Democrats flocked to criticize Goldman Sachs the strongest
Goldman’s CEO and those like him “still don’t get it,’’ Elizabeth Warren said.
Goldman Sachs was at the center of two separate political dramas on Wednesday pitting the banking behemoth against both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
The first of those battles came when Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein warned that Sanders’s presidential candidacy could be “dangerous’’ for Wall Street and bankers.
“It has the potential to personalize it, it has the potential to be a dangerous moment. Not just for Wall Street, not just for the people who are particularly targeted, but for anybody who is a little bit out of line,’’ Blankfein said on CNBC. “It’s just incredible. It’s a moment in history.’’
Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, had previously pointed to Blankfein as a key example of Wall Street greed, he said to Bloomberg Politics in January.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren came to Sanders’s defense, mocking Blankfein’s double standard in an interview with International Business Times.
“He thinks it’s fine to prosecute small business owners, it’s fine to go hard after individuals who have no real resources, but don’t criticize companies like Goldman Sachs and their very, very important CEO — that’s what he’s really saying,’’ she said.
Warren continued, saying Blankfein and others like him “still don’t get it’’:
“When Blankfein says that criticizing those who break the rules is dangerous to the economy, then he’s just repeating another variation of ‘too big to fail,’ ‘too big to jail,’ ‘too big even to prosecute,’’’ she said.
“That tells you here we are, seven years after the crisis and these guys still don’t get it. Seven years. That crisis cost an estimated $14 trillion, it cost jobs, it cost homes, it cost retirement funds. And Lloyd Blankfein stands up and says ‘Don’t even criticize me, I ran a company that was right at the heart of some of the biggest financial frauds in history and made money off it, but don’t you dare criticize me.’ That’s his position? That’s why we need voters to get really engaged.’’
Warren’s defense of Sanders comes at a time of increasing interest in who the Massachusetts senator will endorse for president. She is the lone female Democratic senator who has not yet endorsed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
Clinton herself was the focus of the other Goldman Sachs tiff. At CNN’s Democratic town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday night, Clinton stumbled over a question about why she accepted $675,000 from Goldman Sachs for three speeches.
“I don’t know. That’s what they offered,’’ she said. “Every secretary of state that I know has done that.’’
CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked how she thought those payments would look in a presidential campaign, and Clinton said that at the time she wasn’t planning to run for president.
“When I was secretary of state, several times I said, ‘You know, I think I’m done,’’’ Clinton said. “But, you know, anybody who knows me who thinks they can influence me: Name anything they’ve influenced me on. Just name one thing. I’m out here every day saying I’m going to shut them down. I’m going after them.’’
Clinton has struggled to explain her Wall Street ties, which has been the focus of criticism from Sanders. In November, Clinton invoked the attacks of 9/11 to explain why she received so much funding from Wall Street banks in Manhattan.
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