For his part, Clinton mockingly dismissed calls for banker prosecutions. Despite the fact that economists and law enforcement experts agree that punishment is essential to prevent future crimes, Clinton encouraged Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to go easy on crooked bankers, saying "[I] could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark alley and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days. Then the blood lust would rise again."
Unsurprisingly, the authoritative financial journalist William D. Cohan tells us that Wall Street is thrilled by Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Why wouldn't they be? They know her, they've rewarded her with lavish speaking fees, and the financial industry has made the Clintons and their associates very wealthy.
For their part, corporations are jacking up their share prices at the expense of employees -- and their own future viability -- in order to enrich their executives. (For his part, Bill Clinton suggested that CEOs will soon voluntarily give up the pursuit of profit as a top priority in favor of -- an idea Robert Borosage rightly dismissed as Clinton's "corporate fantasy.")
According to a recent analysis by Goldman Sachs, corporate profits grew five times faster than wages last year. Meanwhile, back in the real world ...
Depressing realities
This income crisis is also contributing to a retirement crisis. 20 percent of Americans have nothing saved up for retirement. (Teresa Ghilarducci has more.) Far fewer corporations offer secure pension plans, 401(k) plans are miserly, and many "centrist" politicians (including Bill Clinton) have touted plans for cutting Social Security -- the only reliable form of post-retirement or post-disability income they have left. (And the waiting list for Social Security disability hearings is worsening, not improving, with nearly a million people now waiting to have their appeals heard.)
A new study predicts that Americans with employer-sponsored healthcare will pay 55 percent more in out-of-pockets costs in 2015 than they did in 2010.
Household debt is soaring for the bottom 25 percent of Americans as they struggle to pay their bills. One-third of American households are living a "paycheck-to-paycheck existence."
Total student debt has more than doubled since 2007, and the amount owed by the average borrower now exceeds $27,000. Less than half of all student borrowers are current on their payments, and a recent study (must complete a form in order to download report) shows that significant student debt harms the borrower's physical and mental well-being.
Oh, and those jobs numbers we've been celebrating? A report from the Conference of Mayors found that the jobs created since the financial crisis pay 23 percent less than the ones they replaced.
Perhaps inevitably, another recent study found that Americans are more depressed today than they were in the 1980s, with depression rates and psychosomatic depression symptoms (sleep loss, etc.) higher for all age groups studied: teens, young adults, and adults.
These Americans, and the others among the vast majority who have suffered economic setbacks, aren't likely to be swayed by Bill Clinton's sunny optimism -- or by a candidate or a party which echoes this misguided economic worldview behind it.
No wonder three out of four people say the recession's still going on. It is -- for them.
The trend lines are good for some people, of course. The amount of wealth held by the richest 0.01 percent of Americans hasn't been this high since 1916. The top 0.1 percent (that's one-thousandth of the population) now possess as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Corporate profits hit record highs last year, and the stock market's skyrocketing numbers continue to break one record after another.
Selling "austerity lite"
Is Bill Clinton worried? He did manage to express concern recently -- for corporate executives who feel they're our corporate tax system is "crazy." His proposed solution is a system of "tax reform" that would lower taxes on US corporations, even though the taxes they actually pay (as opposed to statutory rates) are at or near historic lows.
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