The
former president is reportedly raking in $400,000 per speech to
massive financial firms.
by
Jake Johnson
Less than a
year has passed since he departed from the White House, and former
President Barack Obama has already joined the “well-trod and well
paid” Wall Street speaking circuit, a decision many argued will
negatively impact the Democratic Party’s credibility as it attempts
to fashion a message around taking on corporate monopolies, tackling
income inequality, and loosening the insurance industry’s control
over the American healthcare system.
According to
a Bloomberg report published Monday, Obama has in the last month
delivered two speeches to massive financial firms—Northern Trust
Corp and the Carlyle Group—for around $400,000 a pop, and he is
slated to attend a three-day conference hosted by Cantor Fitzgerald
next week, for which he will make another $400,000.
Former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced a wave of intense criticism
following her paid speeches to Wall Street during the 2016
presidential campaign and later conceded that they weren’t
politically wise.
Obama,
however, doesn’t appear to harbor any concerns about the political
impact his speeches may have—a fact that could be problematic for
the Democratic Party, Bloomberg‘s Max Abelson notes.
“While
he can’t run for president, he continues to be an influential voice
in a party torn between celebrating and vilifying corporate power,”
Abelson writes. “His new work with banks might suggest which
side of the debate he’ll be on.”
News of
Obama’s decision to “cash in” following his eight-year
presidency drew significant ire, particularly given his
administration’s failure to enact sufficient structural changes to
the financial system following the worst economic collapse since the
Great Depression.
As Abelson
observes, Obama’s “Justice Department prosecuted no major
bankers for their roles in the financial crisis, and he resisted
calls to break up the biggest banks, signing a regulatory overhaul
that annoyed them with new rules but didn’t stop them from pulling
in record profits.”
Responding
to Bloomberg‘s report, a Twitter user asked Ryan Cooper, national
correspondent for The Week, what a person could do in order to
receive $400,000 for a single speech.
Cooper
responded with a two-step plan:
three $400,000 buckraking speeches on Wall Street from Obama just in the last month https://t.co/SiegTvaTS0— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) September 18, 2017
Others
reacted similarly to the former president’s lucrative speeches,
noting that given Obama’s continued power over the direction of the
Democratic Party—which was demonstrated in his successful push for
former Labor Secretary Tom Perez to become chair of the Democratic
National Committee over Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)—is reason
enough for him to abandon the Wall Street circuit.
“This
is a really crappy thing to do to the people who poured their hearts
into his campaigns and administration,” concluded Matt Stoller,
a fellow at the Open Markets Institute. “Hillary Clinton
publicly talking about why she lost [the 2016 election] is far
healthier than private speeches to the Carlyle Group.”
For
investigative journalist Nomi Prins, Obama’s Wall Street speeches
are indicative of the deep, inescapable influence the nation’s
largest financial institutions exert over political discussion and
policy in the United States.
“Wall
Street knows no party,” Prins concluded.
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