Trump's Wall Streeting

[anaturalwoman]

Rollingstone has excellent articles --and concise, pointed, online videos too Matt Taibbi is great, and sometimes hosts for Thom Hartmann, when he's away. I've excerpted from a recent piece of Matt's.

Marcia


Extreme Vetting, But Not for Banks
By Matt Taibbi
February 3, 2017

"Trump's approach to Wall Street is in sharp contrast to his tough-talking stances on terrorism. He talks a big game when slamming the door on penniless refugees, but curls up like a beach weakling around guys who have more money than he does. ..."


"Trump's "extreme vetting" plan for immigrants and refugees is based upon a safety argument – i.e., that the smallest chance of a disaster justifies the most extreme measures. Infamously this week, administration spokesdunce Kellyanne Conway resorted to citing a disaster that never even happened – the "Bowling Green Massacre" – as a justification for the crazy visa policy...."

"This makes Trump's embrace of the Mortgage Crash Dream Team as his advisory panel for how to make Wall Street run more smoothly all the more preposterous. ..."

"...This is the same Jamie Dimon about whom Trump said today, "There's nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie Dimon, so thank you, Jamie." .... The enduring lesson of the financial crisis is that in markets as complex as this one, the most extreme danger is in opacity. The big problem is that these egomaniacal Wall Street titans want markets as opaque as possible. .. ."

"This is why they want to get rid of the fiduciary rule, because they don't think it's anyone's business if they choose to bet against their clients (as Cohn's Goldman famously did), or overcharge them, or otherwise screw them."

"...Trump – a man who doesn't want you to see what's going on underneath his hair, let alone in his books – naturally sympathizes with Wall Street's efforts to keep the markets opaque."

See full article here