What Clinton likely said in her speeches to Goldman Sachs


Hillary Clinton has refused to release the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, speeches for which she received a whopping $675,000 for just three speeches. It is unlikely that she had anything to say that was of practical use to the audience of investment bankers, so naturally one wonders why they were willing to pay her so much and why she is so reluctant to reveal their contents.

One reason may be that the speeches were so vapid and content –free that one cannot but think that Goldman Sachs was buying influence with her, along with all her contacts and those of her husband. The Clintons have shown that they are avaricious and like to live the high life, which makes them easy targets for influence peddlers.

But another important reason could be that her speeches were full of praise for Goldman Sachs and the investment banking business, according to one person who was present, even after the banks’ shameful and criminal role in the financial crisis had been revealed.

Clinton, who received $225,000 for her appearance, praised the diversity of Goldman’s workforce and the prominent roles played by women at the blue-chip investment bank and the tech firms present at the event. She spent no time criticizing Goldman or Wall Street more broadly for its role in the 2008 financial crisis.

“It was pretty glowing about us,” one person who watched the event said. “It’s so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.”

Given that, in typical Clinton fashion of seeing which way the wind blows and tailoring her message accordingly, she has now latched onto Bernie Sanders’s critique of Wall Street excesses and vows to be tough on them, giving speeches that fawned over the banks that created so much misery would undoubtedly be embarrassing to her and make people question whether she will actually carry out her promise to be tough on the banks. She and he Democratic party have already shown that they can be bought by Wall Street and the release of her speeches will likely reinforce that conclusion.

Comments

  1. moarscienceplz says

    The Clintons virtually every politician in the whole freaking world have shown that they are avaricious and like to live the high life, which makes them easy targets for influence peddlers.

    FIFY

  2. John Smith says

    moarscienceplz@1
    We have an option that isn’t corrupt : Sanders. We have Stein if not Sanders as a good candidate or Trump to begin the process of curbing corruption, even though he will be a terrible president.

    Famous examples of US Presidents who weren’t corruptible include Eisenhower (who chose a bad VP) and Truman. Truman was living in poverty after he left the presidency. Both were good presidents.

  3. moarscienceplz says

    John Smith
    First off, despite my nom de internet, I freely admit my post #1 has a high content of snark and hyperbole. I just thought that Mano was being a tad unfair singling out the Clintons for this tendency as if they invented it. Any person running for the highest office in the country is pretty much guaranteed to have a very high level of narcissism. Maybe Bernie truly bucks that trend, maybe he has just hidden it better than the Clintons because he hasn’t been in the national spotlight nearly as much as they. Abraham Lincoln went into politics partly because he realized the work was easier and the money better than anything else available to him. As for Truman, I agree with what you said, but Wikipedia also has this:

    With the help of the Kansas City Democratic machine led by Tom Pendergast, Truman was elected in 1922 as a County Court judge of Jackson County’s eastern district—this was an administrative rather than judicial position, somewhat similar to county commissioners elsewhere.[33] Truman was not re-elected in 1924, losing in a Republican wave led by President Calvin Coolidge. Two years selling automobile club memberships in the political wilderness convinced him that a public service career was safer for a man approaching middle-age who had never been successful in the private sector.[34]

    In 1926, Truman was elected as the presiding judge for the county court (similar to a county commission) with the support of the Pendergast machine, and was re-elected in 1930.

    Kansas City was notoriously politically corrupt in the early part of the 20th century. Truman indeed seems to have been a good man, but he wasn’t above playing ball with politicians on the take themselves.

  4. moarscienceplz says

    Oh, and as for Eisenhower:
    1. He wasn’t a politician. He was a soldier who got drafted by the GOP into running for president, so he isn’t encompassed by my post #1.
    2. He cheated on his wife.
    3. He played golf while McCarthyism was ripping the country apart, so not that great a president in my view.

  5. John Smith says

    moarscienceplz @3 & 4
    While the Clintons did not invent it -- corruption is as old as the dawn of man, they normalized the Democratic Party’s corruption. The Koch Bros funded the Democratic Leadership Council which got Bill Clinton elected.

    Also, everything known about Sanders -- his net worth, his career, his past statements and how the media is turning against him suggest that he is not at all corrupt. Obama had Wall Street ties before the presidency. His wife was a corporate lawyer. The thing about Truman is true, but not really evidence of anything and it is also true about Sanders. Sanders plays politics. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Heck the Friends of Hillary funded his senate campaign in 2012. She regrets that now, I guess. Everybody’s got flaws. About Eisenhower -- I didn’t know the second part but that’s quite irrelevant. Your third point is pretty damning though.

  6. says

    Oh, and as for Eisenhower:

    He oversaw the building of the military/industrial complex, but was good enough to warn everyone about it as he was heading out the door.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *