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    Why is Trump cozying up to America’s most powerful business leaders? | Robert Reich

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    The Business Roundtable is an association of more than 200 CEOs of America’s biggest corporations. It likes to think of itself as socially responsible.Last Wednesday, its chair, Joshua Bolten, told reporters that his group planned to drop “eight figures” while “putting its full weight behind protecting and strengthening tax reform”.Translated: it’s going to pour money into making sure that Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts – most of which benefit big corporations and the rich – don’t expire in 2025, as scheduled.On Thursday, Trump met at the Business Roundtable’s Washington headquarters with over 80 CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook, JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Walmart’s Doug McMillon.Trump reportedly promised the CEOs he would cut corporate taxes even further and curtail business regulations if elected president.Trump’s 2017 tax cuts reduced the rate of corporate income taxes from 35% to 21%. That has cost America $1.3tn.Those tax cuts, along with the tax cuts put in place by George W Bush, are the primary reason that the national debt is rising as a percentage of the economy.What have corporations done with the money they have saved? They haven’t invested it or used it to raise wages. Nothing has trickled down to average workers.A large portion has gone into stock buybacks. The year after the tax cut went into effect, corporations bought back a record $1tn of their shares. Buybacks do nothing for the economy but raise stock prices – and, not incidentally, CEO compensation, which is largely in shares of stock.Making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent – as the Business Roundtable seeks – will cost $4tn over the next 10 years, $400bn per year – and cause the debt to soar.Yet every one of the CEOs that Trump met with last week has been thriving under Biden. Corporate profits are way up. Stocks are at near record levels. Inflation has plummeted.So why are they attracted to Trump, whose antics are likely to destabilize the economy? Is it mere ideology?Kathryn Wylde, the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City (a non-profit that represents the city’s top business leaders), relates that Republican billionaires have told her “the threat to capitalism from the Democrats is more concerning than the threat to democracy from Trump.”In my experience, CEOs of large corporations are more practical than ideological. They’re coming around to Trump because they want even more tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks – which means even more money in their own pockets.The Business Roundtable’s motto – “More than Leaders. Leadership” – suggests a purpose higher than making its CEOs and corporations richer.Indeed, in August 2019 the Roundtable issued a highly publicized statement expressing “a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders”, including a commitment to compensating all workers “fairly and providing important benefits”, as well as “supporting the communities in which we work”, and protecting the environment “by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses”.Signed by 181 CEOs of major American corporations, the statement concluded that “each of our stakeholders is essential,” and committed “to deliver value to all of them”.The statement got a lot of favorable press. But it was rubbish. At the time, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were gaining traction in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries with their criticisms of corporate America, and the CEOs of the Roundtable were worried. They needed cover.Then, after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, many of these CEOs announced they would not provide campaign funds to Republican members of Congress who refused to certify the 2020 election.Now, they’re lining up to fund Trump, because they and their corporations want another giant tax cut and rollbacks of regulations.If the Business Roundtable’s CEOs were honestly committed to all their stakeholders, they wouldn’t seek massive tax cuts.If they cared about preserving American democracy, they wouldn’t support Trump or any Republican.The greedy cynicism of America’s corporate elite is now on full display.
    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Jamie Dimon thinks Trump was ‘kind of right’ about a lot of things. What? | Robert Reich

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      On Wednesday, speaking from the World Economic Forum’s confab in Davos, Switzerland, Jamie Dimon – chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the United States, and one of the most influential CEOs in the world – heaped praise on Donald Trump’s policies while president.“Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump “was kind of right about Nato, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”What?Mr Dimon, take a step back, be honest.Kind of right about Nato? Trump wanted the US to withdraw from Nato – and may get his way if he becomes president again. This would open Europe further to Putin’s aggression.Kind of right on immigration? Even the conservative Cato Institute found that Trump reduced legal immigration but not illegal immigration. Trump refused to grant legal status to children of immigrants born in the United States or who grew up in the US. He banned Muslims from the US, and when the Muslim ban was found to be unconstitutional, banned people from Muslim countries. He fueled the flames of nativism by describing poorer nations as “shitholes” and has used terms redolent of Nazism to describe foreigners as “poisoning the blood” of Americans.Grew the economy quite well? In fact, under Trump the economy lost 2.9m jobs. Even before the pandemic, job growth was slower than it has been under Biden. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%. The international trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce went up. The US trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016. The number of Americans lacking health insurance rose by 3 million. The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4tn to $21.6tn.Tax reform worked? Trump’s tax cut conferred most of its benefits on big corporations and the rich, while enlarging the budget deficit. Giant banks and financial services companies got huge gains based on the new, lower corporate rate (21%), as well as the more preferable tax treatment of pass-through companies.If not for the Trump cuts – along with the Bush tax cuts and their extensions – federal revenues would keep pace with federal spending indefinitely, and the ratio of the debt to the national economy would be declining.Instead, these tax cuts have added $10tn to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57% of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100% of the increase.Right about China? As the Brookings Institution found, Trump’s China policy only made China less restrained in pursuit of its ambitions. Confrontation has intensified, areas of cooperation have vanished, and the capacity of both countries to solve problems or manage competing interests has atrophied.Oh, and then there are the pesky matters of Trump’s seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, facing 91 criminal indictments, causing the US to be more divided than at any time since the Civil War, lying every time he opens his mouth, and planning to use the justice department for “vengeance” against his political enemies if elected again.Why is Jamie Dimon – the most influential CEO in America – spouting these talking points in favor of Trump?Because he thinks Trump has a good chance of becoming president, and Dimon wants to be in his good graces.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked which candidate would be better for his business, Dimon said: “I have to be prepared for both. I will be prepared for both. We will deal with both.”Dimon knows that his support for Nikki Haley irked Trump.“Highly overrated Globalist Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMORGAN, is quietly pushing another non-MAGA person, Nikki Haley, for President,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social in late November. “I’ve never been a big Jamie Dimon fan, but had to live with this guy when he came begging to the White House. I guess I don’t have to live with him anymore, and that’s a really good thing.”So now, Dimon – like Republican lawmakers across the US, like too many other leaders of American institutions – feels it necessary to cave into the integrity-crushing intimidation of a Trump administration, and lick Trump’s backside.And when Dimon does this, you can bet many other CEOs and financial leaders will now follow his example.At a time in American history when the most influential leaders of the US need to stand up loudly and clearly for the rule of law, for democracy, for decency, and against Donald Trump, Dimon is leading the charge in the opposite direction.This is how fascism takes root and spreads.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      JP Morgan claims US Virgin Islands ‘complicit’ in Jeffrey Epstein crimes

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      JP Morgan Chase claimed that the government of the US Virgin Islands is “complicit in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein” in a legal filing on Tuesday, saying the convicted sex trafficker maintained a “quid pro quo relationship” with some of the territory’s highest officials over two decades.The claim comes as part of an ongoing legal tussle that began with the US Virgin Islands alleging in a New York court that JP Morgan “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls”. JP Morgan denies the claims.USVI has sought legal depositions of the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, and a host of high-profile names from tech, hospitality and finance, including Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Thomas Pritzker and others, as part of an effort to gather more information about Epstein’s relationship with JPMorgan.Epstein maintained a home on a private island in the territory where he sexually abused young women over the years, using money from accounts he maintained at JP Morgan. Last week, Deutsche Bank agreed to settle a similar proposed class action by an Epstein victim for $75m.But in a counterclaim, JP Morgan claims that the government of the US Virgin Islands, not JP Morgan, is the entity “that most directly failed to protect public safety and most actively facilitated and benefited from Epstein’s continued criminal activity”.“Epstein could have lived anywhere in the world. He chose USVI. Discovery obtained in this case reveals why,” JP Morgan claims.“For two decades, Epstein maintained a quid pro quo relationship with USVI’s highest-ranking officials. He gave them money, advice, influence and favors. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him, granting him [millions of dollars] in tax incentives … looking the other way when he walked through USVI airports accompanied by girls and young women …”JPMorgan also claims that Epstein backed a USVI government official for office who would later awarded him tax breaks in the territory, and that his “primary conduit for spreading money and influence throughout the USVI government was First Lady [Cecile] de Jongh”.Epstein further “exerted influence over USVI sex offender legislation and received lax monitoring”, according to the filing, and maintained such close connections with government officials that he was able to pass through the “USVI’s airport accompanied by young women as a registered sex offender”.Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that the governor of the USVI, Albert Bryan, is scheduled to be deposed next month as part of the lawsuit. JPMorgan is believed to have requested Bryan’s deposition.The USVI-JPMorgan lawsuit was filed last year by the then Virgin Islands attorney general Denise George. But days after filing the claim, she was fired by the governor, reportedly because she failed to alert him that she planned to sue the bank.The continuing swirl of allegations comes a day after it was claimed that Epstein had reportedly threatened to blackmail Bill Gates over his extramarital affair with a Russian bridge player. More

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      E Jean Carroll files new suit against Trump as New York sexual abuse law takes effect

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      E Jean Carroll files new suit against Trump as New York sexual abuse law takes effectJPMorgan and Deutsche Bank also face lawsuits in connection with Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking A New York law that temporarily allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their abusers beyond the statute of limitations for civil claims came into effect on Thursday – and with it, the first of what could be hundreds of new legal actions.Among the first claims filed under the Adult Survivors Act (ASA), signed into law in May by Governor Kathy Hochul, is that of E Jean Carroll, a writer who accused Donald Trump of rape. Carroll filed an upgraded lawsuit against Trump minutes after the new state law took effect.Claims were also brought against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank by lawyers acting for unnamed individuals who accuse the banks of turning a blind eye to alleged sex trafficking by the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in order to “churn profits”.The lawsuits, filed separately in a New York court, allege the banks “knowingly benefited and received things of value for assisting, supporting, facilitating, and otherwise providing the most critical service for the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking organization”.JPMorgan, the largest US bank, is accused in the suit of “financially benefiting from participating” in Epstein’s alleged operation by providing financial support from 1998 to August 2013.Deutsche Bank is accused of knowing it would “earn millions of dollars” from its relationship with Epstein. Both actions are seeking unspecified damages. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal the claim “lacks merit” and the bank would present its arguments in court. A spokesman for JPMorgan in London declined to comment to the Journal.Trump is running for president again – but these legal battles might stand in the wayRead moreAccording to Bradley Edwards, a Florida lawyer who has featured prominently in exposing Epstein’s alleged crimes and in seeking financial restitution from Epstein’s $577m estate, “Epstein and his co-conspirators could not have victimized without assistance from wealthy individuals and financial institutions”.The class-action suit against JPMorgan also names Jes Staley, former head of JPMorgan’s private bank, who was forced to step down as chief executive officer of Barclays after UK regulators shared with Barclays the preliminary findings of their inquiry into what he told the Barclays board about his relationship with the disgraced financier.“Staley made sure Epstein and his illegal sexual abuse organization was absolutely protected by the bank,” according to the lawsuit filed Nov. 24. Lawyers for Staley declined to comment, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg noted that “none of the allegations against Staley in the suit have been publicly proved”.In E Jean Carroll’s case against Trump, the former Elle columnist is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for pain and suffering, psychological harm, dignity loss and reputation damage.Carroll first made the claim in a 2019 book, saying Trump had raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan luxury department store in 1995 or 1996. Trump responded to the book’s allegations by saying it could never have happened because Carroll was “not my type”.His remarks led Carroll to file a defamation lawsuit against him, but that lawsuit has been tied up in appeals courts as judges decide whether he is protected from legal claims for comments made while he was president.In her new claims, Carroll maintains that Trump committed battery “when he forcibly raped and groped her” – and that he defamed her when he denied raping her last month.“Trump’s underlying sexual assault severely injured Carroll, causing significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological harms, loss of dignity, and invasion of her privacy,” the suit alleges, adding: “His recent defamatory statement has only added to the harm that Carroll had already suffered.”Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said at a court hearing that her client “intends to hold Donald Trump accountable not only for defaming her, but also for sexually assaulting her, which he did years ago in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman”.Trump, who has denied the allegations against him, said in a statement that Carroll “completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”The JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Carroll lawsuits may be the first of dozens of new actions to be filed through the New York legal window. A previous two-year window, the 2019 Child Victims Act, saw cases brought that would otherwise have been beyond the statute of limitations, including Virginia Giuffre’s settled claim against Prince Andrew.Hundreds of lawsuits may now be forthcoming, including many by women who claim they were assaulted by co-workers, prison guards or medical providers, in part because it allows an institution like a hospital or jail to be held responsible.“I think there will be some very interesting cases that come about in the employment cases where powerful men, who were supervising women or overseeing women, sexually assaulted them and they will be able to hold their perpetrator accountable but also their employers,” the attorney Doug Wigdor, who has represented women in many high-profile civil or criminal actions of the #MeToo era, told CNN.The previous window, which limited new claims to child sex abuse cases, produced almost 11,000 claims, a New York state office of court administration spokesperson told CNN. It has been estimated that claims against the New York state prison system could include 750 women alleging sexual assault.New York’s department of corrections and community supervision said in a statement that it had “zero tolerance for sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and unauthorized relationships”.Also anticipated are new lawsuits on behalf of about 40 women who claim they were subjected to unlawful sexual abuse by the former Columbia University gynecologist Dr Robert Hadden. About 150 claims against the gynecologist have already been settled.Hadden was convicted in 2016 on sex-related charges in state court. He is due to be tried on federal charges of abusing female patients over two decades next year. He has pleaded not guilty.TopicsNew YorkDonald TrumpUS politicsJeffrey EpsteinJP MorganDeutsche BanknewsReuse this content More

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      Big Oil is using the coronavirus pandemic to push through the Keystone XL pipeline | Bill McKibben

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      Big Oil is using the coronavirus pandemic to push through the Keystone XL pipeline Bill McKibben The oil industry saw its opening and moved with breathtaking speed to take advantage of this moment TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline facility. Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP I’m going to tell you the single worst story I’ve heard in these past few […] More