A Gamble That Paid Off: When Bernie Was Riding High, Wall St. Saw A Distressed Asset In Biden-- And Bought Low

The Republican wing of the Democratic Party lined up behind Biden early, though it wasn't enough to animate his DOA campaign-- not until Obama stepped in and told the party establishment the enough time had been wasted and that Bernie could win and take away everything they had built for themselves if they don't unite behind Biden. So they did. Was anyone surprised? Was anyone surprised when Republican elites started flocking to Biden-- first in a trickle and now in a steady stream?

So why would anyone be surprised that Biden-- who has spent his entire career in politics fellating Wall Street-- would be embraced by the banksters and junior-banksters who were FDR's and the working class' sworn enemies but have been assiduously cultivated by the Bill Clinton breed of Democrats?

Over the weekend, the NY Times published a piece by Kate Kelly, Shane Goldmacher and Thomas Kaplan, The Wallets of Wall Street Are With Joe Biden, if Not the Hearts that will thrill many Democrats and chill many others. The story barely mentions Bernie-- just once when he and Elizabeth Warren were dismissed-- but Bernie, fear of Bernie to be precise, was the impetus for Biden's rise among the financial elites. This story though is about how Trump is pushing Wall Street into the Biden camp. After donating millions to Biden to beat Bernie, that money "helped him build a strong lead in national polls." But with the threat of Bernie off the table, what would Wall Street do next?

"Wall Street," wrote the Times trio, "has fared extraordinarily well under Mr. Trump: deep cuts to taxes, slashed regulations and, until the pandemic hit, record stock prices. But in recent months, dozens of bankers, traders and investors said in interviews, a sense of outrage and exhaustion over Mr. Trump’s chaotic style of governance-- accelerated by his poor coronavirus response-- had markedly shifted the economic and political calculus in their industry. More and more finance professionals, they say, appear to be sidelining their concerns about Mr. Biden’s age-- 77-- and his style. They are surprisingly unperturbed at the likelihood of his raising their taxes and stiffening oversight of their industry. In return, they welcome the more seasoned and methodical presidency they believe he could bring. They may not exactly be falling in love with Mr. Biden. But they are falling in line." And they know that the raising won't be too high and the stiffening won't be too painful. Biden said so himself. He's not called Status Quo Joe just because it rhymes.

Now... ready for silly?

“I’ve seen meaningful numbers of people put aside what would appear to be their short-term economic interest because they value being citizens in a democracy,” said Seth Klarman, founder of the hedge fund Baupost. A longtime independent, Mr. Klarman was at one point New England’s biggest giver to the Republican Party. But in this cycle, he has given $3 million to groups supporting Mr. Biden.

Or as James Attwood, a managing director at the Carlyle Group and a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, put it, “For people who are in the business of hiring and firing C.E.O.s, Donald Trump should have been fired a while ago.” (Mr. Attwood contributed $200,000 in June to the Biden Action Fund, a joint committee with the Democratic National Committee.)

In May and June alone, the Biden Action Fund raised more than $11.5 million. That tally-- a good measuring stick for Wall Street support because it was set up in part to draw contributions from that industry-- included $710,000 from Josh Bekenstein, a co-chair of Bain Capital, and his wife.

But Wall Street money has proved to be a double-edged sword for Democrats, as Hillary Clinton discovered when she was hounded four years ago for delivering private speeches to Goldman Sachs and other firms. Progressive voters and activists-- many of whom backed Mr. Biden’s more liberal rivals in the primary-- are particularly leery of any appearance of coziness with the finance industry.

Leery... imagine that! Why would progressives be leery of the working class' historical enemies? Everything that is wrong with the world... follow the money. Our Times trio wrote that when asked about Wall Street’s role in Biden’s current bid, the campaign spits out all the Biden bullshit about how he fights for the common man, which is quite at odds with his repulsive record of fighting against the common man. Our trio hates Trump so they refrain from noting that although they reluctantly admit that "As a senator from Delaware, Mr. Biden has for decades had relationships with credit-card companies there, but less of a presence in the financial power center of New York. He has counted a small circle of finance executives as supporters. Marc Lasry, the co-founder of Avenue Capital, for example, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden during his first run for president in 1988, and continues to back him now. The former hedge-fund executive Eric Mindich and the short-seller James Chanos have been supporters from well before the pandemic began. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Biden has also not crusaded against Wall Street, the way his primary rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did. Financial executives mostly seem to believe that while their taxes would rise in a Biden administration, they would not be subjected to the kind of 'fat cat' rhetoric that soured some of their relationships with former President Barack Obama." Feel better now? How about this then? "'Rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,' Mr. Biden told donors at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan last year. At a Brookings Institution gathering in 2018, he said, 'I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.'" Biden is wrong; they are.

Biden’s more benign stance toward the finance industry has provoked skepticism among advocates for stricter regulation. “When the candidate doesn’t have a clear plan on something like Wall Street reform, it tilts the playing field toward what is probably the most powerful industry in the world,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group. “We need more than ‘not Trump appointees’ when it comes to financial regulation.”

While Wall Street financiers tend to be more socially liberal, they have collectively swung back and forth between parties. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics show the securities and investment community donating more to President George W. Bush in 2004, and then to Mr. Obama in 2008, and then to Mitt Romney in 2012, followed by Mrs. Clinton in 2016, than to their respective presidential rivals.

This year, it’s Mr. Biden. Financial industry cash flowing to Mr. Biden and outside groups supporting him shows him dramatically out-raising the president, with $44 million compared with Mr. Trump’s $9 million.

Last month, multiple Wall Street bundlers, including Alan Leventhal, the chief executive of Beacon Capital; Nat Simons, who runs a clean-tech investment fund; and Mr. Gray, Blackstone’s president, held virtual fund-raisers for Mr. Biden. The giving has been so robust that the Biden campaign is now asking for at least $1 million in donations before it will confirm the former vice president’s attendance at an event, say bundlers.

As the checks roll in, the Biden campaign has been carefully cultivating its relationship with the business community, with a focus on Wall Street. The outreach has included offering private briefings ahead of major policy rollouts and dangling various donor packages for the upcoming, and mostly virtual, Democratic National Convention.

In one call last month, two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers on financial policy, Ben Harris and Jake Sullivan, led a wide-ranging conversation to preview the candidate’s economic plan, which focuses on broad policy initiatives like investing in green infrastructure projects and minority-owned businesses. Two former Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Jacob J. Lew, were part of the call.

Several major Wall Street executives and investors were also present, including Blair Effron, co-founder of the financial advisory firm Centerview Partners; Penny Pritzker, a fund-raiser and former commerce secretary; David Cohen, a top Biden bundler and Comcast executive; and Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google.

...[H]ow Mr. Biden might affect their wallets is still a major concern for industry executives who aggressively fought the implementation of new regulations after the financial crisis of 2008. Some in the business community have suggested tweaks to the former vice president’s tax and economic policies in ways that might soften the impact for companies.

At a separate July meeting with campaign staffers and a handful of Wall Street participants, Charles Phillips, chairman of the software company Infor and a onetime Morgan Stanley tech analyst, argued that Mr. Biden shouldn’t make huge expenditures on infrastructure and other new programs without also identifying spending cuts. “We can fund some of this by getting more efficient and getting rid of waste that no one will miss,” Mr. Phillips recalled saying. He said he also argued for a simpler tax code with a corporate rate lower than Mr. Biden’s proposed 28 percent.

In addition to those watching the policy details, many financiers are closely attuned to Mr. Biden’s selection of a running mate, arguing that they might reconsider their votes if he were to choose someone like Ms. Warren, whose campaign sold coffee mugs that read “Billionaire Tears” in a nod to her proposed wealth tax on the superrich.

Some in the finance industry are concerned about Ms. Warren’s emergence as an informal policy adviser, and the possibility that she could be installed as Treasury secretary.

Mr. Biden’s policy platform on the issues affecting Wall Street’s most affluent players has been relatively sparse. He has proposed a series of tax increases on businesses and on wealthy individuals, including raising the top marginal income tax rate and taxing capital gains as ordinary income for the richest Americans. But he has not embraced a wealth tax like Ms. Warren’s, nor has he rolled out any kind of detailed policy plan focused on financial regulation.

Since Mr. Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, the campaign has appointed Rufus Gifford, a former finance director for the 2012 Obama campaign, as a deputy campaign manager overseeing the money operation nationwide. Mr. Gifford is in regular touch with Wall Street donors, coordinating a slew of virtual fund-raisers and discussing campaign issues with deep-pocketed financiers.

In recent meetings with donors, Mr. Biden has said that while the wealthy are going to have to “do more,” the details of his tax hikes are still being hammered out, according to someone who has attended multiple fund-raisers but requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. At a virtual fund-raiser held in July, the candidate spoke of the need for corporate America to “change its ways.” But the solution, he said, would not be legislative.

Back in February, Mr. Biden had taken a precious day off the trail to collect a critical $800,000 at two New York fund-raisers, including the one Mr. Gray co-hosted. “You’re putting me in a position to be able to be very competitive,” Mr. Biden said, thanking his Wall Street supporters.

A few of his finance industry donors, looking back, have privately remarked how the evening turned out to be the most quintessential of Wall Street plays: seeing a distressed asset at that time, and buying low.

Republican Phil Heimlich, a former Cincinnati City Council member and Hamilton County commissioner, is a principal in the #NeverTrump group, Republicans For the Rule of Law and a founder of Operation Grant, an offshoot of the Lincoln Project for Ohio. Over the weekend, USA Today published an OpEd he wrote about how Ohio conservatives are abandoning Trump for Biden. Trump, he complains, hasn't lead as a true conservative. "In 2016, many Ohio voters put their faith in Donald Trump, us included. That was an error of judgment, not intent. For these reasons, we’re joining with other Republicans in this state to vote against President Trump this November. He has created a culture of fear within the Republican Party as well as across the country, demonizing anyone with differing opinions. He belittles, berates, and ruins the careers of all who oppose him-- including his own appointed government agency heads, respected military leaders and war heroes. He has undermined the rule of law, obstructed justice, and issued pardons and commutations to personal cronies who helped cover up his misdeeds. He has demonstrated gross incompetence during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing needless suffering and death. He has run up a $2.7 trillion budget deficit, $1 trillion of which occurred before the pandemic unfolded..." And so on. And... how much of President Biden will all these conservative Republicans own? 50%? 75% 99.9% More? Maybe I'll be proven wrong. We'll know when Biden announces his VP pick. If he choses Elizabeth Warren, I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. You know I'm not.

Yesterday Juan Cole, in his Informed Consent newsletter, asked how Americans became such wimps, quietly watching Trump kill tens of thousands, destroy Social Security, Medicare, the environment and the post office and openly plot to steal the election. "Americans," he wrote, "are masochistic sheeple who let the rich and powerful walk all over them and thank them for the privilege... The rich figured out in the 1980s that Americans are all form over substance, and if you put up for president a Hollywood actor like Ronald Reagan who used to play cowboys, they would swoon over him. In 1984 when Reagan ran against Walter Mondale, I saw a middle aged white Detroit auto worker interviewed who said he woudn’t vote for Mondale because he was a “panty-waist.” Reagan took away their right to strike and took away government services by running up the deficit and cutting taxes on the rich simultaneously, then claiming the government couldn’t provide the services the people had paid for because it is broke. Reagan raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. Why? Most young people don’t realize that their health will decline in their late 60s and they often won’t actually get any golden years."

What did Americans do in response? They just bent over and took it.

Actually, it is the French who are much more like Americans imagine themselves to be. President Emmanuel Macron last December tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. I can’t understand why. France has persistently high unemployment as it is.

In response, all hell broke loose. Some 30 unions went on strike, and they supported each other. Trains were interrupted. Trucking was interrupted. Life was interrupted. A million people came out into the streets. But one poll had 61% of the French approving of the strikes. They went on for months, and were very inconvenient.

Macron backed down on raising the retirement age.

The French working and middle classes know how to throw a first class fit when the servants of the rich in government come after their lifestyles. They don’t always get their way (Macron used a parliamentary maneuver to make some changes in pensions, in late February), but they make damn sure the government knows it can’t get away with encroaching on them without a fight.

I actually think that one reason Europe has done much better in tamping down the coronavirus than Trump’s America is that the governments and corporations were afraid of a public backlash if the death toll went on rising. So they did their effing jobs.

In mid-April the Financial Times reported that the CGT workers union (which it darkly observed is under Communist influences) had filed a criminal complaint against the Carrefour supermarket chain and its CEO for not protecting its workers from the coronavirus. The unions also went to court to force Amazon to step back and only ship essential items until the courts could review the company’s safety procedures.

The only thing I know of like that in the US is the UCFW’s lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture’s waivers to poultry plants allowing them to speed up the assembly lines. During a pandemic! Workers breathing harder is undesirable with a respiratory disease floating about.

But in France, it wouldn’t have been one union filing a lawsuit (which one of Mitch McConnell’s unqualified Republican judges/ideologues will likely slap down). It would have been a massive set of mutually reinforcing strikes.

By feeding us decades of propaganda against unions and “socialism,” the American rich have broken the legs of the people, and left them to twitch helplessly as more and more indignities are heaped on them. They’ve divided us by race (Trump is not alone in this tactic, only the least subtle), they’ve convinced us to give the super-rich power because they will make us rich too. (How is that working out for you?).

There is now no mainstream political party in Western Europe that is anywhere near as far right as the GOP. The closest analogues to today’s Republican Party in Europe are the far right white supremacist parties, like Marie LePen’s National Front in France or the AfD in Germany.

It appears that a plutocracy produces fascism, since appeals to racialist superiority and playing on fears of a brown and black Other are the only things that can convince people to give up their basic human rights (like a comfortable life in retirement, which they have paid for, or the right to cast a mail in ballot during a pandemic).

But despite all the military parades and brave talk of master races, fascism is just the ultimate humiliation of the sheeple. Mussolini drove enormous numbers of Italians into poverty. The Axis used them for cannon fodder at the front. If the increasingly wimpy Americans don’t watch out, they will find that it is too late to fight back, since they have surrendered all their means to do so. So as to avoid being panty-waists and all. They will be left with a borrowed greasy cheeseburger they can’t even pay for.

Does this song and video make you cry? Human solidarity has always had such an incredible power over me.

Why Bernie, Iowans? Banks!

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

Banks, including on Wall Street, fear no one like they fear Bernie. I’m sure they’re not keen on Elizabeth Warren, but Bernie strikes a unique terror, because banks know anyone taking them on will have to wield the bully pulpit against them like FDR did. Bernie can do that. And heading up a ticket, no one else will do as well in critical precincts in the upper midwest, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that went for Obama twice, then flipped for Trump when people chose him as the middle finger to Washington, and to Democrats like Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner who famously stated that housing policies were “foaming the runway for the banks.”

And no one should fear banks more than Iowans. They stand very naked, and very much at risk. My dad’s alma mater, Iowa State University, recently issued a report that Iowa farm finances are continuing to erode, with 44% of growers struggling to cover costs. Iowa farm debt hit $18.9 billion in the second quarter, the highest level in the country. As it is, government aid is now providing nearly 40% of US farm income.

Climate change isn’t helping prospects. Last year Iowa finished its wettest twelve months since records began, and it also had a rough drought. The most recent National Climate Assessment from the U.S. Global Change Research Program has nothing but grim news for the Midwest, including increased humidity and participation, eroded soils, rising temperature extremes, more pests and pathogens and major reductions in agricultural productivity. Worsening health conditions are also in the cards, with substantial loss of life by mid-century. Anyone for Medicare-for-All?

Now contemplate that the banks are about to do to us something similar to what they did to us in the Great Recession, from which many have still not fully recovered. If you don’t want to be blindsided, spend some time at Wall Street on Parade, where you can learn fun facts like a handful of banks are again up to their ears in derivatives exposure, and are trading their own stocks in dark money pools, and that since Fall the New York Fed has funneled $6.6 TRILLION to trading houses on Wall Street in the form of of repurchase agreement (repo) loans, keeping the details opaque. There’s speculation by market watchers that the Fed is fueling a Ponzi-like rally in stocks. What could go wrong?

We’d never know that after the financial meltdown the Fed pumped in various bailouts the equivalent of over $29 trillion, if Bernie hadn’t hammered away until he finally got that information.

Banks pulled plenty of tricks pursuing their business model of taking what doesn’t belong to them. Recently Citibank, which foreclosed on homes under an alias, was quietly revealed to have illegally held homes of the market for more than five years while rents are rising dramatically from a shortage of affordable homes for purchase. It got a slap on the wrist.

The people Bernie will put in charge won’t just give a slap on the wrist. They won’t keep the public from knowing what’s going on behind the scenes, or be pushing for further bank deregulation, like Wall Street’s revolving door minions Trump has put in charge. Or the revolving door minions like Obama put in charge at the behest of Wall Street. There will be no Eric Holder put in charge of the Department of Justice to make sure bankers are protected from the consequences of their misdeeds.

Revolving Door by Nancy Ohanian

I have found from personal experience in Iowa that inaction against bankers behaving badly is a seamless web between state and federal public offices. The tone is set at the top, and it flows down through all tangential government offices. One of Obama’s greatest failures was setting a tone that talked a good game but threw people under the bus on behalf of banks, which ushered in Trump, who of course has set that tone from day one.

How do I capsulize over a decade of horror stories, involving one bank that was shut down, and another bank that took it over, both of which used the same foreclosure artists? I’ll just give one little slice. I broke my back to pay off in full an unfair settlement that was forced on us, to the astonishment of everyone familiar with the case. I relied on a bank’s representations, both verbally and in emails, that it would cooperate with the payoff arrangement being structured. On the appointed day, it reneged on its promise, deliberately sabotaging my ability to pay it off in full by the agreed upon plan of having another lender buy the note. The bank knew there was no time for due diligence on another arrangement by the loan deadline. It refused to extend the deadline or modify the loan. It did so because my mom’s family farm, outside of Des Moines in a recreation area, was known to be worth far more than what was owed. The bank simply did not want to be paid off. So my mom, who lived with us in DC until we lost her a year ago at 101, had a very sad note at the end of a life that richly deserved much better. The loss of her farm, the family nest egg, and a great deal more. How does one begin to describe the wear and tear of a krap decade? How does one begin to describe the contempt with which I hold the bankers responsible, or the government officials who enabled them by averting their gaze?

I know what it’s like to go up against a bank on the bank’s home turf, where every decision is like rolling the dice on the cost of a college education. I know what it’s like to encounter the bipartisan fix for political darlings like family-owned and so-called community banks. And I include judges in the mix, because in Iowa they gather campaign contributions to run for retention elections. Over time that’s a recipe for courting pro-business decisions to the disadvantage of individuals. Judges know where the money’s at as well as Willie Sutton did. They can make a seemingly minor unexpected ruling a bank wants that in practicality throws the game. You like judges with a tin cup? Go to Iowa.

At every government level I encountered indifferent if not complicit public officials. It’s a hard education nobody should want, but I have enough stories to fill a book. And may yet do it. Public servants and in particular local prosecutors will claim to be overwhelmed and under-resourced. If you’re not a big headline providing political glory, and you don’t have local political backing and connected lawyers, you can forget about getting a measure of justice on anything that isn’t penny-ante. Prosecutors also fundraise from banks and their lawyers. If you’re an out-of-towner, a centenarian widow half way across the country, just have a laugh.

Consider the regulation of banks in Iowa, a state not known for robust consumer protections in the banking arena. The top bank regulator, at the Iowa Division of Banking, is appointed by the governor. The regulator who recently ended his term was a former bank CEO and was formerly the top state bank lobbyist-- Chairman of the Iowa Bankers Association-- and worked with government relations for the American Bankers Association. The top regulator before that fulfilled his role while serving as chairman of a state bank. The new top regulator was a president and CEO of a financial services holding company, a former chairman of the American Bankers Association and a former chairman of the Iowa Bankers Association, and I gather he will continue on various bank boards.

These are the people who are to protect Iowans from predatory and deceitful banks. Except that they are all about protecting bankers. They all know each other, it’s a tight little club in Iowa.

Several years ago I sent a well-documented history of my experience to the top regulator. His general counsel responded with a note that said “Mr. Kaltenheuser, you’ve made some very serious allegations.” It had that sort of legal attitude of “wouldn’t you really like to back off and not say those things about a bank.” I responded that “...yes, I think they're very serious allegations. But tell me, which ones do you find to be the most serious?” Crickets. Several followups asked the same question of both the chief regulator and his general counsel. Nothing but crickets. The regulator has a lot of power. If he finds something serious, like deceptive practices or fraud, he’s supposed to lift the bank’s license. Well, they’re not very keen on doing that to their buddies. So look away, don’t look close.

But what of the “people’s lawyer,” State Attorney General Tom Miller, famed for heading up the multi-state investigation of foreclosure fraud against major banks for misleading or fraudulent statements to evict struggling homeowners from their homes? A top finance writer, David Dayen, summed up the result, “…Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, ran the 50-state investigation of foreclosure fraud, which investigated nothing and moved directly to a weak settlement that delivered 90 percent less relief for homeowners than promised.”

It paid off well for Miller, though. According to Dayen, “Within days of being announced as the lead investigator, we learned that Miller received $261,000 from banking interests for his re-election campaign-- 88 times more than he ever took in the previous decade-- and that he personally asked bank lawyers for contributions. Miller then famously told community groups in Iowa that “we will put people in jail” for foreclosure fraud, only days later his office backtracked and said they weren’t referring to foreclosure fraud but some separate mortgage fraud investigation in Iowa (which he didn’t put people in jail for either), and then days after that he called the case “inherently civil,” and days after that he appeared at the Senate Banking Committee and admitted he had two settlement negotiations with Bank of America within the first month of the vaunted investigation.

In other words he’s a phony, he’s for sale, and you can’t afford him. Miller just endorsed another bankers’ favorite for President, Joe Biden, who’s long carried the water for the finance sector and its most onerous abuses.

Bernie will set a very different tone at the top, and if Iowans miss the opportunity to help him set it, they do so at their peril.

American Dream Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

Does Status Quo Joe Want Jamie Dimon As His Treasury Secretary? Bernie Doesn't

Jamie Dimon is the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank. His net worth is over a billion dollars. Th U.S. Treasury gave JPMorgan $25 billion in taxpayer money to keep the bak afloat in 2008 after Dimon had gambled in speculative mortgages. Many in the Obama administration urged him to appoint Dimon Treasury Secretary but he picked Timothy Geithner instead. Dimon had instant access to the Obama adminstration and he was their favorite bankster. But by 2012 he was describing himself as “barely a Democrat,” and certainly not a Bernie Sanders kind of Democrat. “I’ve gotten disturbed at some of the Democrats anti-business behavior, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counterproductive… [I]t doesn't mean I don't have their values. I want jobs. I want a more equitable society. I don't mind paying higher taxes… I do think we're our brother's keeper. But I think that… attacking that which creates all things, is not the right way to go about it.”

That which creates all things isn’t likely to be the way Bernie would describe banksters, Dimon or Wall Street and today he responded to an attack on him by Dimon is a tweet. “Jamie Dimon is the billionaire CEO of a Wall Street bank that was fined $13 billion for mortgage fraud, paid a settlement for bribing foreign officials and received a $416 billion taxpayer bailout. Jamie,” he wrote, “Thanks so much for your advice.”

On Friday, Dimon had done a broadcast interview with Yahoo Finance Editor Andy Serwer, punching out at Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and AOC. “Just because it resonates, doesn’t make it right,” Dimon said, when asked about criticism of him and Wall Street by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie and Senator Elizabeth Warren.”

The comments came just before Warren on Friday sent a letter to Dimon raising concerns about the reinstatement of the company’s forced arbitration policy for credit card holders, which disallows customers from holding the bank accountable in court for potential wrongdoing.




At a hearing on Capitol Hill in April, Ocasio-Cortez sat alongside lawmakers who targeted the tens of millions in compensation received by top bank executives, including Dimon, who received $31 million in compensation last year. The ratio between CEO pay and entry-level wages at JPMorgan Chase stands at 381:1, ranking it second highest among the large banks, after Citigroup.

But juxtaposition of CEO and entry-level pay is “comparing apples and oranges,” Dimon tells Yahoo Finance Editor-in-chief Andy Serwer, calling the calculation “a complete waste of time.”

“People don't think clearly about stuff like that,” he adds. “We treat our people well, we educate our people, we give them a huge opportunity— and that's what we should do.”

The minimum starting wage at JPMorgan Chase is $16.50 per hour, though it can start at $18 for workers in high-cost regions. Meanwhile, Bank of America announced in April that its hourly pay will rise to $17 in May and increase to $20 by 2021.

Dimon pointed to the benefits package the company offers entry-level employees, recounting how the company improved its health-care coverage when he found out some employees couldn’t afford the deductibles.

“The second we found out for our lower paid folks making under $60,000 a year, we cut the deductible to the extent that if they do the wellness programs it's effectively zero,” he says.

Dimon also pointed to the competitive pressure that compels him to pay enough to hire and retain effective workers.

“To act like somehow I can steal from them and do a good job at my company is a little bit crazy,” he says.

…According to Dimon, populist critics misrepresent the actions of wealthy people and big banks. Still, he acknowledged these critics tap into genuine discontent held by people struggling to gain access to services like quality education and health care.

“We should acknowledge the problems in society that are causing the anger,” he says.

“But those problems are we can't build infrastructure,” he adds. “Those problems are the inner-city schools are not graduating our kids. Our litigation system is capricious. Health care is huge— we should get all health care to the 40 million people who don't have it.”

Leading progressives Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have attacked Dimon in recent months.

In March, Dimon criticized the potential negative economic consequences of Green New Deal legislation proposed by Ocasio-Cortez. The next day, the freshman New York Congresswoman responded, pointing to Dimon’s participation in a $13 billion settlement over allegations that JPMorgan Chase fraudulently misrepresented the mortgages it was selling to investors ahead of the 2008 recession. She also criticized the bank’s financing of fossil fuel pipelines.

“So maybe they aren’t the best authority on prioritizing economic wellbeing of everyday people & the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Earlier this month, Dimon condemned socialism, saying it “means that the government owns and controls companies” for “political purposes, for jobs and votes.”

Sanders objected to the comments, saying he “didn't hear Jamie Dimon criticizing socialism when Wall Street begged for the largest federal bailout in American history— some $700 billion from the Treasury and even more from the Fed.”

In the interview with Serwer, Dimon said he and JPMorgan Chase grasp the issues facing low-level employees and have sought to improve their lives.

“We understand,” he says. “We have a heart.”

Kalamazoo area state Rep Jon Hoadley is contesting the 6th congressional district in southwest Michigan, a swing seat currently occupied by serial Trump-Enabler Fred Upton. This morning, Hadley noted that "The absurd difference between CEO pay and average worker pay is indicative of a tax code that prioritizes wealthy people over working people. Basically the opposite of what happened under the Trump tax scam, our tax code should be investing in working people while encouraging investments to do more work."

Kara Eastman is the progressive Democrat running for the GOP-held seat in Omaha. She’snot the Wall Street candidate and not the Cheri Bustos candidate; she’s the grassroots candidate, a mother and a community activist. “The time has come for us,” she told me last night, “to acknowledge the overwhelming power and influence that millionaires and billionaires have in our country. Their voice has been the loudest— resulting in government handouts to corporations while regular working people are continuously held back. It used to be that if you worked hard in the United States, you could support a family— you could get ahead. This is no longer the case. But there are people running to change the system and candidates like me who will never stop fighting for working people.”

Democratic socialist Shaniyat Chowdhury is running for a southeast Queens congressional seat held by corrupt New Dem Gregory Meeks— the Queens County machine boss. Chowdhury has strong beliefs he’ll be bringing with him to Washington. “With all that money,” he told me this morning, “you would think Mr. Dimon would know that socialism actually empowers the people who do the labor. The means of production and profit belong to the people, not billionaires who believe being poor is on a moral compass.”
 

Overall, Who Is The Worst Democrat In The House? Hint: He Represents The Bada Bing Strip Club In Lodi, New Jersey

Many Americans are unaware of just how important an event in world history the French Revolution was. Before we talk about what Ryan Grim termed a counterrevolution for an The Intercept piece about reactionary Blue Dog and DINO Josh Gottheimer, let's remember, for a little context, that the French Revolution, gave hope to all Europe other than to the nobles, ecclesiastics, and some bourgeois (the 1%). The émigrés, who came from these groups, fought from outside France to defeat the revolution. They persuaded several monarchs to invade France to thwart Robespierre's Montagnards, who were determined to give the lower classes (the sansculottes) a greater share in political and economic power.

The counterrevolutionaries were eager to halt all efforts toward economic equality. In 2017 Paul Berman, wrote about counterrevolution in America for Tablet as an integral part of Trumpism. "What,' he asks, "has brought about the counterrevolution? Fear has brought it about-- a vague and unarticulated fear that life has spun out of control: a fear that assumes a different shape in each country, yet is visibly shared across half the world, such that people who experience the fear naturally feel a solidarity, even across the national borders. And what has brought about the fear? The liberal revolution itself has done this-- its aspirations, its successes, its failures, and the gap between aspirations and realities."

In economic matters, a fear, five times over: the fear that automation, computer efficiencies, and the globalized division of labor are replacing good jobs with bad jobs. The fear that an entire storied social class, the industrial working class, is being shrunk or eliminated, along with its social and political achievements, its privileges, historical sense, culture, and institutions. The fear that, amidst these developments, the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of skilled manual labor are being lost. The fear that, under the modern dispensation, the technocrats and bureaucrats who mandate these many developments have no sense of the human costs. The fear that trade pacts and other instances of economic planning are, on top of their other flaws, a lie, designed merely to benefit the tiny few, and not society as a whole-- as shown by, say, the European Union, whose policies, nominally in the name of the union, somehow conform to the interests of Germany and its banks, and not to Greece and other poor countries.

...The liberal revolution lasted 50 years before the undercurrents of counterrevolution began to sweep it away. How long will the counterrevolution go on? We only know that we do not know. Six months before the 2016 presidential election in the United States, not a single respected political analyst predicted the outcome with any accuracy. This does not mean that in the United States political analysts are stupid. It means that we have entered an era in which the analytic categories of the past do not reliably apply: one more occasion for fear.

Enter Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), one of the most corrupt and conservative Democrats in Congress. Grim wrote that "Not long after Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were sworn into Congress, they began hearing from their new colleagues that one member of the House Democratic caucus, Josh Gottheimer, had particularly strong views about each of them. Gottheimer, a second-term representative from New Jersey, has deep ties to the lobbies for Saudi Arabia and Israel, while Tlaib and Omar are often critical of both Mideast governments."

So when Gottheimer reached out to meet with Tlaib, she was eager to take it, hoping that a personal connection would help bridge their differences. On the day of the meeting, February 6, Gottheimer arrived with a colleague, freshman Elaine Luria from Virginia-- and a white binder. Luria began by saying that she had met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu six weeks earlier, and Tlaib tried to break the ice with a joke: “How’s the two-state solution going?”

The joke fell flat. Gottheimer pulled out the binder, opening it to show Tlaib the contents. It was a collection of printed-out articles, with quotes and other lines highlighted. “He goes through them, ‘you said this, you said that,’ confusing me with other colleagues,” Tlaib said.

...Tlaib said she tried to reach Gottheimer on a personal level, telling him about her grandmother, who lives in occupied Ramallah. He wasn’t interested. “He was using a very stern tone, like a father to a child. At that moment, I realized he’s a bully,” said Tlaib. “He had a goal of breaking me down. I left feeling exactly that way.”

Breaking down Tlaib, Omar, and their allies on the left has been one of Gottheimer’s primary goals since the November elections. He has worked assiduously to carve out a role in the Democratic caucus as something of an avenger, a centrist proud of his centrism and willing to take the fight directly to the squad of freshmen trying to push the party in a progressive direction. He even has a name for his handpicked adversaries: “the herbal tea party.”

His definition of too progressive is startlingly broad. As the Democratic chair of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus, he led a push against Nancy Pelosi as she ran for House speaker last year. He has consistently voted against the party even on procedural motions, threatening to hand control over the House to the GOP. This spring, he was one of just a handful of Democrats at a private retreat on Sea Island, Georgia, hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, mingling with Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and other Republican heavyweights. He was one of just six Democrats to break with the party on a push for the DREAM Act in 2018, and he publicly undermined the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) during a hearing in which he fawned over CEOs of the nation’s biggest banks.

His boldest bid for internal power, however, came amid the push for a congressional War Powers Resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. As progressives in the House neared a historic achievement, Gottheimer organized behind the scenes to take the resolution down, in part by attempting to make it a referendum on support for Israel-- and very nearly succeeded.

The bill’s supporters out-organized him, and in April, Congress sent a War Powers Resolution to Trump’s desk. He vetoed their resolution, rejecting Congress’s demand that the president stop backing the Saudi-led war. Last week’s effort to override the veto failed in the Senate on a 53-to-45 vote.

Trump’s rejection of the resolution-- which was led in the House by Ro Khanna (D-CA) and in the Senate by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT)-- was expected. But for advocates who worked on it, Gottheimer’s intervention was unwelcome but not surprising. “He was counterproductive in a totally unnecessary way at a time when there was actually party unity on something really progressive and historic-- and that unity had been fought for a long time,” said Elizabeth Beavers, who was associate policy director at Indivisible during the Yemen fight. “This is a thing that he’s doing consistently, helping to organize against progress.”

Stephen Miles, head of Win Without War, which worked closely on the resolution, was befuddled by Gottheimer’s role. “It’s unclear what he’s trying to do, but the impact is causing discord within the Democratic Party, making it harder to end an immoral and unconscionable war,” he said. “He took an issue in which there’s a clear right and clear wrong, and he’s come down on the side of wrong.”

Gottheimer’s rearguard action against the Yemen resolution, and his attempt to link the issue to Israel, hasn’t been previously reported. It’s been perhaps the most aggressive move any Democrat has made against the caucus and its leadership this session-- and the intensity with which he approached it suggests that Gottheimer is working to establish himself as a leading player in the years to come.

Gottheimer's intervention in the effort to end the Saudi-led war in Yemen takes on new resonance in the context of his longstanding links to Saudi money. Gottheimer is a protege of Mark Penn, a notorious Democratic operative who has become a leading Trump cheerleader on Fox News. Penn’s companies, where Gottheimer has held senior positions over the years, have long been on Saudi Arabia’s payroll.

Gottheimer’s first big job out of college was as a speechwriter in the Clinton White House, where he worked closely with Penn, the president’s pollster. The two have remained close since. Penn became CEO of the consulting firm Burson-Marsteller, long one of the PR outfits working closest with Saudi Arabia, and in 2006, he hired Gottheimer as an executive vice president. Gottheimer worked at the consultancy firm, where he reported directly to Penn, until 2010. In 2008, Penn joined Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign as chief strategist, notoriously urging her to paint Barack Obama as un-American, and took Gottheimer with him.

Burson-Marsteller, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow once laid out, has been a reliable voice for the worst of the worst. “When Blackwater killed those 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, they called Burson-Marsteller,” Maddow said. “When there was a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, Bobcock & Wilcox, who built that plant, called Burson-Marsteller. Bhopal chemical disaster that killed thousands of people in India, Union Carbide called Burson-Marsteller. Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu-- Burson-Marsteller. The government of Saudi Arabia, three days after 9/11-- Burson-Marsteller.”

She continued: “When evil needs public relations, evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed dial. That’s why it was creepy that Hillary Clinton’s pollster and chief strategist in her presidential campaign was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller.” (Penn, at the time still serving as CEO, disputed the characterization.)

The consulting firm has continued to do major business with Saudi Arabia, including by representing a Saudi-run alliance engaged in the Yemen war, a contract it inked in 2017. (Now known as BCW, the firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) One of Gottheimer’s earliest fundraisers in 2015 was hosted by Don Baer, an ex-Clinton aide who replaced Penn as CEO of Burson-Marsteller.

Gottheimer, a Harvard Law graduate, left Burson-Marsteller to work as a lawyer at the Federal Communications Commission in June 2010, and has remained close to Penn. In 2012, Microsoft hired Penn to build a guerrilla PR shop to battle rival Google in Washington, and Penn plucked Gottheimer from the FCC to join him. Gottheimer later became a consultant with the Stagwell Group, a Penn-owned private equity firm, according to a 2017 financial disclosure. Between 2015 and 2017, while Gottheimer was consulting for Stagwell, Saudi Arabia paid Targeted Victory, a digital company owned by Stagwell, more than $1 million to spread pro-Saudi information on Twitter. “The Congressman has never done any work for Saudi Arabia,” said Adams, Gottheimer’s spokesperson.

In Washington, a handful of law and lobbying outfits are registered as agents on behalf of Saudi Arabia. In the last election cycle, Gottheimer was among the top recipients of cash from those firms’ lobbyists and lawyers, taking in more than $20,000 from them in 2017 and 2018, according to Ben Freeman, an analyst at the Center for International Policy’s Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative.

That makes Gottheimer one of the top 20 biggest recipients of Saudi agent cash in either party, but that number is deceptive, as the rest of the list includes party leaders and veterans. “Almost everyone ahead of him was either up for Senate reelection or part of Party leadership. And he actually pulled more money from Saudi foreign agents than even some Senators up for re-election,” such as former Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, Freeman wrote in an email. Nobody as junior as Gottheimer comes anywhere close.

In 2016, Gottheimer flipped a northern New Jersey congressional seat that had been in Republican hands for more than two decades, representing a slew of Wall Street commuters, as well as more rural areas to the west. He played up his close ties to the Israel lobby, noting that he was a member of the most prominent Jewish fraternity in college and active with both the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and NORPAC. Donors connected to NORPAC, which advocates for Israeli interests, made up his largest source of campaign cash in the last cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He’s been a regular speaker at AIPAC’s annual conference and led the charge in the Democratic caucus to have Omar, D-Minn., condemned by her colleagues on the House floor for what he said were anti-Semitic remarks.

His ties to Penn have followed Gottheimer to Congress, where he co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus, which was established by the dark-money group No Labels, which Jacobson and Penn launched in 2010. (Jacobson still runs it, and Penn advises on strategy.)

No Labels launched “The Speaker Project” in June 2018, aimed at expanding the power of a small group of centrists if Democrats took power in the House of Representatives. The project pushed for a rules change that would give a clear path to a floor vote for any legislation that met a certain threshold of bipartisanship. It’s easy for K Street to round up small bipartisan groups, meaning the reform, if passed, would effectively hand control of the floor to corporate interests. “There’s a problem-solvers group that is looking to have some influence, if the result is close, in terms of changing the rules and naming the speaker,” Penn said in September on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News.

Meanwhile, No Labels deliberated making Pelosi, who was running for speakership, a “boogeyman” in its communications strategy, but ultimately decided against doing so. No Labels Chief Strategist Ryan Clancy argued that the time wasn’t right. The outfit “is probably going to go to war with Pelosi. And it probably should,” Clancy wrote in an email, published by the Daily Beast. “I don’t know that now is the time to do it, especially when we have a perfectly good villain to use in Bernie [Sanders].”

Gottheimer attempted to execute The Speaker Project in the run-up to the new Congress, organizing the Problem Solvers Caucus to withhold support from Pelosi. She made modest concessions and beat back his effort.

But Gottheimer is showing no signs of receding into the background. In the first quarter of 2019, he raised an astounding $830,000, almost none of it from small donors, giving him some $5 million cash on hand. Aside from the campaign cash he rakes in from the pro-Israel and pro-Saudi lobbies, he cultivates Wall Street openly. The tendency was on unusually obsequious display at an April Financial Services Committee hearing, where the CEOs of America’s major banks testified, including JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon, Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman, and Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat.

At the hearing, titled “Holding Megabanks Accountable,” Waters, the committee chair, showed a rotating series of slides highlighting anti-social bank practices. When it was Gottheimer’s turn to question the bankers, he borderline apologized to them.

Thank you all for being here today and for your work and for what you do for New Jersey. I’m very grateful. I wish we had also put up slides earlier today that looked more like this. One about how many jobs your firms have created, or slides showing how many entrepreneurs and small- and minority-owned businesses have been supported by your institutions. Or slides showing how many pensions and 401ks and homes and other finances you’ve helped people secure. Your firms currently employ more than a million people. You’ve doubled your small-business loans in the last decade from $44 billion to $86 billion, including supporting small businesses in my district to the tune of $471 million. Making the dream of homeownership possible, your firms have originated $1.8 billion in home mortgages in my district alone and I’m grateful. Unfortunately, there’s no slide up there about that either.

His questioning was no less fawning: “Mr. Dimon, can you describe some of the work that your firm has done in the small-business lending arena and how those loans are helping to facilitate small-business growth?”

Tlaib, sitting in front of Gottheimer at the hearing, was startled. “I had to pause because he was on our side of the aisle,” she said. “I was taken aback by his strong stance for megabanks. There’s a way to do it that doesn’t undermine the leadership of the committee.”

Gottheimer, the most aggressively anti-progressive Democrat in Congress, is constantly at war with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He hates CPC co-chair Mark Pocan and goes out of his way to undermine him. Although Gottheimer isn't officially a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, that is exactly what he is. They figure out ways to funnel money for him and he does their dirty work in Congress. He certainly spends far more time and energy on the problems of Saudi Arabia than on the problems of Bergen, Passaic Sussex or Warren counties. He does far more for Riyadh than for West Milford, Paramus, Hackensack or Mahwah, that's for sure. When he tried to stop the push in Congress to end U.S. participation in the Yemen genocide, he tried making it about anti-semitism. He failed and the only Democrats who voted with him were fellow DINOs Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog), a machine politician and freshman from New Jersey; Elaine Luria (New Dem), a DCCC-recruited former naval commander; New York freshman Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog); and South Carolina freshman Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog). Grim ended his piece by conveying a chat he had with Madeline Trimble, a steering committee member for the main Indivisible chapter in Gottheimer’s district. She told him that "local activists’ hard work to elect a Democrat in the seat wasn’t paying off. 'Many of our members actively supported Josh Gottheimer’s re-election efforts because we believe in the Democratic Party platform. Some of us are concerned that sometimes it seems like Congressman Gottheimer is working at odds with that platform,' she said. 'We understand this is a purple district and we’re not expecting an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NJ-5; we just want him to meet us halfway and act like a normal Democrat who believes in the party.'"

Gottheimer didn't have a primary opponent last year and it looks like he won't have one next year. I called 5 members of Congress-- Pocan not being one of them-- and asked them if they would support a primary opponent for him. None were willing to go on the record but they were all positive about the idea of a primary that discussed the core Democratic issues and values he opposes. Like these:

• There are 204 Democratic cosponsors for H.R. 860, John Larson's Social Security 2100 Act. Gottheimer is an opponent.
• There are 123 Democratic cosponsors for H.R. 1046, Lloyd Doggett's bill to lower prescription drug prices. I bet Bergen County Democrats would like that. Gottheimer is an opponent.
• There are 108 Democratic cosponsors for H.R. 1384, Pramila Jayapal's new and improved Medicare-For-All Act. Gottheimer is an opponent.
• There are 93 Democratic cosponsors for H Res. 109, AOC's Green New Deal resolution. Gottheimer opposes it, even though Bergen County Democrats overwhelmingly favor it.

NJ-05 needs a new congressman. Progressive Punch rates Gottheimer an "F" and his lifetime crucial vote scores is 40.51%. The only Democrats with worse scores are Collin Peterson, Henry Cuellar, Anthony Brindisi, Ben McAdams, Joe Cunningham and Jeff Van Drew, all fellow Blue Dogs. And when you look at just votes in the 116th Congress (the current session), Gottheimer's crucial vote score-- 28.57%-- is the very bottom of the barrel... the worst of any Democrat and in fact, Michigan libertarian Republican Justin Amash has a much more progressive score-- 42.86-- and is far more likely to support progressive legislation than Gottheimer is. His Trump adhesion score, 55.2%, is very high for a Democrat. In fact, the only Democrats who have voted more often with Trump than Gottheimer are Collin Peterson (56.1) and Henry Cuellar (55.5%).

Photo by Mark Pocan

Wondering If There Are Any Wall Street Whores Trying To Get The Democratic 2020 Nomination?

A headline by Julie Bykowicz and Ken Thomas in this morning's Wall Street Journal-- Joe Biden’s Expected 2020 Bid Is Likely to Rely on Big Donors-- makes it perfectly clear which lane Biden is going for in the 2020 nomination battle: the status quo, conservative lane financed by the rich, not by the party's grassroots. And Status Quo Joe is aware how creepy and reactionary that looks. The Journal piece reports that "He has expressed concern to Democratic fundraisers that he won’t be able to make a splash with early online donations the way Mr. Sanders and other candidates have." That's because he spent a career spanning decades kissing up to banksters and corporate executives and ignoring the legitimate interests of working families to super-serve the rich and powerful.

Last January, Ben White reported for Politico that Wall Street was freaking out. As much as many of the top banksters want to see Trump done, what they don't want is Bernie or Elizabeth Warren-- harbingers of profound and fundamental change-- getting into the White House. They were most excited about Michael Bloomberg but they were open to some others as well: "After mentioning Bloomberg, Wall Street executives who want Trump out list a consistent roster of appealing nominees that includes former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California. Others meriting mention: former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, though fewally know his positions. Bankers’ biggest fear: The nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) or Sanders. 'It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,' said the CEO of another giant bank. 'It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.'... [O]ne hedge fund manager and top Democratic donor: 'If it’s Biden and Beto or Biden and Harris, that might make a difference. The good news for Biden is everyone likes him. The bad news is there is not a lot of passion.'"

Now, 3 months later people are wondering which of the candidates are actual Wall Street whores... and which ones are more likely to protect society from Wall Street banksters? Branko Marcetic, reporting for In These Times, figured out that the worst corporate shills are Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand.

The 2020 Democratic presidential race has so far featured a common theme: candidates clamoring to demonstrate who will most fearlessly take on corporate America. Across the field, Democrats have staked out progressive-- and at times startlingly new—positions on everything from instituting single-payer healthcare to reviving the Glass-Steagall Act, rejected corporate PAC money and refused to take lobbyist cash, all in a bid to prove their progressive bona fides.

“These numbers reveal a campaign powered by the people,” said a member of California Sen. Kamala Harris' campaign about her first 24-hour donation haul. “The system is being rigged by people with money and people with power,” said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker as he pledged not to “take a dime from corporate PACs.” “I think it's important for people to know my values are never for sale,” said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

But even as these candidates vocally reject corporate America, their latest fundraising reports show corporate America hasn't rejected them. In These Times examined the April 15 FEC filings of the leading Democratic candidates—Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—and analyzed the donations they received from employees of the six largest U.S. banks (J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) and the world's six largest private equity firms (The Carlyle Group, Blackstone, KKR, Apollo Global Management, CVC Capital Partners and Warburg Pincus).

While these firms don’t represent the totality of corporate America, their profits ride on the continued growth of corporations, and they remain deeply financially invested in maintaining the status quo in policy areas such as taxes, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and the environment.

Wall Street, a fundraising backbone for the Democratic Party, guides many decisions in Washington around these policies. The support a candidate receives from these financial behemoths is instructive in judging how far they would go as president in siding with progressives and bucking moneyed interests. Not to mention that failing to properly regulate and break up the nation's largest banks-- which are now bigger than they were before the 2008 crash and are again engaging in risky lending-- could lead to another devastating crash, as Johns Hopkins University economics professor Lawrence Ball has warned.

The findings show that, despite candidates’ stated antipathy toward Wall Street, a number of them are benefitting greatly from executives and employees of these financial firms.

By far the candidate most favored by these 12 firms is New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who received a total of $88,492 from them over the first quarter.

Booker, who jumpstarted and then fuelled his political career with contributions from the finance world, has in recent years attempted to shed his Wall Street-friendly reputation. Booker drew particular scorn during the 2012 presidential campaign, when then-President Obama was leading a populist-tinged assault on opponent Mitt Romney's time as head of private equity firm Bain Capital.

Booker called these criticisms “ridiculous” and “nauseating.” “Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright,” he said on Meet the Press, appearing to equate criticism of the industry to the racially tinged criticism of Obama's relationship to Wright, his former pastor, throughout 2008. After getting a call from an Obama aide, Booker walked back his defense of private equity in a YouTube video in which he encouraged scrutiny of Romney's business record. Then a few months later, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he described it as a “hostage video” and called filming it a “dumb decision.”

...[I]t's the private equity world that was most generous to Booker, who in the past quarter received a total of $49,500 from four of the world's six largest firms. Booker received $10,200 from Blackstone, a firm awash in controversy for everything from its slumlord practices after snapping up much of the United States' foreclosed housing stock to a plan hatched by one of its executives during the 2016 election to put Americans' retirement savings into hedge funds. Booker received $2,800 from Blackstone’s executive vice chair, Hamilton “Tony” James, who in 2012 echoed Booker's complaints about Obama's criticisms of the private equity industry.

Apollo Global Management (AGM) has shown a particular affinity for Booker, with 28 of its employees showering him with a total of $32,100. Donors from AGM included not only investors and portfolio managers, but the firm's chief legal and financial officers, four of its partners and the global head of its “human capital” division. Like many private equity firms, Apollo has been criticized for its use of leveraged buyouts to acquire businesses, often leading to job losses and even bankruptcy, as when cloud computing company Rackspace laid off 275 employees in 2017 mere months after being acquired by Apollo.

...Like Booker, Gillibrand is also a prolific Wall Street fundraiser with a past checkered by siding with the industry in Congress who has, since Trump's victory, worked to turn over a new leaf. The protégé of fellow New York Sen. Chuck Schumer-- himself no slouch when it comes to soliciting hefty campaign contributions-- Gillibrand has said in the past that “raising money is the very same effort as developing a grassroots advocacy.” Gillibrand had previously worked against instituting new rules around derivatives proposed by federal regulators, with the New York Times accusing her of “going against the cause of reform.”

...Then there's California Sen. Kamala Harris, who received a total of $44,947 from these 12 firms. Harris, who was once branded a “bankster's worst nightmare,” and has touted her prosecutorial record against banks as evidence of her progressive credibility, received donations from five executives of these firms. They include Blackstone managing director Tia Breakley, Morgan Stanley's new head of international wealth management Colbert Narcisse, Bank of America senior vice president for diversity and inclusion Alex Rhodes, and Goldman Sachs vice president of financial crime compliance Margaret Cullum.

Harris's most enthusiastic source of support among these firms, however, is Wells Fargo, from whose employees she received a total of $16,713-- the most funding from the bank out of any other candidate examined. The donors span multiple tiers of the bank's hierarchy, from bankers and consultants, to a regional director and a manager, to executives like National Head of Cards and Retail Services Beverly Anderson, both of whom gave the maximum individual donation of $2,800 to Harris.

Wells Fargo's generosity to Harris raises eyebrows for several reasons. For one, the bank was one of the key players in the 2008 financial crisis, paying billions of dollars worth of fines for its contributions to the crash, and it has continued to earn legal sanction for doing things like opening up accounts without customers' consent and accidentally foreclosing on hundreds of customers between 2010 and 2015. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has called the bank “the poster child for greed, recklessness and illegal behavior,” and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has made it a particular target of her campaign, calling for the firing of its CEO and for colleges to stop letting it market financial services to students.

The other cause for concern is Harris's role in the 2012 foreclosure settlement with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Bank, a key element of her current campaign pitch. While Harris played hardball to get more money from the firms, reporter David Dayen has called the settlement she helped negotiate “a blight on this country” for its grossly inadequate relief to foreclosed homeowners.

There's another way to do this, tracking the money that has flowed to members of Congress-- so, not McKinsey Pete, obviously-- from the FIRE Sector: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate. These figures show how much these candidates have reported getting from the sector while they've held federal office:

• Kirsten Gillibrand- $10,101,695
• Cory Booker- $5,988,41
• Beto O'Rourke- $4,454,825
• Joe Biden- $4,164,034