‘Money talks and nobody walks’ is an observation that applies to a great many situations. But it doesn’t quite catch the reality of the Wall Street, Washington Beltway relationship. Here, it’s not a matter of talking and walking. It’s more a case of bawling and crawling.
For most of the last century the Republican Party was the universally recognized political mouthpiece of Wall Street. And for the half century between the coming of the New Deal and the 1980s, the Democratic Party made political hay and won elections bragging about how it was the party that stood up to Wall Street, and kept it from abusing working people and the small business community.
The Clinton presidency represented a near-total abdication of this ideological and political policy. Proclaiming themselves “moderate Democrats” to set themselves apart from the old-style liberal Democrats who had brought greater and more widely distributed prosperity to Americans than ever before in our history and enjoyed the longest run of political dominance in consequence, but whose nostrums had been slicked out of fashion by The Great Communicator and by the tens of millions spent by right wingers developing a media base for their own nostrums, the moderate Democrats proceeded to outbid Republicans for Wall Street dollars and other political support.
In the Clinton years this dada New Deal was on view in Congress as well as the White House. A short-lived, inherently unsustainable phony prosperity based on outsourcing, the taking on of huge quantities of new debt, and slicing, dicing and repackaging existing assets via cunning financial instruments, solidified the bond between The Street and moderate Democrats.
It was not just the huge amount of new money made by The Street in this period, however, that made Wall Streeters so receptive to this bond. With both major parties now in their pocket, the moderate Democratic enablers and gofers offered something else as well that a fast changing Republican Party didn’t. It offered a chance to play at being socially liberal.
Wall Street, after all, is in New York City. And Wall Street’s New Yorkers (along with Greater New Yorkers living in New Jersey and Connecticut) tend to favor reproductive rights, gay rights, and even environmental activism — provided such activism focuses on pollution credit trading presided over by Wall Street pollution credit traders.
With their moderate Democrat pals Citi and Goldman fat cats could thus have it all: Much deregulated markets where the biggest, wackiest deals would not only be allowed but actually encouraged by Washington, while retaining a patina of the open-mindedness of the kind these nouveau mega-millionaires heard growing up from their original New Deal-impregnated parents and grandparents.
Even in the wake of the dire crash made possible by Wall Street greed and arrogance, moderate Democratic President Obama did everything possible to retain the goodwill of The Street, an approach whose most obvious manifestation was making Tim Geithner and Larry Summers his chief economic advisers. It was only screeches from the left, and the popular cry to do something, anything, to check Wall Street naughtiness, that forced the White House and the moderate Democrats in Congress to finally pass even the very, very modest reforms included in recently passed legislation.
Is Wall Street today showing forgiveness toward the Democrats who have served them so well in the last two decades? Does Wall Street appreciate the fact that in light of the way it has behaved there had to be at least a few changes in how it would be allowed to operate? Are Wall Streeters turning the other cheek to the occasionally unflattering things the President and members of his party have been saying about it recently?
Heck, no. The Street and its cash-dispensing arm don’t take kindly to any criticism. And they most certainly don’t think their own mode of operating should be intruded upon by lesser beings.
Wall Street expects its hirelings to tow the line ever and always, in word as well as deed. Which is why a recent study by the Center for Responsive Politics, as reported in the New York Times, found that while the investment sector was giving 70 percent of its donations to Democrats a year-and-a-half back, this same sector now gives 68 percent to Republicans.
So here’s the deal kids if you plan to seek elective office and want to tap into that mighty Wall Street cash machine. When visiting The Street with your hand out, wear knee pads, because you’ll be expected to not only walk their talk, but crawl when they bawl.
No need to be embarrassed about this either. Money, after all, is free speech. So get right down there and grovel for your full share of freedom.
More from this author at wallstreetpoet.com