Hillary, the friend of Wall Street

Dear Friends,

Bernie Sanders went to Wall Street on Tuesday to give a speech making his policies very clear.  He will break up the big banks, he will prosecute individuals not just fine the companies, he will reinstate Glass-Steagall, and he will raise taxes on Wall Street.  You can read the text of his speech here.  Hillary Clinton tries to sound tough on Wall Street, but she isn't and really can't be because she takes so much money from them for her campaign, for the Clinton Foundation and for speaking engagements for Bill and her.

ThinkProgress had a great piece on the differences between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton with respect to Wall Street (here).  The piece points out three differences.

First, Senator Sanders would reinstate Glass-Stegall and breakup the big banks that are already too big to fail.  Hillary Clinton refuses to work to reinstate Glass-Steagall or commit to breaking up the banks.  In fact she argues that Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the Great Recession.  The ThinkProgress piece summarized the arguments as follows:

Clinton has questioned the value of Glass-Steagall and said the law repealed while her husband was in the White House could not have helped prevent the 2008 housing collapse. Sanders disagrees, saying the so-called “shadow banks” whose failure triggered the recession, such as AIG and Lehman Brothers, got their money from federally-insured bank deposits of big commercial banks, which would be illegal under such a rule. Regardless of whether the law could have prevented the Great Recession, Sanders argues it could curtail risky behavior in the future.

Second, Secretary Clinton says that she will increase the taxes on Wall Street's risky trading but her proposed taxes are small compared to Senator Sanders' proposal.  Here from the ThinkProgress piece:

“Hillary’s is kind of a half-plan, which doesn’t raise as much revenue,” Mike Konczal with the Roosevelt Institute told ThinkProgress. “The more people have looked at it, the weaker it seems. It’s not sufficient to tackle the problem, because it exempts a huge amount of trades.”

Third, the piece acknowledges that the changes proposed by Senator Sanders would require significant participation by Congress.  It also indicates that the people that are appointed to important financial positions in the government can make a huge difference.  As I indicated in an early blog post, Senator Clinton's chief financial advisor is a Wall Street insider (here).  Here is how the ThinkProgress article ends:

Though Clinton has similarly not revealed who she would appoint to lead the Federal Reserve and other agencies, Konczal says the two candidates would likely show stark differences in their nominations.

“Hillary would appoint people who think Dodd-Frank is mostly successful and just needs a little more work,” he said. “Bernie would appoint people who think our financial system is a massive problem and needs a major overhaul.”

Clearly Secretary Clinton leans in the right direction.  Unfortunately, she does not understand or is not willing to push for the "major overhaul" that is needed both with respect to financial matters and in many other respects.  Senator Sanders will fight for the massive changes that we need.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-mer v.5

Dear Friends,

Our life in Villefranche has begun to settle into a normal routine.  Aude, our wonderful French tutor, comes to our apartment from 9:00 to noon each weekday except for Wednesdays.  She is a great teacher - she is friendly, smart, gentle with us, yet is firm with us when we use the wrong conjugation or forget a vocabulary word.  Everyday we notice how much we don't know, but we also can appreciate that we know more than we did before.

Last night we decided that we would go out to dinner.  Since we do not see Aude on Wednesdays, we can go out on Tuesday nights and still get our homework done by Thursday.  We were all set to go to a restaurant that we had walked by a million times but had never visited.  On our walk there, we went passed La Belle Étoile, a great but rather expensive restaurant that we really like.  It was open, and we were tempted, but we walked on to La Grignotière, our original destination.  We are very happy that we did.

We were the first in the restaurant since it was only about 7:30, but soon other guests arrived, all of whom were speaking French.  The two women who run the restaurant were very nice and spoke to us only in French which made us feel very good.  The ambiance was beautiful and the food was great.

We split the warm goat cheese salad.  There was a dollop of pesto on top of each round of warm almost melted goat cheese and the toast was soft.

We each had one of the specials.

For those of you whose French is not so great, the first special was a kebab of leg of lamb.  Jane got this special.

I got the médaillons de lotte fraiche - sauce amorcicaine.  We are not sure if they meant American, but we will never know.  Lotte is a local monkfish so it was very fresh and really good as was the sauce which I think was made of cream, tomato and herbes de Provence.

The side dishes were ratatouille, a mash of root vegetables and a potato.  In Jane's case, it was a baked potato; in mine it was a boiled potato, but it might have been boiled in butter.

For dessert we split a special dessert that has no particular name but is made with a coconut meringue, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream with sliced almonds.

It was necessary to finish the meal with a small glass of limoncello, an after dinner drink that is omnipresent in Villefranche.

It was a great evening in all respects, and we had a wonderful walk home through the quiet streets of Villefranche.

Notwithstanding our wild evening on the town, we arose by 7:30 this morning and went for a walk along the beach when we reached the other side of the harbor we could look back at the rising sun shining on our wonderful Villefranche.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-mer v.4

Dear Friends,

One of the things that we love about traveling is that we seem more open to unusual adventures.  Yesterday, we had a really fun one.

We arose at a much more normal time and had our regular breakfast.  Since it was a beautiful day, we decided that we would walk to the port of Saint Jean on Cap Ferrat.  The harbor of Villefranche is made from a peninsula that extends out from Beaulieu on the east and the point that separates Villefranche from Nice on the west.

Saint Jean Cap Ferrat has some of the most expensive real estate in the world and is an incredibly beautiful peninsula.  We have walked there often to visit the port and the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild which is now a wonderful villa and garden open to the public.  There is a great walking path around the point which we have never taken but will some day.

It is about a 5 km walk from our apartment to the port if you walk to the east side of the beginning of the peninsula and then walk out the peninsula along a wonderful walking path past David Niven's old house which is the only house on the water side of the path.  Anyway we love this path.  The port was still decorated for Christmas.

Yes, that is a barge in the marina with a nativity scene on it.

At the port there are quite a few choices for lunch.  We chose a nice looking Italian one and ate outside.

While Jane was having the spaghetti napolitana I had the ravioli with fresh tomatoes.

After they finished their meal, paid their bill and were about to leave, the couple next to us struck up a conversation in French.  They were from Luxembourg but had a villa in the hills above Villefranche and Beaulieu where they spent a lot of time.  At first we spoke about easy topics, the weather, Villefranche, Beaulieu, the French language, etc. but then we switched to politics.  At first I was worried, but it then became clear that they thought that Hillary Clinton was great.  They did not seem too put off when we said that we supported Bernie Sanders.  

Sometime during our conversation, all the other people in restaurant and outside left.  When we realized that the couple offered to take us on a tour of Cap Ferrat in their car.  It seemed like a fun idea particularly since we had gotten lost the last time we tried to walk home over the hill and along the west side of the peninsula.  They took us past numerous incredibly large and beautiful villas, including those of the king of Belgium and Bill Gates.  Then they took us to the farthest point on the road to the Chapelle de Saint-Hospice.  It had been used as a hospital particularly for soldiers who had been gassed during one of the First World War so there was also a cemetery.  There was also a huge statue of the Madonna and Child.

The nice looking couple in the photo above are our hosts for this tour of Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.  They then drove us back to the end of the beach of Villefranche so we could walk home.  We introduced ourselves, but they never gave us their names.  That was rather strange, but since you cannot recreate adventures like this one, we will likely never see them again.

It was almost dark by the time we arrived back at our apartment where our laundry was trying hard to dry but it was a very humid day.

We had a wonderful adventure and spoke a lot of French which got us ready for this morning when we had our first tutoring session of this visit to Villefranche.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal