The turmoil in the wake of Brexit particularly with the
markets has raised the question of who is better qualified to lead regarding
matters of Wall Street, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
I was asked to appear on two shows on Fox News regarding
that topic, one on Friday afternoon on the Cavuto show guest hosted by Maria
Bartiromo and one Satuday morning on the Cost of Freedom hosted by David Asman.
I want to discuss Brexit in general and what it means for
the election and what Hillary and President Obama as well as leaders of other
European countries should do but the Wall Street question is an interesting
one. Below is the video of my appearance Saturday morning on the Cost of
Freedom opposite Mark Serrano.
One of the first things that went through my mind during
this discussion is that Trump and his surrogates are trying to have it both
ways with Hillary. On the one hand they are trying to extend and capitalize on
criticism levied by Sanders and his supporters that Hillary is too close to
Wall Street and presumably would favor them too much. At the same time they
want to claim she would enact proposals that are bad for Wall Street. That
thought was going through my head as I exited the studio and ran into my old
friend Jonas Max Ferris who said that very thing to me right after the segment.
I hope everyone reading this gets that you can’t have it both ways. I don’t
blame Mark Serrano. I think that Trump has a massive problem in general with flip-flopping, contradictory statements and being on both sides of every issue and that sets
the tone for the campaign and its surrogates. My last article on the campaign
and Trump, “Trump’s Torrent of Flip-Flopping makes Mitt Romney look like Steady
Eddie”, http://steveleser.blogspot.com/2016/05/trumps-torrent-of-flip-flopping-makes.html
noted that several articles have now been written by reporters doing research
into Trump’s statements and the amount of contradictory statements Trump puts
out there is beyond bizarre to the point of being pathological. This article by
Politico, “Donald Trump’s Greatest Contradictions” http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-contradictions-213869
is perhaps the best catalog of them. Politico’s catalog of Trumps flip flopping
and contradictions goes on for 23 pages. It still shocks me and I have read it
several times now.
But getting back to the debate I had Saturday morning, as
far as Hillary and Wall Street is concerned my position hasn’t changed since
early in the Democratic primary and that is that to really do a good job
reforming an industry you have to have a deep understanding of that industry.
Hillary has cultivated that understanding over the last 16 years, not just by
doing paid speeches but by having an ongoing dialogue with various leaders and other folks on
Wall Street and the banking industry. The fruits of that effort are many
including:
- . Hillary’s plan to reform Wall Street was voted best by a large majority of Liberal and Progressive economists. In other words, her plan will do the best job of reigning in the bad practices that led to the mortgage crisis and various other issues we have seen in finance and banking over the last 30-40 years.
- . Wall Street and the Banking industry feels comfortable that Hillary will address the problems but not prevent or hinder them from ethically doing their business.
Number two will be dismissed by various folks as unimportant
or undesirable, but the Financial Insurance and Real Estate industry is over
20% of the US Economy. If you end up crippling or destroying that industry, you
better have a plan for recreating that contribution to the economy and the tens
of millions of jobs that come with it.
This is the kind of politics I prefer, engaging the people
involved and trying to gain a deep understanding of all the facts surrounding
issues so you can most successfully deal with them. Demagoguery against Wall
Street and the Banking industry and refusing to talk to leaders of companies in
both may be good politics on both sides of the aisle but it doesn’t help you
craft good policy to address the problems. Of course, with this belief system
of mine there was no question of who I would support in the Democratic primary.
On the other hand, Trump has a lot of problems where Wall
Street and the banking industry is concerned. They will never forget how he
left investors holding the bag for his four bankruptcies. All told, for
investments of billions of dollars, investors got pennies on the dollar for
such debacles as the Trump Taj Mahal bankruptcy in the early 90’s. Whenever
journalists have gone to Wall Street to assess how Wall Street and Bankers
think about Trump, they have found a very small group who like him, like Carl
Icahn for instance, and a lot of folks who refuse to do business with him.
There apparently is even a pejorative term in the industry for how bad of an
investment it is to loan Trump money. It’s called “Donald Risk” as Susan Craig
noted in a May 23rd article in the NY Times.
Adding to those kinds of problems is that Wall Street values
consistency above almost everything else. Given consistency Wall Street can
react to and successfully deal with almost anything. But as you can see from
the Politico article I linked above, Trump doesn’t do consistency. He is a wild
card and you never know what to expect from him. During the campaign he has at
times attacked Wall Street and Hedge funds, and then at times he has tried to
paint himself as a big friend of Wall Street. You can bet this hasn’t gone
unnoticed by folks on Wall Street and the finance industry.
Regarding Brexit, I think for those of us in the US and in
other European countries who support immigration and the acceptance of
refugees, Brexit was a wakeup call that we need new short and long term
approaches to these kinds of issues.
Before I get into that, I just want to point out that while
Trump was out in Scotland on Friday and Saturday cheering Brexit and saying the
citizens of the UK were right to “take their country back” (all the while
hawking his golf course), in 2013 he said something very different as the Daily
Caller noted (http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/25/before-the-brexit-donald-trump-was-a-transnationalist-who-wanted-to-leave-borders-behind
):
In
January 2013, Trump wrote an op-ed in the cyber pages of CNN enthusiastically
endorsing the economic benefits of Europe-wide interdependence and calling for
nations “to leave borders behind.”
“The near meltdown we experienced a few years ago made it clear that our economic health depended on dependence on each other to do the right thing,” Trump wrote in 2013.
“I think we’ve all become aware of the fact that our cultures and economics are intertwined,” Trump said. “Never before has the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ had more resonance or relevance.”
Trump also expressed his support for transnational globalism.
“The near meltdown we experienced a few years ago made it clear that our economic health depended on dependence on each other to do the right thing,” Trump wrote in 2013.
“I think we’ve all become aware of the fact that our cultures and economics are intertwined,” Trump said. “Never before has the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ had more resonance or relevance.”
Trump also expressed his support for transnational globalism.
-----------------------------------
Everywhere you turn you find a striking example of Trump
reversing himself. As I noted earlier, Trump’s contradictions and flip-flopping
are pathological, but I digress…
In terms of leaders in Europe and the US who are in favor of
immigration and accepting refugees, it’s time to step back and reassess.
I think there are a lot of people in Europe and the US that
are uncomfortable with immigration and refugees at the levels they are right
now. Rather than doing things like dismissing them or calling them Xenophobes
or racists, it may be a good time to examine the impacts and come up with
concrete facts and new policies with which we can reassure folks who are
concerned. Studies should be conducted
in terms of how some of the new immigrants are settling in and assimilating. We’ve
all heard the horror stories, some of which are true and some are no doubt
exaggerated. So let’s do a study and find out how big the issue really is. Are
there parts of cities in Europe that really have defacto Sharia law being
enforced? I don’t think so, and the few attempts to investigate indicate that
this isn’t true but let’s take each of the specific accusations and debunk them
or prove them. How many incidents do we have of new immigrants abusing women or
trying to force women to cover up or obey whatever social mores that existed in
their host country but not in their adopted one? How different is the overall
crime rate of new immigrants and refugees versus the crime rate of the
communities in which they are living? What percentage of the unemployment rate
in each city and district can be attributed to new immigrants or refugees if
any?
Let’s take a rigorous approach to studying the
reality of the situation so we can combat the fear mongering by Trump in the US
and by folks in Europe like UKIP’s Farage. We should also highlight the
benefits of immigration, globalization and EU membership. One of the more
stunning facts to come out of Brexit is that the cities and communities that
voted to leave the EU are more economically dependent on the EU than those that
voted to stay in it. See this graph from Press Association's John Springfield,
Philip McCann, Bart Los and Mark Thissen.
I think these statistics are stunning.
They tell me that those of us in favor of things like the EU and globalization
aren’t doing the jobs we need to be doing to explain their virtues in terms of
each community.
I also mentioned new policies, and let me introduce that by
saying there are many good ideas we could come up with including I wonder
whether in the US, UK and EU we are doing an adequate job explaining to
immigrants what we expect of them as good citizens. I think we should take specific
examples of unacceptable cultural norms in other regions of the world and explain
to prospective immigrants that those things are not acceptable in their new
homes and that attempting to continue them in their new countries will result
in deportation and then follow through on that threat if necessary. I think
that’s fair. It should be explained to immigrants that things like female
circumcision, harassing or assaulting women who aren’t covered up enough in the
eyes of certain cultures, discrimination against people of other religions and
race, sexual orientation or imposing religious jurisprudence on unwilling
recipients and various other things are unacceptable behavior and will get them
deported. I’m saying this as someone who is in favor of tolerance, multiculturalism
and diversity.
In short, let’s address the concerns of those who currently
have issues with immigration and refugees and globalism with facts and
responsible new policies. We have no choice but to try. The Brexit vote shows the consequence of ignoring those
concerns is very likely to be exploitation of them by far right demagogues. I'll leave you all with this additional graphic from Lord Ashcroft polls showing what motivated people in the UK to vote for or against Brexit.
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