Showing posts with label Michael Hudson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Hudson. Show all posts

Apr 15, 2016

Hillary Clinton Adopts Citizens United in Defense of Her Wall Street Millions

Hillary Clinton was paid $2.9 Million from 12 speeches
to huge banks, (Zaid, Jilani, The Intercept). Money for
nothing, assures Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton declined again last night to release her transcripts for talks to Wall Street for which Clinton was paid $2.9 million.

In fact in last night's debate Clinton refused to acknowledge the question posed twice by CNN's Dana Bash, who limited her question to the mere $100,000s for which Clinton was paid by Goldman Sachs.

CNN's DANA BASH: Secretary Clinton, if I may, Senator Sanders keeping bringing up the speeches that you gave to Goldman Sachs. So I'd like to ask you, so you've said that you don't want to release the transcripts, until everybody does it, but if there's nothing in those speeches that you think would change voters' minds, why not just release the transcripts and put this whole issue to bed?

CLINTON: You know, let's set the same standard for everybody. When everybody does it, OK, I will do it ... .

SANDERS: Well, let me respond. Secretary Clinton, you just heard her, everybody else does it, she'll do it. I will do it.
(APPLAUSE)
I am going to release all of the transcripts of the speeches that I gave on Wall Street behind closed doors, not for $225,000, not for $2,000, not for two cents. There were no speeches. ... (CNN Transcript of Democratic Debate)
---
Now, as Glenn Greenwald notes: The "key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money: 'Expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption' — at least when the candidate in question is Hillary Clinton," (The Intercept).

In other developments, Michael Hudson, Bill Black and Jaisal Noor have an exclusive at Countpunch revealing why Bernie Sanders is right about breaking up the banks, and the New York Daily News is a sham.

Mar 30, 2009

Cockburn Skewers Geithner and Others

Update: John Judis ask in TNR "Are Banks Controlling Obama?" Sure seems that way. Let's call for an accounting of what went wrong, again. The culprits are greed, political complicity, and no safety net for the great mass of people who comprise our country.

Alexander Cockburn seems to blast everyone in this weekend's posting on CounterPunch (though Cockburn calling Paul Krugman or anyone else stylistically "pompous" is ridiculous).

Worthy of mention is the fact that CounterPunch is among the very few journals that tells the ugly truth about the global financial meltdown, and Cockburn points out that Krugman is almost uniquely positioned in the corporate media to offer ongoing analyses.


...In his official obituary for the bank bail-out scheme, published in the Times on (last) Monday – the same day as the scheme’s official birth -- Krugman announced somberly that 'This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.'

Yes, this does sound a bit pompous, even though Krugman is a crisp columnist. As connoisseurs of the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf and other prominent economic Cassandras down the decades know well, there’s nothing like a widely-read economics column to induce a tone of self-importance in the author. 'I’m concerned about Europe,' Krugman began a column grandly a few weeks ago.

By this week’s end Krugman was conclusive in judgement. 'I don’t think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don’t believe it should try.'

Far more acrid have been CounterPunch’s A-team of economic commentators – starring former assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Hudson, Pam Martens, Michael Whitney, Peter Morici and other contributors too numerous for individual mention.