It’s hardly a secret that outgoing Goldman CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, had a clear preference for which candidate he wanted in the White House…
… although, ironically, it was Hillary Clinton’s formerly confidential speeches before Goldman employees, which were released by Wikileaks in October 2016, that may have cost her greatly with potential voters – and ultimately, the White House – as it was there that her duplicity emerged in its full glory for the whole world to read.
Which is why it is surprising that Blankfein, who has repeatedly trolled, mocked and otherwise criticized Trump at every opportunity, actually had something encouraging to say about Trump.
Even if it didn’t quite sound that way at first.
Speaking at an event in Boston, the Goldman CEO said that “it’s only with some great trepidation I’d say anything positive about the president in this crowd, or any crowd”…. there is a ‘but’… “But I would say that one of the things I admire is the way he disintermediated the press. I mean, really, you have to say it.”
To be sure, whereas his leadership style has left many dumbfounded, when it comes to directly reaching the American population, Trump has been without peer: as Bloomberg summarizes, in the past 24 hours, Trump has taken to Twitter to defend his congratulatory call to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, to insult a compromise with Democrats as a waste of money, and to say that if he fought Joe Biden, the former vice president “would go down fast and hard, crying all the way” if the two were to get into a physical fight.
Of course, as Bloomberg also adds, the irony of Blankfein’s comment is that he has used several of his 37 tweets since joining last year to take digs at the president. His first, in June, criticized the decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
The CEO told of his fingers trembling while typing his first tweet, and when he later accidentally sent out an emoji of the flag of Liberia instead of the U.S.
Blankfein said he’d be better at Twitter if he weren’t leading the bank: “The ones I don’t send are really terrific.”
We bet… although as for Twitter CEO Lloyd Blankfein, after the growing scandal at Facebook, all Twitter’s already fractured and highly politicized userbase would want to see is Lloyd Blankfein in charge.
Separately, Lloyd had another, more concerning comment: he said that sovereign balance sheets look risky and added that “one wonders if the next crisis will be a sovereign crisis.”
Well yes, of course it will be, as Goldman’s economist team pointed out one month ago, when it made the stunning admission that “the continued growth of public debt raises eventual sustainability questions if left unchecked” and added that looking at the future, “federal debt will slightly exceed 100% of GDP and interest expense will rise to around 3.5% of GDP, putting the US in a worse fiscal position than the experience of the 1940s or 1990s” as it showed the following chart:
These is, of course, a very valid worry. Our only question is why did it only become a concern to Lloyd only now, when US debt doubled from $10 trillion to $20 trillion under the previous administration?
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