Richard Cohen, who very often gives a very convincing impression of a 2,000 year old man—and not a very nice one, either—nonetheless still has a trick or two up his sleeve and delivers a nice one here, taking down White House evil genius in chief and all-around prick Stephen Bannon’s account of his spiritual awakening to the evils of global capitalism:
“It is a story oft-repeated and, at first, quite moving. It is the story of Marty Bannon, father of the White House chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and how he lost much of his nest egg when the financial system cratered in 2008. He had worked for AT&T for 50 years, buying the stock when it was as safe as gold (only gold paid no dividend) and was now watching it go south at such an alarming rate that he decided to sell it. In a flash, the system turned on Marty and a lifetime of savings was gone. For his son Steve, it was an unforgettable lesson. It made him the revolutionary he is today.
“The story reappeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. ‘The only net worth my father had beside his tiny little house was that AT&T stock,’ Steve Bannon was quoted as saying. ‘And nobody is held accountable? All these firms get bailed out. There’s no equity taken from anybody. There’s no one in jail.’”
As Dick points out, if Wall Street big shots are, you know, evil and, you know, belong in jail, why are eliminating oversight of financial institutions and cutting the taxes of the rich (and, as a confused Avik Roy keeps pointing out, denying health care to the poor) the overriding passions of the Trump Administration? I mean, to what does Evil Steve devote his time, if not avenging his dad? Being mean to kittens?
I also find Steve’s “Road to Damascus” tale a bit mystifying, though for different reasons. After all, Marty sold his stock of his own free will (Steve is a Catholic), so isn’t it his own fault if he went bankrupt?1 Isn’t that how the free enterprise system works? What does Steve want? A law that makes it somehow “illegal” for the stock market to fall? Should we require Wall Street big shots (a class to be defined at a later date) to indemnify anyone who loses money in the stock market, on pain of imprisonment if they fail to do so?
These scarcely sound like workable measures. If only there were, I don’t know, a sort of “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” that would advise Americans on how to invest their money and protect them from being ripped off by unscrupulous financiers who hide behind shell companies and use corporate bankruptcy to shield themselves against their debts and other financial obligations. And we could supplement that with a general program open to all that would provide a minimum of guaranteed benefits for old folks, a “Social Security System”, if you will, that could be linked with medical insurance so that folks like Marty’s dad could live out their retirement years in comfort and peace. How does that sound?
- Also, if he had had a properly diversified portfolio, instead of, apparently, investing everything in a single stock, he wouldn’t have taken such a hit. Aren’t we all supposed to be big boys here? Do you need Lizzie Warren to wipe your nose for you? Is that her job? ↩︎
