Biden’s Wall Street Undertow

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I’ve been writing some flattering stuff about Joe Biden lately. His Made in America blueprint released last week was terrific, and his $2 trillion climate plan released Tuesday was even better.

Here’s the downside. Biden is inundated with Wall Street supporters, who use their influence to assure that he will be another president in the Clinton-Obama mode—liberal-ish on social issues, but not a threat to Wall Street’s toxic business model, which is such a fundamental driver of gross inequality of income and wealth as well as extreme corporate concentration.

Today at 5:30, there is a big, virtual Biden fundraising event by and for Wall Street donors. It was organized by 44 alums of the Obama and Clinton Treasury Departments.

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Keynote speakers, discussing the future of the American economy, include former Treasury Secretary and OMB Director Jack Lew, and former head of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling. Lew, under Obama, was one of the cheerleaders for budget austerity. Sperling helped negotiate the end of Glass-Steagall.

Lew is now a partner at the private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg, which specializes in leveraged buyouts, one of the curses of the economy that a progressive Biden administration would need to rein in. Budget austerity plus private equity!

Gene Sperling, who runs his own strategies firm, is more of a liberal who genuinely cares about poverty and inequality, but far from a crusader for Wall Street reform. And he will be speaking to a group of Wall Street donors.

The risk of this crowd is that several of their number will get key posts in a Biden administration, and then we can kiss radical reform goodbye. Yes, there are other Biden donors, but Wall Street always seems to carry the biggest stick.

Joe, please prove me wrong.

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