Democratic Former Goldman Sachs CEO Warns Bernie Sanders Will 'Ruin Our Economy' if Elected
A former Goldman Sachs executive is predicting economic doom if Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont becomes president, but others say there is no need to push the panic button because Sanders remains unlikely to win.
Former Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein, a registered Democrat, launched a salvo against Sanders on Wednesday after Sanders emerged from the New Hampshire Democratic primary with a narrow victory over former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military. If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.
— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) February 12, 2020
“If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military. If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around,” he tweeted.
Sanders is proposing massive overhauls of health care and student loans in a series of programs that Yahoo Finance has estimated will cost an additional $4.9 trillion per year, slightly more than the current federal budget.
The Sanders camp, which portrays the senator’s campaign as a battle against the super-rich, was not ruffled by Blankfein’s comment.
“This is what panic from the Wall Street elite looks and sounds like,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir tweeted.
This is what panic from the Wall Street elite looks and sounds like. https://t.co/5Di1iFO424
— Faiz (@fshakir) February 12, 2020
Sanders himself seemed fine with the comment.
“Let me see, a billionaire executive on Wall Street doesn’t like me,” Sanders said Wednesday on CNN, according to Reuters. “Hmm, I am shocked by that.”
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was also asked about the comment Wednesday.
“I think Lloyd Blankfein couldn’t be more right on that,” he told reporters.
But others said Sanders has to be elected first, and that is not a sure thing.
“The lack of any stock market reaction to Sanders’ surge suggests that investors either still don’t believe he can win the Democratic nomination against the more centrist candidates or, alternatively, that Sanders will win the nomination but, in doing so, his lack of appeal to independents makes it even more likely that Trump will be re-elected,” Andrew Hunter, senior US economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a recent note to clients, according to CNN.
Hunter said if Sanders appears strong after next month’s Super Tuesday voting, there “might be a more discernible hit to market sentiment.”
Vin Ryan, founder of the venture-capital firm Schooner Capital, said Sanders faces a tough row to hoe to defeat Trump.
“Bernie Sanders, I think, is a lightning rod,” Ryan told The New York Times. “And he’s going to be killed with the socialism by the Republicans.”
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