With the media hyping up the possibility of former dork-turned-cool-brat Kamala Harris becoming president, Wall Street Democrats aren’t wasting any time jumping on the bandwagon to convince the undecided billionaires that Harris is the winner in November’s election.
Wall Street executives should support her and they will not regret it. History shows they will regret it.
Wall Street is important to presidential candidates for the same reason it is important to bank robbers: because that’s where the fundraising money is.
In my experience, the majority of people in finance are center-left and center-right, but they can also be swayed by propaganda and mood.
Remember, in 2008, many Wall Street moderates were enthralled with the smooth-talking Barack Obama?
“Obama is a moderate,” Larry Fink, CEO of asset management giant BlackRock, told me at the time.
He wasn’t alone: Goldman Sachs executives also endorsed the one-term Illinois senator, a man with a lackluster legislative record but a formidable stage presence who preaches moderation and mediocrity.
They ignored his record as one of the most progressive politicians in the country and his “experience” in the private sector as a community organizer.
Once elected, Obama’s true political character quickly emerged: He was a brilliant orator, but he ran left-wing politics, raising corporate taxes and tightening regulations.
He essentially destroyed the firm’s business model, despite past backing from Goldman Sachs, shorting its once-mighty trading business with new monetary policy.
During the Obama administration’s first year, the stock market hit rock bottom in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but a bull market began due to the massive printing of money.
That’s good for Wall Street, but some might say it’s not enough to make up for the taxes, regulations and soaring budget deficits, which is why some American corporations wised up and backed Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.
Incumbent power
It was too little, too late, to overcome the power of the incumbent administration. Obama won a second term, and there was nothing to stop his movement to the left.
He imposed a regulatory regime on big banks (see the fine JPMorgan paid for vague violations in 2008), raised taxes, and continued the left’s industrial policies that were precursors to the Green New Deal.
Then Trump came along. The bankers liked some of the tax cuts and deregulation promises he brought. They weren’t sold on his awkwardness and populist rhetoric, especially when it came to trade with their new big clients, China.
When Trump defeated their favorite, Hillary Clinton (Goldman’s other pick), in the 2016 presidential election, they lay low, praying for salvation from MAGA-ism.
The savior was Joe Biden, former President Obama’s vice president and a familiar figure in corporate America because disputes are adjudicated by a business-friendly court of chancery in his home state (Biden was a long-time Delaware senator).
During the 2020 presidential election, Biden appealed to business interests by speaking like a moderate, but once elected he returned to his old policies of massive regulation, antitrust attacks, taxes and spending.
Stocks have soared, driven mainly by the Fed’s coronavirus stimulus monetary easing, but the regulatory clampdown that Biden’s appointees have imposed on the administrative state has angered even the most staunch Democratic officials, with JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon recently touting the booming economy under Trump.
So consider Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: Will American business again be fooled by the mainstream media’s hype around these two rabid leftists, whitewashing their professed progressive credentials and promising beefed-up Biden economics?
Given recent history, I am confident that this will be the case.
White Crypto Brothers
In the spirit of “White Dude for Harris,” another embarrassing cross-vote mining spinoff has emerged: “Crypto for Harris,” reports Fox Business’ Eleanor Terrett.
The Harris-led crypto organization is trying to catch up with Trump’s crypto fanbase, the 40 million digital coin holders who primarily vote for one policy, Terrett wrote. The organization is led by Democrat tech entrepreneur and crypto enthusiast Mark Cuban and SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s communications director in 2017 before turning on Donald, a disastrous 11-day term that ended in failure.
Both men are hoping to stop Trump from being re-elected and are looking to take a bite out of the lead he has had among the crypto enthusiasts that the former president has been courting for months. Good luck with that.
First, while a headliner like this might lead some to deride the group as “rich white Harris cypher bros,” Terrett reports that its membership also includes several rich white women.
Second, they would have to whitewash Harris’ dismal record as vice president (border steward) and the fact that she was part of an administration that nominally oversaw crypto-hating Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.
President Trump recently vowed to fire Gensler in his second term after he launched a costly regulatory push into a $2 trillion industry.
Cameron Winklevoss, one half of the famous Winklevoss twins and co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, tweeted: “Kamala Harris, please stay away unless you’re prepared to take swift, bold, concrete action. I don’t believe you can rebuild bridges with words alone after burning them for 4 years.”
