RS: Yes, yes.
TF: And they don't pollute, remember that, this is very important. So Wall Street is not a polluting industry, and by their lights, neither is Silicon Valley.
RS: And Martha's Vineyard will remain pristine, and they'll even put up big hedges.
TF: [Laughs]
RS: So this was the idea, though, that in fact, you're quite willing, consciously, to betray the people that the Democratic Party was supposed to be helping. The people that Bill Clinton, even more, much more than Hillary, came from, you know? And you're going to betray these people, whatever their color; you're going to ignore class; you're going to pretend that you have an avenue up to the meritocracy; forget about anybody else who comes from a different background or has a different skill set. And, in fact, you're not -- you're going to embrace these folks as winners on Wall Street, and you're going to do what Ronald Reagan was not able to do. This goes to an argument that I'm going to have with you at the end of this interview, about lesser evilism. Because you know, here was Ronald Reagan, because of the savings and loan crisis, actually tightened regulations a bit at the end. It remained for Bill Clinton to come in, make an alliance with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the banking committee -- who then goes on to work for the Swiss bank UBS as his reward, and his wife is on the board of Enron that gets a loophole in that very modernization --
TF: Enron, yeah. OK, so Enron is an important part of this story. But can I just throw in something here? One of the many really interesting things that I found when I did the research for "Listen, Liberal" was an internal Clinton administration document where they, after one of their many bank deregulations, they were boasting that they got done what Reagan couldn't. That Clinton did [Laughs] what Reagan couldn't. And I remember -- and it seems like -- that might as well be a motto for the Clinton administration, you know? For the kind of things they did. But I don't want to just pick on Clinton here. And you mentioned Enron, so let me talk for just a second about that. You know, I used to be fascinated by Enron; I used to write about them when they were still a going concern. And when Enron went down in this, you know, in this blaze of fraud; and George W. Bush, who was president at the time -- and this is very interesting -- was intimately connected with Enron, had even let Enron basically write his administration's energy policy -- do you remember this?
RS: Oh, yeah.
TF: Even this guy, George W. Bush, knew that he had to get tough with them. And he went and he prosecuted Enron. And a lot of those Enron officials went to prison. OK? And you look at Barack Obama, a Democrat, who we all, you know, we elected with great relief -- George W. Bush is gone, this is fantastic, we've got this wonderful president -- and how many bankers has he prosecuted? You know, there's this long tradition in this country of prosecuting white-collar crime; you get to Barack Obama, and it just completely stops. All of a sudden, these wonderful professionals on Wall Street are above the law. In fact --
RS: Well, they're your classmates.
TF: Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, the Obama administration has been pretty zealous on prosecuting mortgage fraud by individuals. So if you liked on a mortgage application back in the bubble days, they'll come right after you. But if [laughs] if you're the CEO of a company that's handing out liars' loans in order to jack up fake profits and get, you know, ring the bonus bell -- oh, no. Nothing wrong with that. Because you're a professional.
RS: The Enron scandal really was made possible by the Enron loophole in that Commodity Futures Modernization Act that Bill Clinton signed as a lame duck president; he didn't even have to do it. He signed it, it was a gift to Wall Street, Wall Street then backs his wife. And my wife Narda Zacchino has a book coming out on California, and she has a long interview with Gray Davis, who was our governor, driven from office because of the Enron scandal -- not his doing at all, but Enron came in and wrecked the economy in California. And Gray Davis, plaintively, in this interview in her book, talks about going to Bill Clinton. And he said, I got the same answer from Bill Clinton that I got from George W. Bush: talk to Ken Lay.
TF: Hah -- oh, my Lord.
RS: This is a Democratic, progressive governor of California--I don't want to give away, I guess I am giving away one of the really good points in my wife's book [laughs] which is coming out in August -- but I, that interview, I was shocked, you know? Because I mean, here is Gray Davis, goes to Bill Clinton, says can't you help us out? Enron is raping our economy in California. It's destroying it! He's then driven from office, and Bill Clinton says oh, Ken Lay's a good guy, he'll take care of it. Same advice he got from George W. Bush. They wouldn't lift a finger to hold Enron accountable.
TF: What can I say, Robert? I mean, that's what we're talking about here. So basically, the story that I'm trying to get at in "Listen, Liberal" is, why don't Democrats care about inequality? Why don't they, why hasn't Barack Obama done more, why hasn't he been more aggressive with Wall Street, why hasn't he been more supportive of efforts for workers to earn more money? You know, we can go on and on and on down the list of the ways that they've screwed it up legislatively. But at the end of the day, it's because Democrats, their favorite constituency, the apple of their eye, the people that they listen to, that they admire, that they hold up as examples for our children to be like, is basically just a different stratum of the very top of American society. So you know, Democrats love to talk about the one percent, and the point one percent, and the Koch Brothers; and that's all true, and that's all fine. But the real mass constituency for inequality is not the one percent. It's the ten percent.
RS: The point you make -- it's like Nixon going to China.
TF: Yes, yes.
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