Tuesday, February 9, 2016

The Rich Get Richer, Etc.

[Bernie] Sanders took offense when [Lloyd Blankfein, longtime CEO of Goldman Sachs], in a 2012 segment on “60 Minutes,” said, “You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations” that they will get their full Social Security and Medicare benefits because “we can’t afford it.” Blankfein advocated an increase in the eligibility age for both programs as well as other cuts because “entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.”

Soon afterward, Sanders excoriated Blankfein in a speech from the floor of the Senate.
SANDERS: Sometimes there is no end to arrogance. … Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. … During the financial crisis Goldman Sachs received a total of $814 billion in virtually zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve and a $10 billion bailout from the Treasury Department. … And now with his huge wealth he is coming here to Washington to lecture the American people on how we have got to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for tens of millions of Americans who are struggling now to keep their heads above water.
Just a few weeks ago on Bloomberg TV Sanders returned to the subject, citing Blankfein as a Wall Street executive who “really irks me” because such executives “make huge sums of money, help destroy our economy, they come to Congress and [...] say, ‘You’ve got to cut Social Security and you’ve got to cut Medicare and you’ve got to cut Medicaid.’”

That’s what Blankfein was responding to on CNBC last week when he said, “To personalize it, it has the potential to be a dangerous moment."
  The Intercept
For Bernie, maybe.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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