Why do people attack Hillary as a capitalist?

[CheshireDog]

Just curious why people here assume that all Hillary supporters would be upset at Hillary's capitalist roots? Or that she's supposedly less progressive than Bernie? Not all Democrats are determined to blindly support the most liberal option. We all fall on different areas of the progressive continuum - take me for example. I'm very socially liberal, but not so much fiscally. I live in an expensive part of the country where I cannot afford to pay more taxes and keep my quality of life. In addition, I depend on my 401k and stocks to hopefully retire someday - a president who is supportive of business and wall street is actually in my best interests. I think Hillary will be tough enough on businesses, but I don't think she will entirely destroy successful companies and levy taxes on them so high they see falling profits, perhaps delaying my ability to retire someday. I'm happy with that. Why is that a problem?

[Xipe Totec]

1. Link? nt

[think]

2. Part of it is her speeches to the Wall Street banks that continue to violate U.S. laws:

Hillary Clinton got nearly $1.6 million from big banks in 2013

BY GREG GORDON - JULY 31, 2015

Washington - Hillary Clinton earned nearly $10 million in speaking fees in 2013, including almost $1.6 million from major Wall Street banks, she disclosed Friday along with releasing eight years of personal income tax returns.

~Snip~

The totals brought the couples’ combined post-White House speaking income to more than $150 million, an off-the-charts sum when compared with other present and former U.S. politicians.

~Snip~

In 2013, however, she accepted $1,575,000 from Wall Street banks that have been blamed for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis, including $675,000 from Goldman Sachs, and $225,000 each from UBS Wealth Management, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.

The Clintons also disclosed that UBS Wealth Management paid a $175,000 speaking fee to Bill Clinton in May 2013. Together, UBS paid the couple $1.9 million for speeches since 2011.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that shortly after taking office as secretary of state in 2009, Hillary Clinton intervened in negotiations with the Swiss government to release long-confidential information on the UBS accounts of thousands of American citizens suspected of evading U.S. taxes. Clinton’s intervention resulted in a settlement providing for the release of information on 4,450 accounts, not the 52,000 sought by the Internal Revenue Service, the Journal reported...

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article29711881.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-04-14/goldman-sachs-misled-congress-after-duping-clients-over-cdos-levin-says

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/business/dealbook/5-big-banks-to-pay-billions-and-plead-guilty-in-currency-and-interest-rate-cases.html?_r=0

[Cheese Sandwich]

3. Because she is one? They asked during the debate who's a capitalist.

She chimed it with a defense of capitalism.

She said capitalism is hard work and boot straps and living up to your god given potential.

I'm paraphrasing.

[CheshireDog]

7. Right - I'm asking why that's a problem?

Some of us Democrats, as I said, depend on 401k and stocks to hopefully retire some day. Wall st does better under capitalism

[Cheese Sandwich]

16. Capitalism is where homeless people freeze to death in the streets

I'm against it.

[99Forever]

4. Attack? By stating the truth?

Play the phony victim card much?

[CheshireDog]

8. Read the Post...

I didn't say it wasn't true, I want to know why its a problem.

[99Forever]

13. I read your .01%er apologist post.

Completely. That why I responded as I did.

Get it yet?

[CheshireDog]

17. You don't have to be a 0.1%er ...

To invest in the stock market. I am far from a 1%er but anyone at any income level should invested in a 401k in order to retire some day. I don't see how this automatically makes me a 1%er?

[99Forever]

18. What does that...

... word salad have to do with what I said? Perhaps some work on reading comprehension skills might benefit you.

Sorry bud, but I just lack the patience to walk you through it.

[HassleCat]

5. Big stock market crashes

The last big stock market tumble, the one where GW Bush shrugged his shoulders with that "shit happens" expression on his face, came about because politicians in both parties were reluctant to enact regulation to prevent financial institutions from gathering up all their risky assets, bundling them together, and issuing derivatives based on the supposed, vastly overstated value of the assets. Some people believe Clinton supports such activity, and will no support regulation to prevent it. They believe this because she gathers in large campaign contributions from the financial sector. They believe a Clinton presidency offers a greater risk of another crash-and-bailout cycle, such as we saw in 2008. As a small investor, you have to worry less about higher taxes causing falling profits than you do about another slick trick similar to the mortgage bundling that caused the 2008 crash.

[MohRokTah]

6. Because money and working for corporations is EVIL, EVIL I TELLS YOU!!!!

You can only be a pure progressive if you live on your own organic farm and use no fossil fuels whatsoever.

[think]

9. do you approve of banks rigging markets and no one goes to jail?

[MohRokTah]

12. Most of what was done in the leadup to the 2007 recession was completely legal

Hard to put people in jail for not breaking laws.

Some people have been convicted of crimes, but most practices were completely legal at the time.

[think]

15. No. The market rigging where the banks became felons was after that. And these are the banks Hillary

gave speeches to for the big bucks.

These banks continued to violate U.S law even after the big crash

Rigging of Foreign Exchange Market Makes Felons of Top Banks

By MICHAEL CORKERY and BEN PROTESSMAY 20, 2015

For the world’s biggest banks, what seemed like the perfect business turned out to be the perfect breeding ground for crime.

The trading of foreign currencies promised substantial revenues and relatively low risk. It was the kind of activity that banks were supposed to expand after the 2008 financial crisis.

But like so many other seemingly good ideas on Wall Street, the foreign exchange business was vulnerable to manipulation, so much so that traders created online chat rooms called “the cartel” and “the mafia.”

~Snip~

On Wednesday, four large global banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland — pleaded guilty to a series of federal crimes over a scheme to manipulate the value of the world’s currencies. The Justice Department accused the banks of collusion in one of the largest and yet least regulated markets, noting that at one bank one trader remarked “the less competition the better.”

~Snip~

To get an edge, prosecutors say, traders at the five banks colluded to pad their returns from at least 2007 and 2013. To carry out the scheme, one trader would typically build a huge position in a currency, then unload it at a crucial moment, hoping to move prices. Traders at the other banks would play along, coordinating their actions in online chat rooms....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/business/dealbook/5-big-banks-to-pay-billions-and-plead-guilty-in-currency-and-interest-rate-cases.html?_r=0

[azmom]

20. Unethical and morally criminal. They tanked

The economy and ruined millions of lives because of their fucking greed.

[MohRokTah]

21. Which was allowable under the law.

You tell me, how do you convict when no law was broken? Nearly everything done was 100% legal. There has been some convictions for some illegal activities, but most of it was completely legal.

And when laws were broken, being capable of convicting in a meaningful way simply was not realistic. IT is difficult to convict people of crimes, the standard is damned high.

[Armstead]

10. The balance has tipped way too far in the rightward direction

and we already have one political party who unabashedly represents the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

We need a strong economically progressive/liberal party to provide the counterbalance -- and represent the public interest and protect the pubic from the excesses that capitalism can swing to if lefy unchecked. That should be the role of the Democrats.

Economic prosperity in the true sense requires those checks and balances.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. I eschew labels but if she wasn't a capitalist she would be the first president who wasn't./nt

[azmom]

14. You are subscribing to chicken little

Economics. Raising taxes on the mega wealthy is not going to collapse the economy.

[leftofcool]

19. I feel the same way and it isn't a problem at all.

People who think corporations should all be "taken down" have no idea of the thousands of people who would be out of work. These are the same who think Wall Street should all fold up, never once considering that many of us have retirement tied up in WS. Break up all the big banks into little ones? Sure, go ahead, then no one will ever get a home loan and you can count on banking fees go up.

[brentspeak]

22. If you depend on your 401K and stocks for your retirement

Then you definitely do not want a Wall Street-friendly person like Hillary as President.

Besides the fact that Wall Street is eating away at Americans' 401K nest eggs through excessive fees, there is the unmistakable pattern of destroyed 401K's through systematic Wall St. malfeasance (2008 financial crisis) as well as an increasingly weaker and weaker "real" American economy through Wall Street-funded offshoring of US industry.

If this nation is stuck with another 15-20 years of Republican and/or Corporate Democrat rule, your 401K will likely end up having the value of a plate of beans.

[Half-Century Man]

23. You understand that the point of 401Ks is to generate revenue for wall street, not save for you.

Your retirement funds are added together with the retirement funds of others and used to collectively invest, right? A middlemen acts in behalf of you and manages the funds. That middleman is paid.

Under the old system; the middleman worked the fund as a whole, and was paid by the whole. You joined the fund, contributed "X" for whatever length of time you chose. That was added to the greater whole. Which was percentaged out in funds and stocks (some safe, some riskier), it generated interest and dividends. You retired, drew out the money you put in plus your share of the collective interest and dividends.
The accounts could be held by brokerage houses and joined by whoever or, more commonly, were part of a union contract with a corporation. Those accounts were held by the company and viewed by corporate management as part of their property. The company backed their choice of investment firms by guaranteeing to cover contributions lost due to fluctuations in the market. All too frequently corporate management used those funds for reason not intended, picked brokerage houses on bribes paid to the selectors of the brokerage houses, or bad investments were picked. The guarantees made long ago, cut into current profits.
Corporate America hates promises the cut into profits, both real and projected.

Under the 401k system. The middleman works both ends of the fund, and the corporate world evades guaranteeing the contributions of employees. or to say it another way the people involved with your money get paid on both ends.
Brokers give you the illusion of control in return for transaction fees. Instead of a money manager with the training and self control to ride out the fluctuations in the market; they count on the greater trading orders generated by millions of lay persons making decisions based on the minor fluctuations. The 401k'er is too personally involved in outcomes of a system beyond their control to be dispassionate. So instead of a larger single fee manipulating a collective fund, millions of smaller fees combine to generate reliably repetitive profits.
By lumping individual investors into handy sets, corporations(and/or their managers) still are in line for bribes and kickbacks. By breaking the unions (or threatening unions) matching contributions get reduced and/or vesting periods grow longer. And current and future profits are seemingly protected justifying executive pay and bonuses.

[CheshireDog]

24. I agree but

It does generate money for wall street...but for me as well. What other way is there to defer tax free money to grow exponentially? There is literally no better vehicle in this country to save for retirement, especially when you choose funds with low administration costs. Do you advocate simply stashing money in a mattress or savings account? No one can retire on that.