Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein considers Bernie Sander’s revolution a dangerous moment in time
It is true that Bernie Sanders scares Wall Street. One of the titans on Wall Street, Lloyd Blankfein, considers this moment a potentially dangerous moment. He appeared on CNBC recently and said as much.
Both Blankfein and co-host Joe Kernen went into the typical scare tactics about socialism not working. Blankfein tried to draw a false equivalence with Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialist policies with Cuba, whose economy was decimated by the political power of America along with the embargo.
Bernie Sanders is not calling for a Cuban style government. In fact he is not attempting to change the United States government at all. He simply wants policies that support the middle-class. It is fact that for the last 40 years America has had income redistribution from the middle-class to the wealthy class. That is not conjecture. It is a fact that is corroborated by the numbers.
Here is the text to included video clip.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: You mentioned politics and the politics are bad and Bernie Sanders taking a shot at you personally. How do you see this whole campaign turning out and also do you think that it’s impacting the markets in any meaningful way.
Lloyd Blankfein: I think he mentioned me by name. I don’t take it personally since we never met. Another kid from brooklyn how about that. It has potential to look to personalize it. It has potential to be a dangerous moment. Not just for Wall Street, not just for the people who are particularly targeted but for anybody who is a little bit out of line. …
Andrew Ross Sorkin: Do you think wall street or the business community should be worried about Bernie Sanders or is? When you see the comments. I’m just curious what the reaction is. I’m assuming you’re backing Hillary Clinton.
Lloyd Blankfein: Yes, you’re assuming it. I don’t want to help or hurt anybody by giving them an endorsement.
Joe Kernen: I would phrase it different the young people in this country are supporting a socialist. Suddenly we forgot socialism doesn’t work. I’m ready to fire all the academics at all the universities and send my daughter to brigham young or liberty or something.
Becky Quick: It is probably a reflection of these people growing up after the financial crisis.
Joe Kernen: I don’t know what it is a reflection of but socialism doesn’t work real well. Lives are not really improved by it.
Lloyd Blankfein: You know what the best real time controlled experiment is I went to cuba
Joe Kernen: No I haven’t been
LLoyd Blankfein: by the way you should go. Because you go there, stop in miami and you just see the cuban community and how much wealth they’ve generated, created here and how, you know, really exciting and optimistic a community. You go to cuba it’s the cousins, same people.
Source: CNBC