by Nick Paleologos
Hillary Clinton has all but formally won the Democratic
nomination for president – a historic achievement. The good news for her is
that she’ll have my vote in November. That bad news for me is that she knows
it. The only question remaining is how soon—if ever—will she make an earnest
effort to prevent those of us who were “Feeling The Bern” from feeling just
plain burned?
For openers, she’s got to loose the attitude that the
Sanders wing of the party is made up of hopelessly unrealistic idealists. It is
not. Many of us who were fueling Bernie’s campaign with an occasional
five-dollar contribution, are middle class baby boomers who are furious at Wall
Street – and for good reason. Wall Street raped us. Callously. Painfully. Unapologetically.
Worse still, the perpetrator has not only avoided jail time but has brazenly
taken our friend Hillary out on several very
expensive dates.
At the very least we expect her to show some remorse for
that misstep, and to pledge that it will never happen again. She’s done
neither. That’s a problem. And invoking President Obama’s coziness to Wall
Street as a defense for her own indifference to appearances is also
unacceptable. Obama’s failure to deal more harshly with those who crashed our
economy and crippled America’s middle class, continues to be the largest stain
on his otherwise stellar presidency.
Hillary’s tone is very important. For example, on the issue of
universal background checks she has exhibited genuine, heartfelt outrage at the
major roadblock to progress—the NRA. When she speaks of fixing that problem, she’s not qualifying her
position. To her credit she is firm, forthright, and unequivocal. The parents
and loved ones of all those needlessly dead kids—as well as the rest of
right-thinking America—will be better off for her sincere advocacy.
We need to hear that same passion from her about Wall
Street’s transgressions. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not crazy
commies. They clearly see what the rest of America is rapidly discovering. The
dragon that is Wall Street -- with the unconscionable assistance of our elected
leaders -- has broken free of the chains placed upon it in the aftermath of the
Great Depression, and for more than three decades has ravaged the economic
landscape of middle class America.
In 1980, Wall Street radically changed its mission and focus
from investing in the production and exchange of goods, to the unregulated buying and selling of
assets. Restrictions on S&L’s? Gone. Rules to stabilize mortgage markets?
Gone. Let corporations buy back their own shares to raise stock prices? No
problem. Allow hostile takeovers of established companies using massive new
borrowing? Sure. And while we’re at it, why not make all that debt deductable
as a business expense under the corporate tax code? Yeah. That’s the ticket.
What could possibly go wrong?
In just the first decade of all that deranged deregulation,
one third of America’s Fortune 500 companies ceased to exist. The ones that
were left standing completely abandoned any and all deference to: long-term
growth; worker well-being; customer satisfaction; and community responsibility.
Instead, they slavishly devoted themselves to a single goal, short-term
shareholder returns. In that relentless quarterly pursuit, greedy CEO’s and unscrupulous
financiers got rich beyond their wildest dreams, while average workers—those
who didn’t get laid off--saw no pay increases at all for decades.
And as a rotten little cherry on top, the entire accumulated
home equity of America’s middle class--literally trillions of dollars--was wiped out overnight.
In 1982, Forbes Magazine first published their list of the
400 wealthiest Americans. Their combined net worth (in current dollars) was
$225 billion. That year, the list contained only two billionaires. By 2014,
every single member of the Forbes 400 was a billionaire. And that still left
out another 115 billionaires who didn’t make the cutoff—which was $1.55
billion. The combined net worth of the 2014 Forbes 400 was $2.3 trillion, or ten times what it was in 1982 – after adjusting
for inflation.
We’re not asking Hillary to slay that dragon, just to put
the chains back on so it will once again work for us and not against
us. Back in January, Hillary said, “I’m not interested in ideas that look good
on paper but can’t work in reality.” Memo to the Presumptive Democratic Nominee
for President: “Fairness” is one of America’s best ideas, and it works both on
paper and in reality.
