The press has tried time and time again to get the speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Wall Street in her paid appearances before Goldman Sachs, but there is an article that was written about the reaction that Wall Street insiders had towards Hillary Clinton when she came to speak to them in 2013.
Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy—it needs to stop. And indeed Goldman’s Tim O’Neill, who heads the bank’s asset management business, introduced Clinton by saying how courageous she was for speaking at the bank. (Brave, perhaps, but also well-compensated: Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000).
The titans of Wall Street liked what Hillary Clinton had to say to them. She was soothing, conciliatory, and certainly did not “tell them to cut it out” about their part in the financial crisis that ruined millions of homeowners, turned homes underwater, and preyed on minorities with deceptive banking practices.
The worry on Wall Street is about how far to the left Clinton might have to drift to appease what’s been proclaimed the “Warren wing of the Democratic Party”—the vocal populists buoyed by Elizabeth Warren’s tough critiques of Wall Street greed, as well as by the recent election of liberal Mayor Bill de Blasio on their New York home turf. According to people in Clinton’s extended circle, John Podesta—the former White House chief of staff under her husband who this week joined the Obama White House for a year-long stint—was poised to work with Hillary Clinton on her messaging on income inequality, a role he seems less likely to fill while he's in government. Still, some say fears that Clinton will end up alienating financial sector donors the way Obama has, even if she tacks left, are overblown. “Wall Street folks are so happy about [having Clinton run] that they won’t care what she says,” says one well-placed Democrat.
And if the banking class is delighted with Clinton lately, the feeling appears mutual. In Manhattan last week, Clinton sat down with the Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein for their second question-and-answer session in the last two months. Unlike the first one, held for his private equity firm’s investor conference, this was a more public appearance, part of a program honoring the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Clinton easily regaled the well-heeled crowd with stories from her past before Rubenstein ended their half-hour chat with a joke about her future: Would she be interested in joining a private equity firm?
Wall Street loves Hillary Clinton, and she sure loves them. They know that her populist talk against Wall Street is just hot air, and not to be taken seriously. They are looking forward to another Clinton administration that is friendly to them just as Bill Clinton’s administrations was. It is very much the height of naivete to believe that Hillary Clinton, the recipient of thousands of dollars in speaking fees and donations from Wall Street, will actually do anything to rein in Wall Street and protect the middle class once she is in office.
Once she gets into the White House, hello to the passing of the TPP, hello to more deregulation of Wall Street, hello to the rampant greed from corporations that further imperils Americans, and….in short, a Hillary Clinton administration is not one that works for Main Street, but works happily for Wall Street. It’s what they expect of her anyways, and after all, money talks.
Wall Street does not fear Hillary Clinton for she is one of them.
