was that he’d been fired twice.

The idolization of entreprenuership has bolstered the bogus idea that it’s a reasonable employment option for many people. I’ve heard far too many adults who’ve spent their lives on a paycheck argue that people who’ve lost their jobs should go out and create their own work.

As someone who has been in business for myself for 27 years, I can tell you that anyone who has a decent gig and can manage corporate politics should seriously question the idea of going out on their own. Independence comes at a very high price. Having a company take care of the large amount of grunt work in running a business, as well as considerably buffering your downside risk (like draining your savings and retirement accounts to keep a listing business going, as I’ve seen way too many people do), is worth a lot. As a colleague put it, “The difference between being self employed and unemployed is fine indeed.”

The myth that lot of people can sally forth and start a venture that will provide them a decent living serves as a convenient excuse for the failure to create enough jobs. Very few people have the temperament and mix of skills and experience (and luck) to make a go on their own. 90% of all new businesses fail within three years. And it’s also hard to make partnerships work.

Yet Millennials romanticize entreprenuers as successes when the data consistently shows that most fail:

Few Millennials may be starting businesses of their own, but the generation deeply admires entrepreneurs

Millennials overwhelmingly (78 percent) consider entrepreneurs successful

62 percent of Millennials have considered starting their own business.

55 percent believe their generation is more entrepreneurial than past ones, even if the data say otherwise.

The biggest obstacle keeping Millennials from starting their own business is money

42 percent of Millennials lament that they don’t have the financial means to start a business.

Across demographics, white men are least concerned with finance, with only 40 percent citing it as the biggest obstacle compared to 53 percent for black women and 59 percent for Hispanic women.

While it may seem rational for Millennials, faced with a crappy job market and short job tenures, to try to pull themselves by their bootstraps, they much less likely to succeed than others who launch new ventures.

The most common characteristic of successful entrepreneurs, per extensive research by Professor Amar Bhide in his classic book, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, is that via their experience working for others, they’d identified a niche that was underserved and started a business to fill the gap. Young people with no or little business experience are unlikely to have the opportunity, on someone else’s nickel, to get a sense of how an industry works and identify opportunities. Nor will they have had much opportunity to learn other skills, like negotiating, qualifying suppliers, vetting and hiring professional services providers, and managing subordinates.

Nevertheless, despite the considerable distress of many Millennials, many are still hopeful about the longer term. While people have a remarkable capacity to endure, one has to wonder how long Millennials will remain acquiescent if most of them continue to languish economically while the top 10% and higher income strata continue to accumulate more income and wealth at the expense of the rest of us.