Indeed, any proposition to reduce the size of big banks was sidestepped. Although Mnuchin did say that four monster banks shouldn't run the country, he didn't say that they should be broken up. He won't. Nor will Cohn. In response to a question from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, he added, "No, I don't support going back to Glass-Steagall as is. What we've talked about with the president-elect is that perhaps we need a twenty-first-century Glass-Steagall. But, no I don't support taking a very old law and saying we should adhere to it as is."
So, although the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall was part of the 2016 Republican election platform, it's likely to prove just another of Trump's many tactics to gain votes -- in this case, from Bernie Sanders supporters and libertarians who see too-big-to-fail institutions and a big-bank bailout policy as wrong and dangerous. Rest assured, though, Mnuchin and his Goldman Sachs pals will allow the largest Wall Street players to remain as virulent and parasitic as they are now, if not more so.
Goldman itself just announced that it was the world's top merger and acquisitions adviser for the sixth consecutive year. In other words, the real deal-maker isn't the former ruler of The Celebrity Apprentice, but Goldman Sachs. The government might change, but Goldman stays the same. And the traffic pile up of Goldman personalities in Trump's corner made their fortunes doing deals -- and not the kind that benefited the public either.
A former Goldman colleague recently asked me whether it was just possible that Mnuchin was a good person. I can't answer that. It's something only he knows for sure. But no matter how earnest or sympathetic to the little guy he tried to be before that Senate confirmation committee, I do know one thing: he's also a shark. And sharks do what they're best at and what's best for them. They smell blood in the water and go in for the kill. Think of it as the Goldman Sachs effect. In the waters of the Trump-Goldman era, don't doubt for a second that the blood will be our own.
Nomi Prins, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of six books. Her most recent is All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books). She is a former Wall Street executive. Special thanks go to researcher Craig Wilson for his superb work on this piece.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2017 Nomi Prins
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