**JULY 15, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

Biden's Wall Street Undertow

****

I've been writing some flattering stuff about Joe Biden lately. His
Made in America blueprint released last week

was terrific, and his $2 trillion climate plan

released Tuesday was even better.

Here's the downside. Biden is inundated with Wall Street supporters,
who use their influence to assure that he will be another president in
the Clinton-Obama mode-liberal-ish on social issues, but not a threat
to Wall Street's toxic business model, which is such a fundamental
driver of gross inequality of income and wealth as well as extreme
corporate concentration.

Today at 5:30, there is a big, virtual Biden fundraising event
by and for
Wall Street donors. It was organized by 44 alums of the Obama and
Clinton Treasury Departments.

Make a donation, and you too can participate. Lead gifts are $25,000.

Keynote speakers, discussing the future of the American economy, include
former Treasury Secretary and OMB Director Jack Lew, and former head of
the National Economic Council Gene Sperling. Lew, under Obama, was one
of the cheerleaders for budget austerity. Sperling helped negotiate the
end of Glass-Steagall.

Lew is now a partner at the private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg, which
specializes in leveraged buyouts, one of the curses of the economy that
a progressive Biden administration would need to rein in. Budget
austerity plus private equity!

Gene Sperling, who runs his own strategies firm, is more of a liberal
who genuinely cares about poverty and inequality, but far from a
crusader for Wall Street reform. And he will be speaking to a group of
Wall Street donors.

The risk of this crowd is that several of their number will get key
posts in a Biden administration, and then we can kiss radical reform
goodbye. Yes, there are other Biden donors, but Wall Street always seems
to carry the biggest stick.

Joe, please prove me wrong.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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