“Greed is good”
By
Phil Mattera for the Dirt Diggers Digest
Much
has been made of President-elect Trump’s use of his bully Twitter pulpit to get
companies such as Carrier and Ford Motor to adjust their investment plans and
to warn military contractors about escalating costs.
The Washington
Post went so far as to publish a piece last month claiming that Corporate
America is “unnerved” by Trump.
Any
CEOs still feeling such anxiety have not caught on to the way Trump operates.
These moves serve two purposes: to give his base the impression that he is
promoting the interests of the working class while deflecting attention away
from his larger agenda that caters to the corporate elite.
The
latter has come through loud and clear in his cabinet nominees. Not only has
Trump shunned the idea of including a token Democrat, the purported populist
has not picked anyone for the cabinet who can in any way be construed as
representing the interests of working people.
Along with generals and
right-wing zealots, the choices instead include a slew of billionaires, wealthy
investors and corporate executives.
These individuals are not exactly from the corporate social responsibility wing of the business world. The man chosen to run the Labor Department, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, openly promotes wage suppression, while the choice for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, was responsible for thousands of dubious foreclosures after he took control of a struggling bank.
Yet
perhaps the clearest signal that Trump is favoring the worst elements of big
business is the decision to give prominent roles to individuals associated with
two of the most controversial large corporations around: Exxon Mobil and
Goldman Sachs.
By
proposing Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, Trump is implicitly endorsing
the polices of a giant oil company which has long been a symbol of corporate
irresponsibility.
Exxon
was widely condemned for its inadequate response to the disastrous 1989
accident in which one of its supertankers spilled 11 million gallons of crude
oil off the coast of Alaska.
During
the past three decades, the company has been involved in a long
series of other spills and accidents, and it became notorious
for its refusal to acknowledge the climate impacts of fossil fuel production.
Violation Tracker shows that since the beginning of 2010 it
has racked up more than $80 million in federal regulatory penalties.
Another
corporate pariah embraced by Trump is investment bank Goldman Sachs, the alma
mater of several key figures in the new administration, including Mnuchin,
chief strategist Steve Bannon and Gary Cohn, selected to head the National
Economic Council.
Goldman
became one of the leading symbols of
the reckless behavior of financial institutions in the period leading up to the
financial meltdown, thanks to its key role in packaging and distributing toxic
securities.
Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi’s depiction of Goldman as “a giant vampire
squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood
funnel into anything that smells like money” and Greg Smith’s reference to Goldman as “toxic and
destructive” in a New York Times op-ed announcing his
departure from the firm were two of the most frequently quoted phrases about
the financial crisis.
According
to the Violation Tracker tally, Goldman has had to pay more than $9
billion in legal penalties since the beginning of 2010, putting it in eighth place among all companies.
While
repeatedly being found in violation of financial regulations, Goldman has
enjoyed taxpayer largesse. Like other big banks, it received vast amounts of
support from the federal government, including a $10 billion TARP bailout loan and
billions more from the Federal Reserve. It has also received large subsidies
from state and local governments, including a $425 million package to keep its
headquarters in lower Manhattan after 9-11.
By
associating his cabinet so closely with the likes of Goldman and Exxon, Trump
is sending a message that his administration is, despite the rhetoric of his
campaign, embracing corporate cronyism and irresponsibility. Given Trump’s
own checkered business record, this should come as
no surprise.
If
anyone should be unnerved by the way the Trump Administration is shaping up,
it’s not big business but those voters who supported a man they thought would
challenge the corporate elite but is instead giving it more power than ever
before.