Hillary the Populist

[bobloblaw]

Will Hillary crack down on major Wall Street tax breaks

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Of course not.

[Samantha]

lol, no.

she isn't one of goldmand sachs favorite democrats for no reason. expect her to talk a big game, and then forget all of progressive priorities once she's elected.

[King]

BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, who would likely be Hillary's Treasury Secretary, has been fairly good on position favoring regulation of his own industry. He also has a pretty populist idea of capital gains tax reform based on length of investment--so day traders would pay really high rates while those who hold onto the investments for 3, 5, or 10 years would pay less, which would favor smaller investors and retirement funds over Wolf of Wall Street types and stabilize the market to prevent recession-starting short term bubble parties.

"Cracking down on Wall Street" is a crock, anyway. A good banking and investment sector is important to our national economic strength. The more important thing progressives should be focusing on is to make sure these rich people are paying a fair income tax and that our poorer citizens have access to affordable education to become recession proof via mobility. We wouldn't be better off if Wall Street were destroyed and everything else the same. There would just be different group of rich people starting gigantic financial bubbles.

[Beet]

Well, considering that the only reason people are talking about carried interest is that she alluded to it while campaigning in Iowa, saying "There is something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers that I saw on I-80 as I was driving here over the last two days," she's already raised awareness of this issue just by talking about it.

Would her election actually result in investment managers paying income tax rates on gains from capital contributed by clients? Admittedly there's no guarantee. Obama has proposed reforming carried interest taxation multiple times, but he can't change tax rates without Congressional approval, and of course neither would Hillary.

[Sumner 1868]

Even token changes won't happen unless there's a Democratic congress.