Wall Street tycoons advise Democrats that the UK elections show people hate it when you say mean things about banks

SALON

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 07:59 AM EDT

The delicate flowers of Wall Street: Financial titans warn Hillary to be mindful of their feelings

Wall Street tycoons advise Democrats that the UK elections show people hate it when you say mean things about banks

Simon Maloy

Topics: Politico, Wall Street, financial industry, big banks, Hillary Clinton, 2016 Elections, ed miliband, U.K. Government, Labour Party, Elizabeth Warren, Income inequality, Business News, Politics News

Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster/Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Photo montage by Salon)

There is no commodity more precious, more delicate, more vulnerable to lasting and irreparable harm than the feelings of a Wall Street executive. The titans of the financial industry have faced zero criminal liability for nearly destroying the economy in 2008, they still enjoy unrivaled influence over the policy platforms of both major political parties, and no one except Bernie Sanders even considers making a run for the president without hitting up the hedge fund managers for donations. Life is very, very good for the rich and powerful. But it isn’t quite good enough, in their view, largely because certain politicians are apt to say unflattering things about Wall Street.

Politico reported yesterday that, in the aftermath of the Tories’ unexpected rout of Labour in last week’s elections in the United Kingdom, Wall Street executives are warning Hillary Clinton and other Democrats that if they keep it up with the populism, then they’re going to meet the same fate as freshly resigned Labour Party leader Ed Miliband:

These bankers and their ideological supporters say if likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton keeps tacking to the left on Wall Street issues — as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, other progressive Democrats and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are demanding — she could wind up facing the same fate.

“[Prime Minister David] Cameron embraced the role of the financial sector in growing the U.K. economy and creating jobs, never once criticizing hedge funds, banks or the wealthy,” said a top executive at one of Wall Street’s largest firms. “Miliband ran against hedge funds and bankers, promising bonus and mansion taxes and lost big. Is that a lesson for Hillary as well?”

Is it? IS IT??? A few months ago we were told that the kings of Wall Street were none too perturbed with Hillary Clinton’s populist rhetoric because they largely understood that she has to say such things to win the Democratic nomination. In the meantime, they’d keep funneling cash to her campaign and trust that she wouldn’t make life too difficult for them once in office. Now that a politician somewhere in the world has lost badly while campaigning on a platform to attack inequality, they’re seizing the opportunity to make the case that populism is bad and that average people, deep down, carry the fire for hedge fund managers and recoil at the prospect of slightly higher tax rates on unearned wealth.

It’s an inspiring defense of the overly-maligned banks and the wealthy. And, of course, none of the wealthy people mounting that defense want their name attached to it because they’re afraid they’ll look bad, thus undermining the entire defense:

This executive, like several others who cited the U.K. election result as a warning to populists, declined to be identified by name or by firm for fear of eliciting a heavy backlash.

This is all part of the broader pathology of the masters of the financial universe in which they’ve so thoroughly convinced themselves of their own superiority that they feel they should be above criticism. As far as they’re concerned, populist anger at the banking industry is largely illusory, a campaign gimmick egged on by the media – after all, no one was ever prosecuted after the crash, so that means no one did anything wrong, right? And while they’re willing to allow a little populist posturing from the candidates they try to purchase, even a light wrist slap from someone like Hillary Clinton, who makes campaign-trail references to outrageous CEO salaries while also hitting up Goldman Sachs executives for contributions, can easily become too much to tolerate.

This overriding sense of self-importance of course leads them to believe that elections are won and lost based solely on who said what about the bankers. Again, from Politico:

“I would say that this is the second major election in a row where bank bashing no longer seems to move voters,” said a lobbyist for the banking industry. “Even where voters may continue to have anger about banks, other issues seem to be driving their votes. We saw that last year in the U.S., and now we seem to be seeing an echo in the U.K.”

Imagine that. A bank lobbyist believes anti-bank political rhetoric is a loser. No motivated reasoning there! Maybe it’s possible that voters in the U.K. decided to throw Miliband out on his [checks British-English dictionary] arse because he was too hostile toward the financial industry. It could also be that they thought he was a wanker and was not effective at tapping into the country’s overwhelming dissatisfaction with the banking system. Alternately, Miliband could be paying the long-deferred price for Tony Blair’s wankery. Whatever the reason, I’m not entirely sure it has much relevance to a presidential election that is still over a year away in a different country with a different political system.
But if you’re a self-absorbed Wall Street dimwit, the connection is clear: the British man criticized my friends, and the British people didn’t vote for him, so clearly this Elizabeth Warren type-stuff won’t play well in New Hampshire.

Simon Maloy is Salon's political writer. Email him at smaloy@salon.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SimonMaloy.

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

The Guardian  

Winner of the Pulitzer prize

Occupy movement

On making change

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

Naomi Wolf

 

Police used teargas to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

 


It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat":

"FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country."

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism":

"This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a "Bank Fraud Working Group" met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its "domestic terrorism" unit. The Anchorage, Alaska "terrorism task force" was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Mississippi "joint terrorism task force" was issuing a "counterterrorism preparedness alert" about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Mississippi, the FBI and the "Bank Security Group" – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to "National Bad Bank Sit-in Day" (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state's Occupy members' details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its "joint terrorism task force" aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the "longterm plans" of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.
There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people's income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one's personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a "terrorist organization" and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

• This article originally referred to a joint terrorism task force in Jackson, Michigan. This was amended to Jackson, Mississippi at 4pm ET on 2 January 2012


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Topics

• Occupy movement
• Occupy Wall Street
• US politics
• FBI
• US national security