By Nomi Prins, a former Wall Street executive and the author of six books. Her most recent is All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books). Special thanks go to researcher Craig Wilson for his superb work on this piece. Originally published at TomDispatch
Irony isn’t a concept with which President Donald J. Trump is familiar. In his Inaugural Address, having nominated the wealthiest cabinet in American history, he proclaimed, “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth.” Under Trump, an even smaller group will flourish — in particular, a cadre of former Goldman Sachs executives. To put the matter bluntly, two of them (along with the Federal Reserve) are likely to control our economy and financial system in the years to come.
Infusing Washington with Goldman alums isn’t exactly an original idea. Three of the last four presidents, including The Donald, have handed the wheel of the U.S. economy to ex-Goldmanites. But in true Trumpian style, after attacking Hillary Clinton for her Goldman ties, he wasn’t satisfied to do just that. He had to do it bigger and better. Unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, just a sole Goldman figure lording it over economic policy wasn’t enough for him. Only two would do.
The Great Vampire Squid Revisited
Whether you voted for or against Donald Trump, whether you’re gearing up for the revolution or waiting for his next tweet to drop, rest assured that, in the years to come, the ideology that matters most won’t be that of the “forgotten” Americans of his Inaugural Address. It will be that of Goldman Sachs and it will dominate the domestic economy and, by extension, the global one.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, when President Teddy Roosevelt governed the country on a platform of trust busting aimed at reducing corporate power, even he could not bring himself to bust up the banks. That was a mistake born of his collaboration with the financier J.P. Morgan to mitigate the effects of the Bank Panic of 1907. Roosevelt feared that if he didn’t enlist the influence of the country’s major banker, the crisis would be even longer and more disastrous. It’s an error he might not have made had he foreseen the effect that one particular investment bank would have on America’s economy and political system.
There have been hundreds of articles written about the “world’s most powerful investment bank,” or as journalist Matt Taibbi famously called it back in 2010, the “great vampire squid.” That squid is now about to wrap its tentacles around our world in a way previously not imagined by Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.
No less than six Trump administration appointments already hail from that single banking outfit. Of those, two will impact your life strikingly: former Goldman partner and soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and incoming top economic adviser and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, former president and “number two” at Goldman. (The Council he will head has been responsible for “policy-making for domestic and international economic issues.”)
Now, let’s take a step into history to get the full Monty on why this matters more than you might imagine. In New York, circa 1932, then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his bid for the presidency. At the time, our nation was in the throes of the Great Depression. Goldman Sachs had, in fact, been one of the banks at the core of the infamous crash of 1929 that crippled the financial system and nearly destroyed the economy. It was then run by a dynamic figure, Sidney Weinberg, dubbed “the Politician” by Roosevelt because of his smooth tongue and “Mr. Wall Street” by the New York Times because of his range of connections there. Weinberg quickly grasped that, to have a chance of redeeming his firm’s reputation from the ashes of public opinion, he would need to aim high indeed. So he made himself indispensable to Roosevelt’s campaign for the presidency, soon embedding himself on the Democratic National Campaign Executive Committee.
After victory, he was not forgotten. FDR named him to the Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce, even as he continued to run Goldman Sachs. He would, in fact, go on to serve as an advisor to five more presidents, while Goldman would be transformed from a boutique banking operation into a global leviathan with a direct phone line to whichever president held office and a permanent seat at the table in political and financial Washington.
Now, let’s jump forward to the 1990s when Robert Rubin, co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, took a page from Weinberg’s playbook. He recognized the potential in a young, charismatic governor from Arkansas with a favorable attitude toward banks. Since Bill Clinton was far less well known than FDR had been, Rubin didn’t actually cozy up to him from the get-go. It was another Goldman Sachs executive, Ken Brody, who introduced them, but Rubin would eventually help Clinton gain Wall Street cred and the kind of funding that would make his successful 1992 run for the presidency possible. Those were favors that the new president wouldn’t forget. As a reward, and because he felt comfortable with Rubin’s economic philosophy, Clinton created a special post just for him: first chair of the new National Economic Council.
It was then only a matter of time until he was elevated to Treasury Secretary. In that position, he would accomplish something Ronald Reagan — the first president to appoint a Treasury Secretary directly from Wall Street (former CEO of Merrill Lynch Donald Regan) — and George H.W. Bush failed to do. He would get the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 repealed by hustling President Clinton into backing such a move. FDR had signed the act in order to separate investment banks from commercial banks, ensuring that risky and speculative banking practices would not be funded with the deposits of hard-working Americans. The act did what it was intended to do. It inoculated the nation against the previously reckless behavior of its biggest banks.
Rubin, who had left government service six months earlier, wasn’t even in Washington when, on November 12, 1999, Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall. He had, however, become a board member of Citigroup, one of the key beneficiaries of that repeal, about two weeks earlier.
As Treasury Secretary, Rubin also helped craft the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He subsequently convinced both President Clinton and Congress to raid U.S. taxpayer coffers to “help” Mexico when its banking system and peso crashed thanks to NAFTA. In reality, of course, he was lending a hand to American banks with exposure in Mexico. The subsequent $25 billion bailout would protect Goldman Sachs, as well as other big Wall Street banks, from losing boatloads of money. Think of it as a test run for the great bailout of 2008.
A World Made by and for Goldman Sachs
Moving on to more recent history, consider a moment when yet another Goldmanite was at the helm of the economy. From 1970 to 1973, Henry (“Hank”) Paulson had worked in various positions in the Nixon administration. In 1974, he joined Goldman Sachs, becoming its chairman and CEO in 1999. I was at Goldman at the time. (I left in 2002.) I remember the constant internal chatter about whether an investment bank like Goldman could continue to compete against the super banks that the Glass-Steagall repeal had created. The buzz was that if Goldman and similar investment banks were allowed to borrow more against their assets (“leverage themselves” in banking-speak), they wouldn’t need to use individual deposits as collateral for their riskier deals.
In 2004, Paulson helped convince the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to change its regulations so that investment banks could operate as if they had the kind of collateral or backing for their trades that goliaths like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase had. As a result, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns, to name three that would become notorious in the economic meltdown only four years later (and all ones for which I once worked) promptly leveraged themselves to the hilt. As they were doing so, George W. Bush made Paulson his third and final Treasury Secretary. In that capacity, Paulson managed to completely ignore the crisis brewing as a direct result of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the one I predicted was coming in Other People’s Money, the book I wrote when I left Goldman.
In 2006, Paulson was questioned on his obvious conflicts of interest and responded, “Conflicts are a fact of life in many, if not most, institutions, ranging from the political arena and government to media and industry. The key is how we manage them.” At the time, I wrote, “The question isn’t how it’s a conflict of interest for Paulson to preside over our country’s economy but how it’s not?” For men like Paulson, after all, such conflicts don’t just involve their business holdings. They also involve the ideology associated with those holdings, which for him at that time came down to a deep belief in pursuing the full-scale deregulation of banking.
Paulson was, of course, Treasury Secretary for the period in which the 2008 financial crisis was brewing and then erupted. When it happened, he was the one who got to decide which banks survived and which died. Under his ministrations, Lehman Brothers died; Bear Stearns was given to JPMorgan Chase (along with plenty of government financial support); and you won’t be surprised to learn that Goldman Sachs thrived. While designing that outcome under the pressure of the moment, Paulson pled with Nancy Pelosi to press the Democrats in the House of Representatives to support a staggering $700 billion bailout. All those taxpayer dollars went with the 2008 Emergency Financial Stability Act that would save the banking system (under the auspices of saving the economy) and leave it resplendently triumphant, bonuses included), even as foreclosures rose by 21% the following year.
Once again, it was a world made by and for Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Back in the (White) House
Running for office as an outsider is one thing. Instantly inviting Wall Street into that office once you arrive is another. Now, it seems that Donald Trump is bringing us the newest chapter in the long-running White House-Goldman Sachs saga. And count on Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn to offer a few fresh wrinkles on that old alliance.
Cohn was one of the partners who ran the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodity (FICC) division of Goldman. It was the one that benefited the most from leverage, trading, and the complexity of Wall Street’s financial concoctions like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) stuffed with derivatives attached to subprime mortgages. You could say, it was leverage that helped propel Cohn up the Goldman food chain.
Steven Mnuchin has proven particularly adept at understanding such concoctions. He left Goldman in 2002. In 2004, with two other ex-Goldman partners, he formed the hedge fund Dune Capital Management. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Dune went shopping, as Wall Street likes to do, for cheap buys it could convert into big profits. Mnuchin and his pals found the perfect prey in a Pasadena-based bank, IndyMac, that had failed in July 2008 before the financial crisis kicked into high gear, and had been seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). They would pick up its assets on the cheap.
At his confirmation hearings, Mnuchin downplayed his role in throwing homeowners (including members of the military) out of their heavily mortgaged homes as a result of that purchase. He cast himself instead as a genuine hero, the guy who convened a cadre of financial sharks to help, not harm, the bank’s customers who, without their benevolence, would have fared so much worse. He looked deeply earnest as he spoke of his role as the savior of the common — or perhaps in the age of Trump “forgotten” — man and woman. Maybe he even believed it.
But the philosophy of swooping in, attacking an IndyMac-like target of opportunity and converting it into a fortune for himself (and problems for everyone else), has been a hallmark of his career. To transfer this version of over-amped 1% opportunism to the halls of political power is certainly a new definition of, in Trumpian terms, giving the government back to “the people.” Perhaps what our new president meant was “the people at Goldman Sachs.” Think of it, in any case, as the supercharging of a vulture mentality in a designer suit, the very attitude that once fueled the rise to power of Goldman Sachs.
Mnuchin repeatedly blamed the FDIC and other government agencies for not helping him help homeowners. “In the press it has been said that I ran a ‘foreclosure machine,’” he said, “On the contrary, I was committed to loan modifications intended to stop foreclosures. I ran a ‘Loan Modification Machine.’ Whenever we could do loan modifications we did them, but many times, the FDIC, FNMA, FHLMC, and bank trustees imposed strict rules governing the processing of these loans.” Nothing, that is, was or ever is his fault — reflecting his inability to take the slightest responsibility for his undeniable role in kicking people out of their homes when they could have remained. It’s undoubtedly the perfect trait for a Treasury secretary in a government of the 1% of the 1%.
Mnuchin also blamed the Federal Reserve for suggesting that the Volcker Rule — part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 designed to limit risky trading activities — was harming bank liquidity and could be a problem. The way he did that was typically slick. He claimed to support the Volcker Rule, even as he underscored the Fed’s concern with it. In this way, he managed both to make himself look squeaky clean and very publicly open the door to a possible Trumpian “revision” of that rule that would be aimed at weakening its intent and once again deregulating bank trading activities.
Similarly, at those confirmation hearings he said (as Trump had previously) that we needed to help community banks compete against the bigger ones through less onerous regulations. Even though this may indeed be true, it is also guaranteed to be another bait-and-switch move likely to lead to the deregulation of the big banks, too, ultimately rendering them even bigger and more dangerous not just to those community banks but to all of us.
Indeed, any proposition to reduce the size of big banks was sidestepped. Although Mnuchin did say that four monster banks shouldn’t run the country, he didn’t say that they should be broken up. He won’t. Nor will Cohn. In response to a question from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, he added, “No, I don’t support going back to Glass-Steagall as is. What we’ve talked about with the president-elect is that perhaps we need a twenty-first-century Glass-Steagall. But, no I don’t support taking a very old law and saying we should adhere to it as is.”
So, although the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall was part of the 2016 Republican election platform, it’s likely to prove just another of Trump’s many tactics to gain votes — in this case, from Bernie Sanders supporters and libertarians who see too-big-to-fail institutions and a big-bank bailout policy as wrong and dangerous. Rest assured, though, Mnuchin and his Goldman Sachs pals will allow the largest Wall Street players to remain as virulent and parasitic as they are now, if not more so.
Goldman itself just announced that it was the world’s top merger and acquisitions adviser for the sixth consecutive year. In other words, the real deal-maker isn’t the former ruler of The Celebrity Apprentice, but Goldman Sachs. The government might change, but Goldman stays the same. And the traffic pile up of Goldman personalities in Trump’s corner made their fortunes doing deals — and not the kind that benefited the public either.
A former Goldman colleague recently asked me whether it was just possible that Mnuchin was a good person. I can’t answer that. It’s something only he knows for sure. But no matter how earnest or sympathetic to the little guy he tried to be before that Senate confirmation committee, I do know one thing: he’s also a shark. And sharks do what they’re best at and what’s best for them. They smell blood in the water and go in for the kill. Think of it as the Goldman Sachs effect. In the waters of the Trump-Goldman era, don’t doubt for a second that the blood will be our own.
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Yes, I would like it better if there were no Goldmanites working for Trump. I’m pretty sure the staff of a President Bernie Sanders would be Goldmaniteless. I would guess Prez HRC’s crew would be even more Goldmaniteful than The Donald’s. You gotta remember: (1) It takes a thief to catch one, and (2) Trump will call the shots in his administration. Bill Clinton let Rubin dictate policy because he wanted to get rich, and somehow, mysteriously, he did. Trump’s already rich and there is every reason to believe he wants to be a hero, so let’s just wait and see what happens. What else can we do?
I disagree with #2 . Trump is only a clueless figurehead. His inner circle which includes Pence will call the shots.
Trump will call the shots for whatever flits across his nonexistent attention span at the moment and ignore everything else.
I find it amazing that for a candidate who overtly ran against Goldman Sachs’ pernicious influence for over a year, your only response to him hypocritically stacking his cabinet with Goldmanites is, “The others would have done it too” and a shrug. That’s some acrobatic apologetics.
Everything you said after “HRC admin would have even more Goldmanites” is really tortured and pure speculation. Occum’s Razor. The simplest, most obvious answer with the least number of assumptions is most likely the correct answer. Trump is stacking his cabinet with Goldman Sachs bankers because he likes them and wants them to have great influence in his administration.
Perhaps you think Trump is another 11th dimensional chess player like Obama? This is all one big head-fake and one day in the near future we will see this was all part of his master plan to help the working class he promised to save in his campaign? Time will tell, but just as Obama outed himself as a giant phony when he appointed his cabinet, I imagine Trump’s cabinet picks will tell us all we need to know about how he intends to govern as well.
There is also the fact that high end finance is generally really complex and difficult to understand, and its practitioners are adept at screwing people while drawing the righteous mantle of markets about themselves. So we get Blankfein and “God’s work”, fawning over Dimon and so on. Meanwhile Trump does not come across as a details guy.
Do we really think that Trump is fully informed on the causes of the financial crisis and the role played by the banking sector? What about shadow banking, the derivative market, and tight coupling? The Magnetar doomsday machine, and its role in making the subprime bubble and subsequent crash so much worse? The mortgage fraud scandal, and the whitewash and blanket indemnification that was the task force settlement? The studies showing that the financial sector is a net destroyer of value? The role of the financial crisis in increasing inequality in America?
If his understanding on any of these points is less than perfect, ponder the fact that any additional information on the subject that he gets is going to be filtered through Mnuchin and Cohn. Do you think the story he will hear from them will be anything like the presentations we see here at NC? That’s assuming that he even takes an interest in the first place, and doesn’t delegate the whole thing to them and rubberstamp anything they come up with.
In the best case, if Trump is serious about wanting to rein in Wall Street, then he is sabotaging himself with these appointments. In the worst case, he knows exactly what the appointments mean and welcomes it.
Ok now you’re really grasping at straws.
Goldman is a parasite, Trump criticized Clinton for her support of them, and now he’s filling the government with Goldmanites.
This is rank hypocrisy on Trump’s part and one loses credibility when trying to defend the indefensible.
As was mentioned a couple days ago, if he does something good then he shouldn’t be criticized just because one doesn’t like the guy. But if he does crap like this the people need to let him have it.
OK, you don’t like Mnuchin. Call your senator and urge non-confirmation. Good luck.
Nomi does explain the guy is a duplicitous money-grabbing dude, like many in Washington. SecTreasury is not necessarily a powerful job. The Attorney General is actually the one who may choose to prosecute white collar crime. Trump can also use the Munchkin to jawbone his friends about what they can get by with before he brings the hammer down. I would like to see some banksters do prison time the next time they commit criminal acts. All we can do is hope for the best.
If you successfully mount a campaign to get Munch-Man blocked, I will congratulate you.
(2) Trump will call the shots in his administration
I’m surprised by how many people don’t agree with this. The man has focus. It came through in his inauguration speech. It’s coming through now in how his administration is hitting the ground running.
According to a piece I read somewhere (else), Trump has hit the ground signing ceremonially, like a king or an emperor. The running is being done by Bannon, ex-Goldmanite Bannon. Trump ran for the title of King, and that he knows how to do.
BTW, at the end of the piece, Nomi says Munch-man is a shark and will smell blood and go in for the kill. OK, that’s possible. Nomi loses me when she says “don’t doubt for a second the blood will be OUR own.” I don’t know Nomi’s net worth but I’m quite sure no matter what diabolical scheme the Muncher comes up with, Nomi is not going to be living on Instant Ramen and Hamburger Helper, struggling to make ends meet.
I mean, come on, Nomi, you worked for Goldman, Lehman, and Chase Manhattan for years. You mean to tell me you don’t have a lot of moola saved up? You’re one of the “little people” now?
i was hoping trump would be a bit more of a maverick, maybe disrupt the patronage networks to create more a trump machine, but so far it looks like just standard republican (or democrat) fealty to the elites when it comes to his appointments. i just hope he kills the rest of the trade deals, and continues to avoid ramping up for a war with russia.
IMO Trump measures IQ by net worth. Notice him saying he has the smartest cabinet ever? It’s kind of sad.
I have had business dealings with Cohn many years back.
He is a very clever man. I cannot speak for what his agenda will be so would not dare to say his appointment will be good for the US people. But whatever he does I will fully expect to be intelligently crafted. But all of course depends on what his goals are.
why is this personal attack allowed here? in light of the weekend’s message? can’t help but think it is because Nomi is a woman?
I think this is one of THE best, clearest background reports on (and Histories of) Goldman Sachs influence and why we are where we are and why the banksters have not gone to jail and how truly awful things are going to get (even more than now) under Mnuchin and Cohn, this time for everyone. And it’s relatively short. I’ve recommended it to all my friends who know nothing because they don’t have the time to read all this stuff.
I love Nomi Prins. Just this last line where she’s pretending to be poor folk needs to be called out. How could she possibly not be wealthy after all the years at the top rungs of big investment firms?
Nothing to do with her being a woman. But go ahead and blackball me if you like. I got other things to do.
I think Nomi means “our” in the sense of All Americans except the very very very very rich like the higher echelons at Goldman and the multibillionaires and the crazy very very rich like Mnuchin and Cohn who run the country now.
Nomi’s expressing compassion and inclusion (IMHO) that she feels, as do I, unlike the sexist comments here.
why so personal and snarky about Nomi everyone? Did she step out of her female zone by 1)working at various places like Goldman and then 2)writing about them?
Don’t you all realize Trump/Bannon (now that he’s a national security advisor) is inciting a civil war so there can be a military coup so the US can conquer/destroy the world even more as they all scuttle off to their $billion underground bunkers which they think will save them? bwahahahaha
Ditto in defense of Naomi.
“Inciting civil war” brings to mind another Naomi: Naomi Klein, I think she would identify your scenario as an example of “shock doctrine” politics. We have been warned.
Trump is the brand. Bannon is the brain.
Nomi, that is.
Don’t you all realize Trump/Bannon (now that he’s a national security advisor) is inciting a civil war so there can be a military coup so the US can conquer/destroy the world even more as they all scuttle off to their $billion underground bunkers which they think will save them? bwahahahaha
well you had me agreeing with you up to this point, which is kinda inciteful, not insightful. It, like the recent references by a cadre of usual suspects to certain religions seems to be trying to deligitimize perspectives by trying to derail discussion to lower forms and incite, in your case, more of what you can label “sexist” , while in others cases trying to get commentors to respond in a negative way to the various religions in the world, thus getting the subject off of the shortcomings of all of our recent, current, and failed politicians. Women are ok, as is making money, lots of people make money and are not bad people, religion is a good thing for people in the sense that it is a social contract providing basic guidelines for getting along. I don’t think there is an established religion that has codified “treat people badly” into it’s contract. I think it was andrew jackson or one of those founder types who said we should have a revolution every 20 years or something like that, and elections allow that to happen. You may not agree but it’s possible that by electing trump the collective of the american people actually prevented a civil war, because if too many are disenfranchised they’ll be more likely to revolt, and the usual suspects don’t own their place in the dialogue or honor the contract, everyone knew about the electoral college, maybe governorships are a better place for politicians who desire to rule for small geographic locations against trying to rule the world as if it were all san francisco. That said, to the point of the article In my imaginary discussions with wealthy people who feel slighted by the current situation I think to myself, “why are they so worried, as GS is still in charge”.The winner in this case has goldman in a prominent place taking Q and A from senators, the loser in this case had a meeting of the minds with GS and a few kagillion into the foundation would have allowed them to dictate policy from the background. Two sides of the same coin, perhaps? The revolution or civil war in our civil nation said “you had your chance, and we don’t want anymore, thanks” If we can keep the topic away from distillations like isms of any stripe, we’ll learn more and communicate better. I agree that nomi likely was referring to herself as an american like so many others of us in our various conditions and that seems civil enough to me.
It was Thomas Jefferson in his “Tree of Liberty” letter— “God forbid we should ever go twenty years without … a rebellion.” Written in Paris, when he had some free time from the dalliances with the female slave he took over there.
I thought the policy is against personal attacks of commenters. There is no policy that there can’t be personal attacks against editorialists, essayists, talking heads, etc.?
Banning the savaging of the credentialed/statused for civility? Not a big supporter of that.
you’re right, I should have said civic minded, civil is unproductively restrictive and polite just means holding your tongue most of the time. Who needs it when you’re hanging around a bunch of necessarily cynical geezers…..
This blog is hosted by a woman; who like Nomi is helping you and I better understand the corruption. Neither I would suggest is poor. But that does not reduce the value we get from the information they provide.
Its’ up to us to use that information the best we can to change our government, and understand the value of government policies.
You imply that you don’t know Nomi’s financial status. So why attack her as if you do?
Waiting for a Women’s Protest on this one ……
you got it. See above. And it’s a woman’s protest.
Yeah, me too. Because I want to wear a fluffy green money hat.
feel free to delete all my previous comments – along with the ones I was replying to. It was a distasteful back and forth to me and I’m sure to many.
I’m shocked at this attack on Nomi here. The reason she – and Yves- can explain the inner workings of these places and the mindset of those running them is because they were there. They didn’t make policy.
I quadruple that. Nomi Prins is the most b-line direct writer on finance that we have right now. She is concise, informed and passionate about ‘banking’ corruption and what is doing to our nation. She (and Yves), should be applauded and thanked for her voice, not nit-picked because she might have some money.
Ellen Brown is quite good too.
Absolutely.
I hope Nomi won’t take this wrong but what we need more than anything are “class traitors” in the broadest sense. Aka those who both “relish the hatred of the bankster class” (to channel FDR) and have the knowledge+experience to call them on their grifting.
Sadly on current form DJT isn’t shaping up to be one of those … unless Mnuchin & Cohen have had some secret Damascus moments.
Meet the new boss, same…
Capitalism elevates the worst human traits to the detriment of everyone in the long run. “Got to get more for myself. There can never be enough.”
This will all come crashing down because it is against the laws of nature. There are always limits.
Just to hi-jack your opening line, is the new boss same as the old boss in this case?
In this particular case, the new boss seems to be fighting for jobs. The old boss couldn’t seem to muster that much interest.
More importantly, when it comes down to it, what will Trump do when hard decisions have to be made between fighting for jobs vs doing what’s right for Goldman Sachs? Will it be the same ol, same ol? Goldman feasts while the people get the same short-end of the stick? I don’t think so.
On the other hand, if Goldman Sachs can feast while the people reach full employment in good jobs, then I’m pretty sure Trump will be copacetic with that. And I don’t think the rank-and-file are going to cut off their nose to spite their face, just to see Goldman suffer. Besides this would be a sea change in itself for Goldman, that the rank-and-file aren’t completely shafted.
“This will all come crashing down because it is against the laws of nature.” The laws of thermodynamics to be sure.