A devilish deal between White House and Wall Street
It began with Donald Trump’s racist tweets demanding that four Democratic congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar — “go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came.”
All four women are American citizens, and only one, Omar, was born overseas.
At a rally in North Carolina, Trump continued his attack, especially on Omar. In response, the crowd chanted: “Send her back!”
The relevant question is not whether Trump is a racist. Of course he is. Or whether he’s going to continue bashing members of Congress who fill all his demonization boxes: Females, people of color, a Muslim. Of course he will.
The real question is whether the people bankrolling Trump and the Republican Party are going to stop this rot before it consumes the politics of 2020, and perhaps more.
Who is funding this? Much of the money that’s flowing into Republican coffers is coming from the same place it’s always come from: Wall Street.
Last year, JPMorgan Chase contributed $149,908 to the RNC. JPMorgan’s chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, is no racist. A few months ago, in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, he said white people don’t adequately understand racial discrimination.
But JPMorgan isn’t the only Wall Street firm backing Republicans. Between April and June, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell collected $3 million, but just 9 percent of it came from people in Kentucky. The biggest block was from executives at Wall Street hedge funds.
Why is Wall Street funding Trump’s GOP? Because it is delighted with what Trump and Senate Republicans are giving it: tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.
Dimon was instrumental in getting the Trump-Republican tax cut through Congress. Last year it saved JPMorgan and the other big banks $21 billion.
Trump and the Republicans have also given Wall Street more freedom. They defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and have allowed the banks to grow even larger, announcing more mergers and acquisitions in the first five months of 2019 than in any full-year period since 2008.
The result has been vastly more money for the Street. Last year’s bonus pool totaled $27.5 billion — more than three times the combined incomes of the 600,000 Americans earning the minimum wage.
Since Trump’s inauguration, JPMorgan’s stock is up nearly a third. Dimon earned $31 million in 2018.
Asked how Trump was doing, Dimon gushed: “Regulatory stuff, good.”
The summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un? A “great idea.”
He also complimented the administration’s “negotiating tactic” on China and called the relationship between big business and the White House “active and good.” Asked about Trump saying the Fed had “gone crazy,” Dimon said he had “never seen a president who wanted interest rates to go up.”
Wall Street and the CEOs of major corporations have made a hellish deal — ignore Trump’s repugnance and provide ongoing support for the GOP, regardless of its complicity, in return for high returns.
Perhaps they also believe the flames of racism and xenophobia will distract the nation enough for them to keep looting it.
But a deal with the devil can exact a large toll. Flames that distract now could lead to an uncontrollable conflagration.
The putative leaders of the American economy owe it to the nation: They must help douse this fire.