Hillary Comes to Hollywood for Money-Raising Shindigs

Hillary arrives in Hollywood today, to raise more than $2.5 million. Money and power mesh like peanut butter and jelly in Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood. The path toward influence is lined with the casualties or victories of status, wealth, and ego. Two presidential elections ago, Hollywood created its own underdog when it poured backing into the coffers of Barack Obama, shunning Hillary Clinton. But Hollywood loves a good comeback story in politics or on the silver screen. Enter Democratic presidential hopeful, Hillary and Hollywood money, Part II.

On May 7^th, three private fundraisers kick off the first of many legs of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election Hollywood campaign. First, there is a breakfast reception at the Westwood home of Public Affairs consultant, Catherine Unger. Then comes a luncheon at the Pacific Palisades abode of Steven and Dayna Bochco. (Steven Bochco Productions contributed $373,000 to Democrats over the last four campaign cycles.) The main evening event takes place at the Beverly Park estate of Chairman and CEO of Saban Capital Group, Haim Saban, and his wife, Cheryl. The couple and the Saban family foundation are listed in the $10-$25 million bracket of the Clinton Foundation contributors. The crème-de-la-crème of Tinsel town will clank their glasses for their ‘Champion’ of inequality far above the inequality rampaging the City of Angels.

Co-hosting will be an assortment of legacy media heavy hitters including the Sabans, Casey Wasserman, a trustee of the William J. Clinton Foundation, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Event tickets are $2700, the maximum individual limit for primary period contributions. This would put Hillary Clinton’s May 7^th Hollywood haul at about $2.6 million. More important than these initial outlays though, is their promise of solidarity. Hollywood stands ready for Hillary.

Indeed, Hollywood is expected to unite for a chance to spend money on Clinton’s campaign, in contrast to its prior loyalty abscess, which accelerated into cacophonous Barack Obama support early in the 2008 election cycle. The question is – will it spend as much? That answer will depend on the GOP and whether the rest of the Democratic field opens up, as with Senator Bernie Sanders’ April 29^th declaration that he would run for president as a Democrat.

The Bigwig: Jeffrey Katzenberg

According to the Washington-based non-partisan, non-profit research group, Center for Responsive Politics, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg reigns supreme over Hollywood glitterati in terms of most consistent and varied monetary support for the Democratic Party and its anointed ones.

Most people think of political contributions in terms of individual or aggregated corporate donations. That’s just the tips of the iceberg. Money flows into Capitol Hill in many forms. These include donating directly to candidates and bundling (or tapping all your rich friends and associates to contribute under your name before handing over a mega check). More ways to fork over dough consist of contributing to political action committees (PACs) or super PACs that do the same thing once removed, and ‘other’ avenues like paying $50K a pop to attend the Inaugural Ball, something stars such as Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Neil Diamond and Jamie Foxx did for Obama’s 2009 victory gala.

Katzenberg was the top Hollywood bundler for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. Last year, shifting gears back to prep for the 2016 election, he co-hosted a fundraiser featuring Hillary Clinton that raised $2.1 million for the Democrats.

Hillary's Money and Social Circles

Hillary has been comfortable in these sorts of circles for decades, even before the days when Barbra Streisand serenaded her husband, former President Bill Clinton during his 1996 re-election bid, ensuring enthusiastic media coverage in the process. Then, A-listers like David Geffen and Steven Spielberg corralled Hollywood’s elite to pay up to $12,500 a piece to convene in an opulent Mediterranean-style manor, netting the Democratic Party around $3.5 million. Geffen also hosted intimate dinners, in which President Clinton and a dozen power-guests, such as Steve Jobs, Steve Tisch, and Lew Wasserman, former MCA studio chairman would mingle.

Hillary’s own fortune pales in comparison to some of these players. On a relative scale, she is more like the 99 percent to the 1 percent bracket of the Hollywood billionaires, but at those echelons, such distinctions get blurred in lieu of power.

Her wealth still places her well into the 1/10th of 1 percent territory relative to the rest of the American population. In 2012, Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, ranked the third richest person in the executive branch, with a net worth of approximately $15.3 million. Her successor, John Kerry sits comfortably in first place with a net worth of $103 million as of 2013. (Obama ranks 8^th wealthiest with $4.6 million.)

Obama’s Bundlers

Hillary Clinton is hoping to surpass the total of Obama’s contribution figures, including from Hollywood. In 2008, Obama and Senator John McCain posted bundlers by ranges, with the top ranges designated "$500,000 or more." Together, 536 elites directed at least $75.75 million to McCain, and 558 directed at least $76.25 million to Obama. Jeffrey Katzenberg topped Obama’s 2008 bundler list. David Geffen from DreamWorks SKG was also in the $500,000 category.

Money flowed more plentifully for Obama’s 2012 re-election bid against Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, in the most expensive presidential campaign in US history. Again, the distinction between the wealthiest and everyone else was pronounced.

The top 100 individual donors to super PACs (plus their spouses) represented 1.0 percent of all individual donors to super PACs, but raised 67 percent of the super PAC (or ‘Outside Group’) money. All told, 769 elites handed $186.5 million to Obama's re-election efforts or the DNC. The TV/Movies/Music industry coughed up $12.1 million, not quite Wall Street’s levels of $22.85 million, but still commendable.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, who led Obama’s bundler group in general, with a total of $2.12 million to him or the Democrats from 1990-2012, was again in the $500,000 bucket, alongside Barry and Wendy Meyer of Warner Brothers, Colleen Bell of Bell-Phillip TV Productions, Mai Lassiter and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith of Overbrook Entertainment, and John Emerson from Capital Group Companies.

Katzenberg ranked 18^th in the 2012 composite list across industries of Top Individuals Funding Outside Spending Groups with $3.15 million. Other Hollywood A-listers on that list included Director Steven Spielberg (who ranks in the $1-$5 million contributors group for the Clinton Foundation  with $1.1 million, Actor Morgan Freeman with $1 million, Comedian Bill Maher with $1 million, Haim Saban with $1.16 million, and billionaire Jerold A. Perenchio, CEO of Chartwell Partners with $4.1 million.

By early 2015, DreamWorks Animation announced cuts of 500 employees as part of its “strategic” plan to restructure its feature film business. It's a safe bet that those 500 former employees will not be attending many elite political festivities in Beverly Hills. Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg dropped to 97th of the 100 top individual contributors for 2014, with $793,000. Hillary Clinton may provide grounds for a leap.

Hillary’s Celebrity and Celebrities

If it were up to Twitter and Facebook, Hillary would be running the White House already. She has more Twitter followers and Facebook likes than any Republican candidate that has already announced a bid for the Oval Office, plus Jeb Bush. She scores about 3.46 million Twitter followers and 2.1 million total Facebook likes.

On the GOP side, Ted Cruz tops the social media list with about 844,000 Twitter followers and also about 2.1 million Facebook likes. Rand Paul has 651,000 Twitter followers and 1.9 million Facebook likes. Marco Rubio has 732,000 Twitter followers and 1.1 million Facebook likes. Jeb Bush lags the GOP social media race with just 183,000 Twitter followers and 172,000 Facebook likes.

Aside from Hollywood’s legacy political-donor leaders and established celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Hillary is attracting a new more youthful demographic to her side. Lena Dunham offered Twitter support, but no funds as of yet. Kimberly Kardashian West donated $15,000 to the DNC last fall, under her company Kimsa Princess, Inc. and may come out publicly to support Hilary Clinton. America Ferrera backed Clinton in 2008 and will again. Olivia Wilde endorsed her. So did Scandal’s Kerry Washington and singer, Ariana Grande.

In 2008, after raising $229.4 million (about one-tenth the amount her camp claims she will raise this time), Clinton left the 2008 presidential race in early June. Of her top dozen corporate donor sources, Wall Street came through for her over Hollywood. JPM Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch all placed above 21^st Century Fox at 12th place.

According to a customized analysis for Forbes by the Center for Responsive Politics, only 12 people made both Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s top 50 Hollywood contributors list. And though the majority of those donors gave to both Clinton and Obama, only four of them ranked in both Clinton’s and Obama’s top 20. Those were Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Clarence Avant, CEO of Interior Music Corp. It will be Clinton’s hope to raise that crossover rate.

In politics, business and media, bruised egos heal quickly when money is concerned. Big Hollywood players will still back the Democratic candidate they think will win. That’s how the game of money, politics and social status works. The smaller ones will follow.

This piece originally appeared in Forbes on May 4th. 

Gateway Policies: ISIS, Obama and US Financial Boots-on-the-Ground

President Obama’s neo-Cold War is not about ideology or respect for borders. It is about money and global power. The current battle over control of gateway nations - strategic locations in which private firms can establish the equivalent of financial boots-on-the-ground - is being waged in the Middle East and Ukraine under the auspices of freedom and western capitalism (er, “democracy”). In these global gateways, private banks can infiltrate resource-rich locales fortified by political will, public aid and military support to garner lucrative market advantages. ISIS poses a threat to global gateway control that transcends any human casualties. That’s why Congress decided to authorize funds to fight ISIS despite the risk.

The common thread of today’s global gateway nations appears to be oil. But even more valuable are the multitude of financing deals that would accompany building new pipelines, arming allies, and reconstructing civil-war-torn countries. Indeed, hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake in America’s wars of  “principle.”

Middle-East Gateways: ISIS and Money

Obama’s recent public address on fighting ISIS  had a dash of economy sprinkled in. For him, US economic policy is foreign policy. It is also a product of an American political-financial expansionary land-and-resource grab that has been going on for decades. Obama’s execution may be far less authoritative than President Eisenhower’s. But his neo-financial Cold War has similar elements to those initiated by Eisenhower and the American banking elite in the 1950s when they collaborated to project American power into more countries, using the military and a combination of public and private capital, as tools.

The second World Bank President and 1950s Chairman of Chase Bank, John McCloy, and ascending and later Chase Chairman David Rockefeller both had aspirations to financially penetrate the Middle East. So did other major bankers. The US government and its banks first focused on Beirut as a gateway to the Middle East. Eisenhower dispatched military personnel to Beirut in 1958 not because he cared about the Lebanese, but because of the attractiveness of the country’s potential as a gateway to the region. By the 1970s, oil and money relationships between Chase and Saudi Arabia and Egypt grew, as they did with Iran and the Shah. Rockefeller's relationship with the Shah, who kept his family money with Chase, ignited the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. Before that, the US government and its military contractors made billions of dollars from arms deals with Iran. 

Citigroup opened its first Iraq branch in September 2013, ten years after George W. Bush began his Iraq War while facing a recessed American economy. A decade ago, the Bush administration selected JPM Chase to manage billions of dollars of financing for Iraq imports and exports. JPM Chase also opened a branch in Iraq last year to compete with Citigroup for current gains. Billions of dollars in new pipeline funding and other projects are now up for grabs in Iraq. If the US supports the Iraqi government (against ISIS), these banks, as well as oil and infrastructure-building companies are poised to get more of a chunk of that money. Citigroup is already a forerunner for arranging a $2 billion loan for Boeing Jets to Iraq. As Iraq's Deputy Transport Minister Bangen Rekani said in April, “We need a lot of funds...we’re in a race to complete the maximum number of projects in a short time.” 

Regarding Syria, Obama’s plea for showing strength worked. Congress voted in rare bipartisan fashion to fund the moderate Syrian rebels or “free Syrian army rebels.” According to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, initial assistance would be “small arms, vehicles and basic equipment like communications, as well as tactical and strategic training.” That could just be the beginning. He also said, “as these forces prove their effectiveness on the battlefield, we would be prepared to provide increasingly sophisticated types of assistance."  We’ve been down this road before, positioning the military to gain financial access to an area relative to our competition. It’s lasted for years and killed thousands of people, while not accomplishing the stated goal of curtailing terrorist threats or activities.

It gets complicated from there. Moderate Syrian rebels have been fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom the US would support against ISIS. The US thinks these forces would cease fighting against al-Assad to fight ISIS instead, though the US claims it is not directly cooperating with  al-Assad. 

Despite this, the US financial hope is that once the dust clears from all these regime changes we support militarily, there will be demand for massive reconstruction and resource extraction projects that our private banks can take care of alongside the IMF and World Bank. At a press conference in Beirut in June, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told the international community that the World Bank would help to rebuild Syria (at a cost of $150 billion after an “internationally recognized government” was put in place) as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq during their 'recovery' from years of war. Mega reconstruction profits are at stake for private firms in symbiotic partnerships  with these international entities. So too, are the requirements for austerity and loosely regulated financial markets as the Western “reform” bargains that accompany them. 

“Wars on terror” serve as a distraction in public and media discourse from a bipolar economy. The September releases of the US Census Report and the Federal Reserve Consumer Finance Survey revealed an ongoing trend toward greater income and wealth inequality. We remain 8 million jobs below pre-crisis levels, adjusted for population growth. Real wages have stagnated or declined. Employers have no incentive to provide well-paying jobs amidst ample desperation in the ranks of the unemployed. We are a mess at home.

Rather than deal with this, the US is trying to prevent terrorism from blocking private bank and corporate expansions and profit elsewhere. ISIS has already caused Iraq to delay its first mega project-finance deal. The $18 billion Basra-Aqaba oil pipeline would extend through Jordan to the Red Sea, pumping a million barrels of crude oil per day, as well as 258 million cubic feet of gas.  That’s a hefty financial incentive for which to use public funds.

Truth be told, the game of global gateway finance is a closed one. And there’s still Russia (and China) playing at the same table. In August 2014, Russia’s biggest oil company, Lukoil, estimated construction of the first branch of a pipeline to Iraq’s West Qurna-2 field at a cost of up to $1 billion. Lukoil holds a 75% stake in West Qurna-2 and has invested over $4 billion in the project, which is already producing more than 200,000 barrels of oil per day.

Cold-War Gateways: From Cuba to the Ukraine

The narrative of Russia's aggression vs. America’s fight for freedom dovetails with the turmoil going on in the Middle East. Both situations deflect attention from our country, which has greater inequality today than before Obama took office, despite a soaring stock market buoyed by the Fed's stimulus policy of pumping zero-interest rate money into banks providing them capital for all of these international adventures.

After Ukrainian President Poroshenko, a former banker and chocolate mogul, proclaimed the situation with Russia was much improved following his truce with Vladimir Putin, President Obama ratcheted up sanctions against Russia and corralled the rest of the Euro-squad to join him. This action was not about saving Kiev from pro-Russian rebels, but to reinforce the notion that the US is in financial control of the country. Poroshenko is no financial dummy, which is why he threw Putin and any potential Russian economic support under the bus, and high-tailed it to Washington for photo-ops and handouts.

These will come in the form of US government aid, more loans from the IMF and World Bank, plus complex transactions with US banks seeking more areas in which to funnel foreign capital, finance projects, and down the line, maybe securitize the resources of a new corner of the world and sell them to a fresh bunch of hungry speculators. The US has already provided $60 million in aid including food, body armor and communications equipment to the Ukraine to secure its place at this gateway table later.

Stepping back in time, my book, All the Presidents' Bankers illustrates how President Eisenhower's 1950s doctrine promoted a combination of US military and economic support to its non-communist allies. Aid from the then-new World Bank and IMF was provided in return for their commitment to provide open trade relationships and adapt policies advantageous to private western banks and corporations. The US government could thus achieve a dual military and financial stronghold. One such country was Cuba, which under Fulgencio Batista became a favorite spot from which to access Latin and South America. National City Bank (now Citigroup) established 11 branches in Havana alone, becoming Cuba’s principle US depository for American companies involved in the sugar industry and other businesses there. That changed with the Cuban revolution and Fidel Castro, who, in 1960, nationalized foreign bank assets. Bankers looked elsewhere to expand, as did the US government.

In Obama’s political-financial strategy, similar gateway strategies are in play. Obama, like all US presidents since Castro came into power, did the communist-bravado thing and extended sanctions. US bankers will reenter Cuba when US policy changes after Castro is truly gone, as they have during several periods before, notably when National City Bank sent an entourage of bankers led by Chairman Charles Mitchell in the 1920s to explore sugar, nickel, and other deals that eventually soured in the 1929 Crash.

The Ukraine is a modern Cuba with more lucrative resources. As with other US financial gateways, Obama supported the Ukraine faction amenable to financial relationships with the US and Europe relative to Russia. Ten years ago, the Bush administration supported Ukrainian leaders sympathizing with the US vs. Russia as well.  None of this was because of any purported interest in dispersing democracy, but because the right leadership offers more capital market, foreign investment and resource control opportunities to private US firms.

The Ukraine signed a $10 billion shale gas deal with US oil giant Chevron to explore its Olesky gas deposit around the time it expressed a desire for closer partnerships with the EU. Its ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to subsequently shun an EU trade agreement in favor of  Putin's offer of cheaper gas and a $15 billion aid package provoked internal unrest, as did its weak economy. The US denounced Russian-backed President Yanukovych, until he left his post, for he represented a potential loss of money, power and more financial access. Ukraine stands between Russian oil producers and European and Asian consumers, and is poised to profit from any growing energy demands from Western Europe, as could Western private firms.  It also serves as a potential financial out-post for US banks hunting for the next hot resource-saturated capital market.

Ironically, on September 17, 2014, the National Bank of Ukraine did a 180 spin on its economic forecasts and promised positive growth of 1% next year. The government said this economic expansion would come through more favorable corporate and income tax laws that would attract outside investors along the lines of what the US and IMF and World Bank has wanted. (More private relationships of bankers with these entities are in All the Presidents’ Bankers.) The Ukraine received two parts of a $17 billion IMF bailout this year with the IMF saying it may need $19 billion more. This means a greater call on Ukraine’s future revenues in return for austerity measures and deregulated financial markets to private foreign interests.

The real battle between the US and Russia is over the gateway countries in political flux. The real winners will be the private banks and oil companies that will reap the strategic benefits from gateway control over related markets and resources, supported by military and political might, and augmented with speculative capital for years to come. American and global citizens, oblivious to all this, will be the losers in this global shell game.

Making a Million an Hour Means never having to say you're sorry

(Note: A version of this book review featured on Truthdig last week.) Les Leopold’s latest book, “How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away With Siphoning Off America’s Wealth,” is necessary, alarming and really funny. His talent for deconstructing complex financial terms and topics constitutes a public service. What he reveals in a sardonic and appropriately irreverent tone, is more ominous. We exist in a political-economic system that allows people who manufacture nothing and bet on everything to control the financial destinies of the rest of the population with impunity, and make stupendous amounts of money doing it. Because, as Leopold writes, “Making a million an hour means never having to say you’re sorry.”

That inanity is what makes Leopold’s book so timely, especially now, when the powers-that-be are pretending we’re back to our pre-2008-financial-crisis status—and that’s a good thing. Hey, the stock market's hitting all-time highs—that’s never happened ahead of a major catastrophe before! 

His “handbook” approach to a pretty arcane topic is hilarious and horrifying. His lively chapters are divided so that they read like a twelve-step Capitalists Anonymous program on how to achieve wealth nirvana. There’s Step 2, “Take, Don’t Make,” which asks how can these hedge fund managers who create absolutely nothing tangible be rewarded so outrageously for it? There’s Step 7, “Don’t Say Anything Remotely Truthful”—well, that speaks for itself. And Step 9, “Bet on the Race After You Know Who Wins,” gets to the heart of how these managers, who inspire a plethora of reverential business magazine profiles and books, aren’t doing anything particularly daring or even smart. Hell, it’s not hard to find the bodies if you’re the one burying them.

Leopold opens with comparisons of wealthy categories of humans from top entertainers to sports legends to CEOs (including bank CEOs). Only then does he reveal the ones who warrant the book’s title—the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent elite hedge fund managers who bag billions of dollars per year, and millions of dollars per hour, making 100 times more than the top bank and insurance CEOs. Some even approach $2 million an hour such as David Tepper did in 2009, or John Paulson did in 2010 (well, $2.4 million an hour).

Rhetorically Leopold asks, “What on earth do hedge fund managers do to justify making all that money?” To answer, he carefully debunks all sorts of reasons that hedge fund managers and their followers give to explain how valuable they are. Some of these non-reasons include their contribution to financial innovation and fixing price deficiencies in the market. To which, Leopold responds, “So what?” (Thank you, Les!)

In fact, because of the mega amounts of leveraged capital these funds have at their disposal—courtesy of the banks that help fund them—they are much more likely to jump ahead of trades and force the market to move as they want, then massage it into some kind of free-market-philosophy-inspired equilibrium. 

The truth is that hedge funds are risk breeders and carriers, not diffusers. They operate in a relatively unconstrained manner, hiding their positions and strategies to remain “competitive.” Leopold does an excellent job of exposing the ways they manipulate our economy behind that curtain, where the only doctrine they follow is the one that makes them the most money.

Take the irony of Tepper’s Appaloosa hedge fund that bet against free-market ideology and for government bailouts, by betting that after the 2008 financial crisis began the government would not let the big banks fail. He was right. In 2009, he made $4 billion. He profited from us bailing him out. As Leopold writes, “The bailout saved the entire hedge fund industry from utter collapse.” And these guys didn’t even hold FDIC-insured deposits or insurance polices. Think about that.

In Step 3, “Rip Off Entire Countries Because That’s Where the Money Is,” Leopold recalls George Soros’ epic hedge fund bet against the British pound when the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was coming into being. He made $1 billion, while British citizens got economically hosed. More recently, MF Global (which operated like a hedge fund) made similar bets, only it used more complicated derivatives to do so. And there’s a host of hedge fund and other forms of speculation slamming various European countries again. This is in addition to the harm that the big banks with hedge fund support did when they collaborated to disperse toxic assets to smaller banks across Europe. Those banks either went bust (along with the assets) or got European Central Bank bailouts depending on their political connections. The results are economic havoc and austerity measures across Europe.

Leopold provides a compelling history of risk deterrents and risk enablers. After World War II, politicians and bankers wanted a more stable financial framework, which they believed would also benefit them. Before that, the Great Depression brought about the Glass-Steagall Act that curtailed Wall Street’s ability to take risk, or its leaders to get overly compensated for creating it. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the world was calmer. Then, 1970s and 1980s deregulation and tax havens for the über-wealthy ushered in dozens of financial crises.

Finally, the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 led to the behaviors that caused the most recent crises. Leopold presents an often-overlooked aspect: how big banks teamed up with hedge fund managers generally. Banks created Collateralized Debt Obligations, and hedge fund managers “managed” them, buying equity in them to entice more investors, countries and pension funds into the game. The timing was special. The junk creation and dispersion machine accelerated after home prices fell and loans faltered in 2006. That’s when the most connected hedge fund managers bet against the CDOs for which they were selecting deteriorating assets. AAA rated slices of CDOs became junk and the whole house of cards collapsed.

In Step 6, “Rig Your Bets,” Leopold asks, “Why gamble unless you’re the house?” He explains how hedge funds like Magnetar fleeced the markets. The deals they managed racked up $40 billion in losses for investors while their managers made billions. They worked with nine banks including Merrill, Citigroup, UBS and JPMorgan. It so happens that JPMorgan—whose chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, is often lauded for being a risk management god—did one of Magnetar’s riskiest deals in May 2007, a year after housing prices started to decline. The bank didn’t disclose to CDO investors its special role: selecting pools of 2005 and 2006 mortgages destined to fail. (Because, Department of Justice, in case you don’t get to read the whole book, they were already failing. Insider Information. Look it up.)

The same thing happened with Goldman Sachs and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson. Goldman dumped its most risky assets into its last Abacus 2007 deal, the only deal of the series, Leopold notes, for which a client selected the assets. That client was Paulson. He and Goldman then shorted those assets (devised ways to sell them, forcing the prices lower, which led to profit when they fell). The manager of the deal, ACA Management, thought Paulson would go long (buy) the assets and so bought a big chunk of the deal. In the end, investors lost $1 billion, Paulson made $1 billion. Today, those Abacus securities are worthless.

Leopold also covers such topics as Bernie Madoff and the Galleon hedge fund implosion, for which Raj Rajaratnam, once worshipped as “a great American hero,” got an 11-year prison sentence. All he was doing, though, was old-school insider trading on Goldman Sachs stock and other sundries. But these men didn’t use the system to their advantage as well as the likes of Paulson. And despite their disgrace, the financial world remains unchanged.

As Leopold laments, “The economic collapse of 2008 should have been a silo-busting event.” Only it wasn’t. That fall, progressives voted for Barack Obama, who turned out to so not be FDR, and whose election was partly sponsored by Wall Street.

Toward the end of the book, Leopold offers tips on how to stop this siphoning, rigging and the resulting wealth dislocation and global economic instability. But I can’t help wondering whether things are just too far gone. So, I asked Leopold: Do we need a greater depression followed by World War III to rattle the framework? Are these people simply sociopaths—operating in an enabling environment run by sociopath apologists—so disconnected from the rest of humanity that, like the mean little king in “Game of Thrones,” they believe in their own magnificence and their right to destroy anything in the name of financial “efficiency”?

“Good question,” Leopold responded. “I think the way forward is to start taking their toys away. One major route is to build more public state banks. Right now a trillion dollars of our state and local tax dollars are floating through Wall Street banks in every state except for North Dakota, which has a public bank. Building statewide, not-for-profit banks in state after state would begin to construct an alternative financial path that would directly challenge the money game as played on Wall Street.

“Second, we have to fight hard for a financial transaction tax that 11 other countries in Europe are putting into effect,” he continued. “A small sales tax on financial trades of all kinds would put a major dent in the hedge fund game. It would wipe out the high frequency traders by turning their hidden, privatized tax into public revenues.

“And finally we’ve got to destroy the carried interest loophole which give the swindlers a tax break for being swindlers,” Leopold noted. “I don’t think we need to wait for Armageddon to make progress. I’m counting on one simple fact—Americans really are pissed at Wall Street. The more they find out the angrier they become. We need to keep getting the word out about how high finance actually works.