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It doesn't necessarily take a prosecutor to block punishment. It also happens when you shelter a big bank from losses when you're supposed to execute a plan for mass mortgage relief.
Look who's babbling. Geithner blocked the punishment of JP Morgan, is now getting paid for it. Let's call it GARP... the Geithner Asset Relief Plan. If you had any clue, you realize we get what we deserve -- regulation of financial services by people anticipating its benefaction.
However out of context that clip is, it still shows 3 former super rich US Treasury Secretaries yucking it up over a faux pas about income inequality. The fact that they served 3 different administrations reveals that crony capitalism is indiscriminate. It wouldn't take much googling to discover that, while in office, all three men advocated wall-street-friendly policies that helped boost the pay for top bankers.
None of it was against the law, but what was all that about the regulators being captured by the financial services firms they were supposed to regulate? I'm sure Mr. Geithner got a reasonable rate on his loan... "whatever you want it to be Timmy" -- to be paid over the course of never...
DJ, thx
Not shocking at all
when one considers your cum laude stature from Haavard. Though duly impressed, my point was more to:
Nothing to see here. Certainly nothing shady going on...
Geithner Gets JPMorgan Credit Line to Invest With Warburg Pincus
by Miles Weiss & Kiel Porter
February 8, 2016
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is preparing to borrow from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to help fund his new career in private equity.
Geithner, 54, secured a credit line with JPMorgan, one of the largest banks he oversaw during the financial crisis, to finance personal investments in funds started by his current employer, Warburg Pincus, according to a filing with the New York Department of State. He is borrowing money to invest in a $12 billion private equity fund that the firm raised in November, its first main fund since he joined almost two years ago, a person familiar with the situation said.
Top private-equity managers are often expected to pony up many millions of dollars for their new funds, to show investors that their interests are aligned. Having worked for the government for most of his career, including as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner entered that high-stakes world with the earnings history of a government employee, albeit a high ranking one. By borrowing money, investors can also amplify -- or leverage -- the returns on their own capital.
“You are in a position to make 20 percent to 30 percent on your position in the fund,” said Tom Bernhardt, a senior vice president at TorreyCove Capital Partners, a San Diego-based private-equity consultant. “Why wouldn’t you buy in at Libor-plus to leverage that up,” he said, referring to the London Interbank Offered Rate, a common benchmark for setting the interest on many types of loans.
The regulatory filing doesn’t disclose the size of the loan or the financial terms, such as the interest rate. Warburg Pincus hasn’t said how much Geithner agreed to commit to the new fund, and the filing doesn’t say whether he made use of the credit line to finance it.
Mary Zimmerman, a spokeswoman for New York-based Warburg Pincus, declined to comment or make Geithner available. Officials for JPMorgan declined to comment.
Top Ranks
When raising a new fund, private-equity principals and their firms often commit their own money, in part to encourage outside investors to sign up. Such contributions amounted to a median 4.4 percent of the capital raised by funds last year, up from 2.5 percent in 2011, according to Preqin, a London-based data provider. Warburg Pincus and executives pledged $800 million to their twelfth fund, said the person familiar with the matter, or 6.7 percent of the $12 billion in total commitments that the firm had raised by November.
Warburg Pincus employed about 490 people at the end of 2014, but most of the money would typically come from mid- to high-level executives, including co-Chief Executive Officers Joseph Landy and Charles Kaye. As the president of Warburg Pincus, Geithner ranks just below Landy and Kaye on the firm’s organizational chart.
The company oversees about $40 billion that is invested in venture capital and early stage growth-companies as well as traditional buyouts.
Warburg Pincus executives including Landy, David Krieger and Peter Kagan have arranged credit lines in the past that permit them to borrow against their existing stakes in the firm’s funds and entities. Landy and Kagan both have credit lines with JPMorgan, while Krieger arranged the financing agreements with UBS Bank USA, a U.S. unit of Zurich-based UBS Group AG, according to separate filings made by the lenders with the state of New York.
‘Least Wealthy’
Geithner and several junior staff members, according to the person familiar with the matter, borrowed money to help meet their personal commitments to the new fund, Warburg Pincus Private Equity XII, which completed fundraising in November. JPMorgan filed documents with New York state in December that showed it was providing Geithner with a credit line to invest in Warburg Pincus funds.
Once described by CNN Money as “one of the least wealthy Treasury chiefs in recent history,” Geithner spent much of his life in public service, including stints at Treasury and the International Monetary Fund before taking the helm of the New York Fed in 2003.
Geithner had an estimated net worth of $3.2 million when he became Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama in 2009. His predecessor, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman Henry Paulson, was worth about $292 million when he took the post in 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C.
‘Dear Timmy’
While at the New York Fed, Geithner recruited a number of finance executives to join the board of directors of the reserve bank, arguing it needed to better reflect the composition of the financial system, according to his memoir “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” Among his recruits was Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, who served in that role from 2007 to 2012. The powers of the board do not extend to activities regarding supervision and regulation, according to the Fed bank’s bylaws.
Later, as Treasury secretary, Geithner oversaw the repayment of bailout funds that the nation’s banks received following the 2008 financial crisis. Dimon, whose bank had gotten $25 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, called the program a “scarlet letter” and pushed for a quick repayment.
“Dear Timmy, we are happy to be able to pay back the $25 billion you lent us,” Dimon said in June 2009 at a conference, reading from a mock letter to Geithner. “We hope you enjoyed the experience as much as we did.”
In addition to JPMorgan and UBS, other large banks with private wealth units, as well as dedicated private wealth managers, all make loans backed by fund interests. The rates on such loans range between Libor plus 150 basis points to Libor plus 450 basis points, said Zachary Barnett, global head of fund finance in the Chicago office of law firm Mayer Brown.
“Many banks look at these loans as a gateway to get more of the fund’s business,” Barnett said. “A multibillion dollar fund is going to be working with the bank a lot. To establish relationships with the fund’s principals is helpful.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/geithner-gets-jpmorgan-credit-line-to-invest-with-warburg-pincus
No patronizing intended... I don't like getting caught up in family squabbles. It seems to create a certain paranoia.
It sure sounded like you were looking for a link that pointed to Clinton's "signature on the final repeal." ... I was just trying to be helpful.
It was also presumptuous of me to add a [?] to your wonder statement... sorry, my bad.
But no where in there did I mention anything critical about Hillary or anything about Bernie's single-payer plan. Did you have a big day?... sounds like you're overwrought... what time is it down there?... get some rest and reread my post in the morning.
Clinton's signature was on the final repeal .. if you have links to any i'd love to see them
Will this work?
That's Bill signing the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, commonly called Gramm-Leach-Bliley
http://www.federalreservehistory.org/Events/DetailView/53
-- This legislation by all means, repealed the part of the Glass–Steagall that prohibited banks from using costumer bank deposits for speculative investments.
You'll find WJC's "E-signature" here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=56922
----------------------
As to your question -- i also wonder if any president, even one such as Bernie had been president in Clinton's time, would have pulled his signature in the deregulation-hyped climate back then [?]
Yes, I believe he would because Bernie has been trying, sometimes single-handed, to reign in wall street for at least 20 years. Here's a short vid of him in 1998:
Thanks, excel. I was listening to "It's Only a Game" and thought you might find interest in this...
(if you want to listen via media player)
http://audio.wbur.org/download.php?url=//audio.wbur.org/storage/2016/02/onlyagame_0206_dave-pear-nfl-concussions-injuries.mp3
Super Bowl Veteran Dave Pear: ‘It Just Wasn’t Worth It To Me’
By Alex Ashley
Dave Pear isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to see sacking a quarterback. He’s quiet, meek. Every step he takes seems to hurt. When I saw Dave 10 years ago, he was already using a cane once in a while.
As I step into the Pears’ home in Sammamish, Washington, a stone’s throw east of Seattle, Dave hands me a stack of paperwork — 30-something years of football history: photographs, ’70s football cards with his face on them and lots of medical records.
There was a time when he was counted among the NFL’s 10 strongest men.
“I was a pretty committed football player,” he says. “So, I was really big in getting physically fit to play. And then I’d work on my mental game by picturing myself playing football and doing well. So I expected to go into the NFL. So it really didn’t come as a surprise.”
Pear was drafted in 1975 by the Baltimore Colts and later played with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders.
“I remember in Tampa Bay when I’d sack the quarterback,” Pear says. “We could stand on ‘em. So I remember sacking the quarterback and standing on him and raising my hands up in the air. And 80,000 people screamed. The only thing that mattered at that time was the game. That was bigger than anything.
“It was really exciting. There were two things I wanted out of football: I wanted to play in the Pro Bowl, which I did with Tampa Bay, and the Super Bowl.”
But before he made it to the Super Bowl, Dave’s football career took a painful turn.
Playing Through The Pain
“Back in ‘79 here in Seattle, playing in the old King Dome, and I saw a player and I tackled him as hard as I could,” Dave says. “I ran about 20 yards and tackled him. It was like lightning was going down my back. I laid on the ground for a while, and I got up. And every time I moved it was just — I knew I hurt myself. And I thought I could shake it off, and I thought it would go away.
“Back then when you were hurt they’d just shoot you up, give you pills and you played. When you got a concussion, you came off the field, the trainer would hold up two fingers and he said, ‘How many do I got up?’ You’d say, ‘Three.’ He says, ‘Good enough. Go back in.'”
“I know he was in a lot of pain a lot of the time,” says Dave’s wife, Heidi. “I met Dave when I was in college. He worked hard. He didn’t party like all the football players. He kind of was more serious.”
She says after his injury at the King Dome, he just wasn’t the same.
“He was never able to return to football to the same recklessness, which was what made him really good,” she says.
But Dave was still good enough to see his second football dream come true. In 1981, his Raiders faced the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV.
After that game, Dave discovered that for two years — ever since that hard hit at the King Dome — he’d been playing with a broken neck. He’d need surgery to repair it.
“That’s when the Raiders released me. I went and saw [late Raiders owner] Al [Davis] and I told him, ‘I made some big plays for you in the Super Bowl. I’ve been playing with a broken neck for two years. And I put some diamonds on that ring that you’re wearing, and you can’t turn your back on me ’cause I’m going to the hospital to have surgery on my neck.’ But I never heard from him again.
“When I was released from the Raiders, I got nothing. I mean, they take your name off your locker, and you’re gone. And it’s like you have some kind of disease, and so no one wants to deal with you, OK?
“I’ve probably spent $600,000 of my own money on operations. I’ve had 13 surgeries. I’ve had a disc fused in my neck, three in my low back, two artificial hips. I just had my arm operated on six months ago. The NFL hasn’t paid for anything. $600,000 — that’s, back then, that’s what an all-pro nose tackle could make in about a six-year span. So I spent all my money and more on my injuries.”
Something Not Quite Right
Dave spent 25 years fighting the NFL over disability benefits. The league finally paid up. He was also the face of a 2008 class action lawsuit against the Players’ Association. A jury ruled that players who retired before 1993 had not been fairly represented.
Those players, Dave says, still don’t get medical benefits from the league. They don’t even get a cost-of-living increase in their pension.
“If you’re pre-1993, you got virtually nothing,” he says.
But then he pauses, confused.
“I lost track of where I was gonna go. I just — you know, I do that sometimes. I’m talking and then all of a sudden I just forget where I’m at, and then I gotta wait to kinda get back on track.”
“I wish he hadn’t played football,” Heidi says. “As time’s gone on, he’s very forgetful. And it’s frustrating because he remembers something, and I’ll say, ‘Nope, that’s not the way it was.’ Or I’ll say something, he’ll say, ‘That never happened.’ I mean, it’s kind of tough. But we all know where it comes from. But it doesn’t make it any easier.”
The “it” Heidi refers to started 15 years ago when Dave was in his 40s.
“I detected there was something wrong with Dave. I knew it wasn’t who he was. I knew there was something — there was something wrong. This just isn’t right. It took years for us to get to the bottom of it, and then when they started talking about the effects of head injuries and concussion syndrome and all that, then it all started making sense.”
Eventually, Heidi says, Dave was diagnosed with dementia. But even with a mind that is slowly crumbling, Pear hopes he can pass on the lessons he’s learned to the next generation.
“I mean, what I tell ‘em is, ‘Hey, look, save your money, because you’re gonna need every penny of it. And the NFL says they’re family? They’re not family. If you’re injured, then the game turns on ya, and you become a stepchild.’ It’s a violent, aggressive, kill-or-be-killed game.
“You can have a little short-term notoriety, maybe, if you’re good enough. But it just wasn’t worth it to me. It just was not worth it. All those diamonds on my Super Bowl ring, they just don’t glitter anymore.”
I think we all do John!
my sentiment too.
CAR-O 28-17 ... thx
Here's Why Your Asthma Inhaler Costs So Damn Much
Dr. Russell Saunders is pissed off:
As I’m sure comes as no surprise, I prescribe a lot of medications....One medication I prescribe with great frequency is albuterol, a bronchodilator. Asthma is a very common childhood illness, and one that primary care providers can often manage without consulting subspecialists.
....So I prescribe a lot of albuterol [inhalers]. Or rather, I would if they existed. Unfortunately, albuterol inhalers per se are not currently on the market. What my patients really get are prescriptions for Proventil or Ventolin or Proair. There are, at this time, precisely zero generic albuterol [inhalers] on the market.
The reason why there are none on the market and thus patients (or their insurance companies, if they are blessed with good coverage) are forced to pay for the name brands is contained in this horrifying and infuriating article about pharmaceutical pricing in the New York Times. If it does not make your blood boil, then I congratulate you for having a more even temperament than I.
I'm pretty sure that I don't have a more even temperament than Saunders, but I do have one advantage over him: I already knew what was going on with asthma inhalers even before Elisabeth Rosenthal's piece—the latest in her series about the high cost of American health care—appeared a few days ago.
Here's the short version of the story: as Saunders says, albuterol is a cheap medication because it went off patent long ago. Then, a few years ago, as part of the campaign to eliminate CFCs and save the ozone layer, CFC-based inhalers were set to be banned. Pharmaceutical companies took advantage of this to design new delivery systems and surround them with a thicket of patents. As a result, even though albuterol itself might be off patent, only name-brand asthma inhalers are available—and since there's now no generic competition the big pharmaceutical companies are free to jack up prices to their heart's content. And they have. After all, as Rosenthal points out, this isn't like acne medicine that you can do without if it costs too much. If you have asthma, you need an inhaler, period.
Is your blood boiling? Well, wait a bit. The story is actually even worse than this. You're probably thinking that what happened here is (a) overzealous environmentalists insisted on banning CFC inhalers even though they don't really have much impact on the ozone layer, and (b) pharmaceutical companies cleverly took advantage of this to suck some extra money out of asthma sufferers.
Well, the ozone layer was the initial cause of all this, so feel free to place some of the blame on environmentalists if you like. But as it turns out, scientists raised some early concerns about the inhaler ban because the replacement for CFCs was a powerful greenhouse gas. So they suggested that maybe it was better just to make an exception for asthma inhalers and let well enough alone. At that point, the pharmaceutical companies that had been eagerly waiting for the old inhalers to be banned went on the offensive. Nick Baumann picks up the story from there:
The pharma consortium transformed from primarily an R&D outfit searching for substitutes for CFC-based inhalers into a lobbying group intent on eliminating the old inhalers. It set up shop in the K Street offices of Drinker Biddle, a major DC law firm. Between 2005 and 2010, it spent $520,000 on lobbying. (It probably spent even more; as a trade group, it's not required to disclose all of its advocacy spending.) Meanwhile, IPAC lobbied for other countries to enact similar bans, arguing that CFC-based inhalers should be eliminated for environmental reasons and replaced with the new, HFC-based inhalers.
The lobbying paid off. In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an outright ban on many CFC-based inhalers starting in 2009. This June, the agency's ban on Aerobid, an inhaler used for acute asthma, took effect. Combivent, another popular treatment, will be phased out by the end of 2013.
In other words, pharmaceutical companies didn't just take advantage of this situation, they actively worked to create this situation. Given the minuscule impact of CFC-based inhalers on the ozone layer, it's likely that an exception could have been agreed to if pharmaceutical companies hadn't lobbied so hard to get rid of them. The result is lower-quality inhalers and fantastically higher profits for Big Pharma.
Rosenthal has a lot more detail in her piece about how the vagaries of patent law make this all even worse, and it's worth reading. But she misses the biggest story of all: none of this would matter if drug companies hadn't worked hard to make sure the old, cheap inhalers were banned. How's your blood doing now, Dr. Saunders?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/heres-why-your-asthma-inhaler-costs-so-damn-much
—By Kevin Drum Oct. 16, 2013
If HRC was a senator during that vote, she would not be attacking him on this point. He hasn't exactly explained why he voted this way, but he has made it clear he regrets it and since worked to close some of the loopholes that it created.
But rest assured HRC was doubtlessly behind the president who supported and signed the bill into law.
Dopey inane gibberish,
brought to you by the 3 blind mice...
Nice comeback, dumbass.
What difference does it make at this point? She made a paid speech for financial moguls behind closed doors. Aren't you curious to know what was said?
Judge for yourself, Stephanie.
Pure republican trope, faugf.
as to your last, "Bernie is no Obama"... that is a good thing!
I don't believe I need a source for such a supposition, F6. Everything in that statement is accurate. You know very well that any politician who stonewalls a simple but important request is hiding their true sentiment.
I am most certainly not "us" in the movement to codify the next doyen in this rigged process.
LOL... I hate to laugh, because I'm afraid her candidacy could be circling the drain if she is caught being as candid as Romney behind those closed doors.
So far HRC has not given good answers regarding WS $$$
Also, her resistance to releasing the Goldman Sachs speech transcripts apparently involves details similar to Mitt Romney's '47 Percent' bombshell that cost him the 2012 election.
Lower Drug Prices Without Saying No
Published: 02 February 2016
Margot Sanger-Katz had a NYT Upshot column arguing that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders plans to have Medicare negotiate drug prices ultimately won’t prove successful in lowering costs because Medicare can’t simply refuse to pay for a drug. There is much truth to this argument, but it is worth working through the dynamics a step further.
The reason why Medicare has to accept prices from a single drug company, as opposed to choosing among competing producers, is that the government gives drug companies patent monopolies on drugs. Under the rules of these monopolies, a pharmaceutical company can have competitors fined or even imprisoned, if they produce a drug over which the company has patent rights.
The granting of patent monopolies is a way that the government has chosen to finance research and development in pharmaceuticals. (It also spends more than $30 billion a year financing biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health.) It could opt for other methods of financing research.
For example, Bernie Sanders proposed a prize fund to buy the rights to useful drug patents, following a model developed by Joe Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist. Under this proposal, pharmaceutical companies would be paid for their research, but the drug itself could then be sold in a free market like most other products.
In this situation, almost all drugs would be cheap. We wouldn’t have to debate whether it was worth paying $100,000 or $200,000 for a drug that could extend someone’s life by 2–3 years. The drugs would instead cost a few hundred dollars, making the decision a no-brainer.
There are other mechanisms for financing the research. We could simply have the government finance clinical trials, after buying up the rights for promising compounds. In this case also approved drugs could be sold at free market prices.
There are undoubtedly other schemes that can be devised that pay for research without giving drug companies monopolies over the distribution of the drug. Obviously we do have to pay for the research, but we don’t have to use the current patent system. It is like paying the firefighters when they show up at the burning house with our family inside. Of course we would pay them millions to save our family (if we had the money), but it is nutty to design a system that puts us in this situation.
Anyhow, if we are having a debate on drug prices, we shouldn’t just be talking about how to get lower prices under the current system. We should also be talking about changing the system.
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/lower-drug-prices-without-saying-no
Addendum:
For those who want more background on the Sanders Bill, here are a few pieces from James Love at Knowledge Ecology International, who worked with Sanders' staff in drafting the bill.
http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/prizes_new_medicines_annals_healthlaw.pdf
http://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/issues/vol-82-no-3/
http://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/vol82no3/Love.pdf
Matsuyama, please...
as in - please don't turn into a pedestrian just because I picked you, Hideki
fuagf, I suppose you are responding to:
The Big Money and What It Means in Election 2016
Ted Cruz: Most “God-Fearing” Billionaires
Yes, it’s true the Texas senator “goofed” in neglecting to disclose to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) a tiny six-figure loan from Goldman Sachs for his successful 2012 Senate campaign. (After all, what’s half-a-million dollars between friends, especially when the investment bank that offered it also employed your wife as well as your finance chairman?) As The Donald recently told a crowd in Iowa, when it comes to Ted Cruz, “Goldman Sachs owns him. Remember that, folks. They own him.”
That aside, with a slew of wealthy Christians in his camp, Cruz has raised the second largest pile of money among the GOP candidates. His total of individual and PAC contributions so far disclosed is a striking $65.2 million. Of that, $14.28 million has already been spent. Individual contributors kicked in about a third of that total, or $26.57 million, as of the end of November 2015 -- $11 million from small donors and $15.2 million from larger ones.
Marco Rubio: Most Diverse Billionaires
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has raised $32.8 million from individual and PAC contributions and spent about $9 million. Despite the personal economic struggles he’s experienced and loves to talk about, he’s not exactly resonating with the nation’s downtrodden, hence his weak polling figures among the little people. Billionaires of all sorts, however, seem to love him.
The bulk of his money comes from super PACs and large contributors. Small individual contributors donated only $3.3 million to his coffers; larger individual contributions provided $11.3 million. Goldman Sachs leads his pack of corporate donors with $79,600.
His main super PAC, Conservative Solutions, has raised $16.6 million, making it the third largest cash cow behind those of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. It holds $5 million from Braman Motorcars, $3 million from the Oracle Corporation, and $2.5 million from Benjamin Leon, Jr., of Besilu Stables. (Those horses are evidently betting on Rubio.)
Jeb Bush: Most Disappointed Billionaires
Although the one-time Republican front-runner’s star now looks more like a black hole, the coffers of “Jeb!” are still the ones to beat. He had raised a total of $128 million by late November and spent just $19.9 million of it. Essentially none of Jeb’s money came from the little people (that is, us). Barely 4% of his contributions were from donations of $200 or less.
In terms of corporate donors, eight of his top 10 contributors are banks or from the financial industry (including all of the Big Six banks). Goldman Sachs (which is nothing if not generous to just about every candidate in sight -- except of course, Bernie) tops his corporate donor chart with $192,500. His super PACs still kick ass compared to those of the other GOP contenders. His Right to Rise super PAC raised a hefty $103.2 million and, despite his disappearing act in the polls, it remains by far the largest in the field.
Ben Carson: No Love For Billionaires
Ben Carson is running a pretty expensive campaign, which doesn’t reflect well on his possible future handling of the economy (though, as he sinks toward irrelevance in the polls, it seems as if his moment to handle anything may have passed). Having raised $38.7 million, he’s spent $26.4 million of it. His campaign received 63% of its contributions from small donors, which leaves it third behind Bernie and Trump on that score, according to FEC filings from October 2015.
His main super PACs, grouped under the title “the 2016 Committee,” raised just $3.8 million, with rich retired people providing the bulk of it. Another PAC, Our Children’s Future, didn’t collect anything, despite its pledge to turn "Carson’s outside militia into an organized army."
Chris Christie: Most Sketchy Billionaires
For someone polling so low, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has amassed startling amounts of dosh. His campaign contributions stand at $18.6 million, of which he has spent $5.7 million. Real people don’t care for him. Christie has received the least number of small contributions in either party, a bargain basement 3% of his total.
On the other hand, his super PAC, America Leads, raised $11 million, including $4.3 million from the securities and investment industry. His top corporate donors at $1 million each include Point 72 Asset Management, the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, and Winnecup Gamble Ranch, run by billionaire Paul Fireman, chairman of Fireman Capital Partners and founder and former chairman of Reebok International Ltd.
Steven Cohen, worth about $12 billion and on the Christie campaign's national finance team, founded Point 72 Asset Management after being forced to shut down SAC Capital, his former hedge-fund company, due to insider-trading charges. SAC had to pay $1.2 billion to settle.
Donald Trump: I Am A Billionaire
Trump’s campaign has received approximately $5.8 million in individual contributions and spent about the same amount. Though not much compared to the other Republican contenders, it’s noteworthy that 70% of Trump’s contributions come from small individual donors (the highest percentage among GOP candidates). It’s a figure that suggests it might not pay to underestimate Trump’s grassroots support, especially since he’s getting significant amounts of money from people who know he doesn’t need it.
On The Democratic Side:
Hillary Clinton: A Dynasty of Billionaires
Hillary and Bill Clinton earned a phenomenal $139 million for themselves between 2007 and 2014, chiefly from writing books and speaking to various high-paying Wall Street and international corporations. Between 2013 and 2015, Hillary Clinton gave 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private equity firms, and other financial corporations, pocketing a whopping $2,935,000. And she’s used that obvious money-raising skill to turn her campaign into a fundraising machine.
As of October 16, 2015, she had pocketed $97.87 million from individual and PAC contributions. And she sure knows how to spend it, too. Nearly half of that sum, or $49.8 million -- more than triple the amount of any other candidate -- has already gone to campaign expenses.
Small individual contributions made up only 17% of Hillary’s total; 81% came from large individual contributions. Much like her forced folksiness in the early days of her campaign when she was snapped eating a burrito bowl at a Chipotle in her first major meet-the-folks venture in Ohio, those figures reveal a certain lack of savoir faire when it comes to the struggling classes.
Bernie Sanders: No Billionaires Allowed
Bernie Sanders has stuck to his word, running a campaign sans billionaires. As of October 2015, he had raised an impressive $41.5 million and spent about $14.5 million of it.
None of his top corporate donors are Wall Street banks. What’s more, a record 77% of his contributions came from small individual donors, a number that seems only destined to grow as his legions of enthusiasts vote with their personal checkbooks.
Posted by Nomi Prins. January 31, 2016. at TomDispatch
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176097/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_the_big_money_and_what_it_means_in_election_2016/
note: these are just snippets... the article is a tad long, but very good... Nomi knows from where she speaks!
NOW can we start QE4?
How Change Actually Happens
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently echoed the argument of too many pundits, elected officials and some of my good friends that Bernie Sanders is too radical and his goals too idealistic to be electable, or, even, to enjoy legislative success if he is.
They’re wrong.
I remember a conversation I had about seven years ago with an erstwhile friend of mine who was consulting with the Obama White House on health care. He told me that they were using focus groups to determine what health care proposals they could sell to the American public. That seemed backwards to me. I asked him why they didn’t first determine what the best proposal was, and then use the focus groups to figure out how to best sell it to the American public.
He quickly dismissed my question. His argument: I just didn’t understand how politics work (never mind that I had spent years working in Congress and elsewhere in public policy). Like Krugman, he believed in accepting the terms of a debate rather than in reframing issues, as Bernie does.
Unfortunately, Republicans get why this approach is misguided. Packaging and sales can make or break an initiative or a candidate. Remember the sales pitch that candidate George W. Bush was a “compassionate conservative?” Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, recognized as lies at the time, which effectively distorted John Kerry’s record as a war hero? Going back much further, President Harry Truman’s proposal for national health care in 1948, overwhelmingly popular at the time, fell victim to negative messaging from the first-ever political consulting firm.
How politicians and the media frame issues plays an essential role in how the public responds. Bernie is competitive in the polls, and his campaign is generating excitement among many voters (both young and old) around the country, because he understands this point. We don’t rebuild and strengthen the middle class, which is the foundation of a strong democracy, by refusing to think big. We do it by building a movement, and that starts with unapologetic advocacy for policies that help people.
Consider the bailouts during the Great Recession. President Obama, top economic adviser Lawrence Summers, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should have declared that government’s top priority was to help individuals hold on to their homes (which are the largest part of middle-income wealth). The right “sales pitch” with the right vision might have toppled Congressional opposition. (I write “might” because we can’t know – they didn’t try.)
Instead of helping individual homeowners directly, the government bailed out (most of) the major financial institutions. And held none of the offending executives and CEO’s of these institutions personally accountable. Meanwhile, millions of Americans lost their homes and had to rebuild their lives from scratch.
In the same way that many well-meaning people believe that Bernie Sanders is “unelectable” (even though he has won 14 elections thus far in his life), many argue that a stimulus program focused on individual homeowners was not possible: the President and the Democrats who supported that approach could not have convinced others to rebuild from the bottom up. I disagree. President Obama did not take hold of the narrative and “sell” the best policies for the country. That’s why his solutions turned out to be Band Aids, not the fundamental moves away from the Reagan/Clinton/Bush “assault” on middle-class and poor families that we desperately need.
Bernie, on the other hand, would fight for good policy ideas. “Medicare for All,” free higher education, a $15 minimum wage, comprehensive immigration reform, addressing climate change, a focus on rebuilding our deteriorating infrastructure – these ideas would all strengthen the foundation of our country (literally, at least in the case of infrastructure!). Importantly, though it may surprise Krugman et al., Bernie has a long record of translating such ideas into government policy that helps people. As Eliza Webb summarizes over at Salon:
[Sanders] has combined what Krugman aptly terms “high-minded” leadership with deft policy-making, fiscal judiciousness with social liberalism, the agenda of the Republicans with the agenda of the Democrats, and strong purpose with clever bargains, to bring forth genuine, bona fide, palpable, honest-to-goodness change for the American people.
The dictionary defines radical as “very different from the usual or traditional.” So perhaps Bernie and his ideas are radical. With this “radical” candidate, we finally have a leader who is willing to shatter the conventional narrative and propose solutions that might actually make a difference.
Debbie Spielberg
http://34justice.com/
I like Honest Gil's candidacy; he's tanned, rested, and ready to serve - not to mention his proposal that all Mondays be paid holidays, so that instead of working people can shop.
Neil is good at math...
http://www.skeptical-science.com/politics/neil-degrasse-tyson-guns-statistics/
I'll bet Les never had a team that ever executed it as flawlessly.
The onside kick lead to breaking a 21-21 tie.
I believe the whole team saw and realized the brilliant execution on that high risk play. Besides taking the momentum away from Clemson, they got the idea that they could also execute their own jobs more like that.
Rickie Fowler
In that case, I'll take Jason Day.
Oops. Nix that... I'll have to get back to ya.