Of course--he's from Goldman Sachs. Sigh. Meet the Director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn. He has been the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs for the past eleven years. And he says he's a Democrat.

Yay! Bipartisanship! Both parties agree on the need to have the most successful predators in charge of making sure the nation's economy continues to operate solely for the benefit of the richest and greediest (whom, according to Jerry Falwell Jr., are the most Christian, and therefore, I suppose, the most deserving. Holy tautology, Batman!).

Over at Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith linked to an interview dealing with the New York City financial crisis of the 1970s, The Financial Crisis That Spawned Austerity, Corporatized the Democratic Party and Gave the World Donald Trump. The interview reminded me there is a rogues gallery of Democrats, like Cohn, who have shafted working Americans.

Felix Rohatyn
The key figure in the New York City story was Felix Rohatyn, a director of exclusive investment bank Lazard Freres. Rohatyn "saved" the City from bankruptcy by creating and directing the Municipal Assistance Corp., which seized dictatorial powers over New York City's finances and budget, and forced the city government, its unionized employees, and its residents, to endure a strict regimen of austerity. The same playbook was applied to the entire USA auto industry in 2008, by a protege of Rohatyn, Obama's auto czar, Stephen Rattner.

Louis F. Powell, Jr.
I did not realize until I recently read it in Thomas Frank's book, Listen Liberal, that the author of the infamous 1971 Powell Memo, which summoned corporations to actively fight for the "free enterprise system," was a Democrat. Powell was a director of cigarette maker Philip Morris, and represented the Tobacco Institute and various tobacco companies in numerous law cases. It is also important to note that the present anti-science animus of the Republican Party and the conservative movement generally, has its origins in the tobacco industry's strenuous efforts to head off, stymie, avoid, and shut down any regulation, by any level of government, of its deadly products.

Paul Volcker
Writing of the 1970s brings to mind another prominent Democrat, who has done even more damage to working Americans than Rohatyn: former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. It was Chairman Volcker who "saved" America from the spectre of inflation by sacrificing USA industry and workers to usury and finacialization. It is rather common knowledge that Volcker did this by raising interest rates to over 20 percent in March 1980. Less well known, but just as important, is that Volcker refused Chrysler's request for cheap Federal Reserve credit, but extended assistance to the big banks that were about to blow up when the billions the banks had loaned to the Hunt brothers to buy over 35 million ounces of silver failed to corner and rig the silver market. (I would be remiss not to note that the Hunts were reportedly the richest family in the world in the 1960s, and major funders of the conservative movement in USA.)

Volcker's decision to save the banks from their failed speculative scheme in silver, but not one of the big three US auto makers, locked the US economy into deindustrialization and financialization. (For details, see William Greider's 1987 book, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. For an excellent discussion of Volcker in the context of what Jon Larson terms the "Natural Usury Point"--which you are not going to find anywhere else--read Chapter Six, "Money" of Larson's 1992 book, Elegant
Technology: economic prosperity from an environmental blueprint. The entire book is available as a pdf file, here.) Despite this clear record of ruin and destruction, most pundits and Democratic Party elites today still give deference to Volcker as the "grownup in the room."

Robert Rubin
Rubin was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs before becoming Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, and convincing the Big Dog that the sexiest thing in the world would be to come back reincarnated as the bond market. I'm curious to know if readers are already familiar with Rubin's role in destroying the USA economy--if you're not, please leave a comment, and I'll provide some links.

Larry Summers
A professional economist, Summers was a protege of Rubin, and followed Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury. As president of Harvard University from 2001 to 1006, Summers nearly destroyed Harvard's endowment--the largest of any university in the world--by steering it into investments in financial derivatives. This was the guy Obama selected to be Director of the National Economic Council, the position now held under Trump by fellow Democrat Gary Cohn. Like his mentor, Rubin, I'm curious to know if readers are already familiar with Summer's role in destroying the USA economy--if you're not, please leave a comment, and I'll provide some links.

I'm posting this at DK next, so please come on over and join in the fun. My latest harebrained scheme is to periodically prod and needle all the newbies there with whatever anti-FIRE material comes to mind. Someone needs to educate (re-educate?) those folks, and if we don't do it, who will?