Democrats and Wall Street

Previous posts have discussed insiderism and outsiderism.  At The Daily Beast, Lloyd Green writes:

Just weeks before de Blasio’s New Year’s Day inaugural address, Hillary Clinton pocketed at least $400,000 at two Wall Street events by saying, “Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy—it needs to stop.” In 2008, Wall Street accounted for nearly 20 cents of every dollar raised by Barack Obama. The securities industry was the No. 2 donor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, trailing behind law firms but ahead of lobbyists in donations.

Reid even took in more than $112,000 in contributions from Weitz & Luxenberg, law firm of Sheldon Silver, the ethically challenged speaker of the New York State Assembly and even better, de Blasio’s newest friend.

...

During Clinton’s 2000 run for the U.S. Senate, New York Democrats were all doing their damnedest to stroke the bankers who commuted to Wall Street from New York’s tony suburbs, such as Chappaqua, which Clinton calls home, and which Clinton bought with a handout, er hand, from Terry McAuliffe, crony capitalist par excellence and Virginia’s new governor.

Clinton didn’t comment on the repeal of the .45 percent commuter tax in 1999, as she was mulling her Senate run. And Silver was instrumental in its repeal. The tax repeal costs New York City $500 million annually.

Early in the aughts, Wall Street whistled, and neither Clinton nor de Blasio barked. No, instead they brought Wall Street its slippers, coffee, and newspaper.