From the Archives: Election Chaos and Our Last Hope (Hint: Not Bloomberg)

Editors' Note:  How often have you, when pondering whom to vote for this fall in the Presidential Election, asked yourself  “Gee, I wonder what a finagling Harvard-educated billionaire like Lloyd Blankfein thinks.”

Wonder no longer, you miserable wage slave!

According to Politico,

And why is that?  Let's skip answers one (who gives a f***?) and two (what do you think?), and let the wise Mr. Blankfein hang [Surely, speak for? – Ed.] himself:

On policy, Blankfein railed against Sanders' backing of a wealth tax, an idea that multiple Democratic White House hopefuls have also endorsed.
 
“I don’t like that at all,” he said in the Financial Times interview, likening it an "assassination by categorization."

On second thought, we can stick with answers one and two.
 
But lest you think that his answer was predicated solely on the narrow self-interest of a economically-unproductive finagler (excuse us, “proprietary trader”) , there's more:
 
“Look, it’s crazy not to acknowledge the economy has expanded under Trump,” Blankfein said, attributing the growth in part to the 2017 GOP tax law and Trump’s elimination of “dopey regulations.”

Like the one limiting how much risk institutions like Goldman Sachs can take with what turns out to be government-guaranteed debt?

And how is the economy doing anyway?  Well, if you had a billion dollars in the stock market on January 1, 2019,  you ended the year $288,000,000 richer without lifting a finger.  Like Lloyd.  If on the other hand you, like Ivonne Hernandez, were working for a living, you were reduced to living on a sofa in the house of your boyfriend's parents, according to yesterday's New York Times.  So maybe the U Bum economy looks better to Lloyd than to Ivonne.  But Lloyd's a rich white man and Ivonne is a working-class woman of color so really who gives a s***?

Anyway the contrast between Lloyd's views on the threat to American democracy represented by U Bum and the calamity that would result from his re-installation in office led us to wonder if there was any other time when rich a**holes made electoral choices they would come to regret.

There were, as this Spy dispatch from January, 1933 recounts:

GERMAN INDUSTRIALISTS
BACK HITLER-LED GOV'T


From Sally Bowles
Spy Berlin Bureau 
with additional material from 
The New York Times News Service

BERLIN, Jan. 30 – Nazi leader Adolf Hitler has finally realized his ambition of being named Chancellor of Germany after at least two failed attempts last year.  The decision, approved by President von Hindenburg with the backing of conservative forces led by former Chancellor Franz von Papen, may spell the death knell of democracy in Germany.

However, New York Times Berlin Correspondent Guido Enderis, who comes in here most every night, reported that “The composition of the Cabinet leaves Herr Hitler no scope for gratification of any dictatorial ambition. . . . He swore obedience to the Republican Constitution today. . . ”

Informed sources told Enderis that Hitler's room to maneuver will be severely limited by the preponderance of Conservatives in his Cabinet, representing the interests of landed Junkers and prominent industrialists and capitalists.

Crucial to the agreement to install Hitler in power, political insiders told the Times, was Hitler's promise not to engage in any form of economic or currency experimentation, including higher spending and currency inflation to relieve German unemployment or higher taxes on the rich to finance social welfare programs.

German industrialists have made no secret of who they prefer in the coming elections, and it's not the socialist parties who threaten to increase their taxes and reduce their wealth.  Instead, they're going with Adolf Hitler.  The Hitler Government can take power only with the agreement of other parties, because the Nazis lack a Reichstag majority.

Although official Nazi reaction was restrained, the Associated Press reported that thousands of torch wielding brown shirts paraded down the Siegesallee in Berlin cheered by thousands more, with similar scenes of triumph playing out in smaller German cities.

Hitler's decision represented something of an about-face from his earlier reluctance to join a coalition government.  The foreign press reported that he had been pressured by right-wing industrialists that had bankrolled the Nazi Party, through former Chancellor von Papen, to take power with the support of other severely conservative parties.  The industrialists were said to believe that only a Hitler-led coalition could prevent their nightmare scenario of a Social Democratic government committed to protecting the rights of labor unions and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Germans.

Among the most vocal opponents of the new Government are the trade unions affiliated with the Socialist and Catholic Center parties, who said that the new rulers are committed to suppressing workers' rights and democracy itself.  But to the German banking and industrial classes, this only proves that Hitler and the Nazis were the only force capable of saving Germany from the menace of democratic Socialism.

In a statement, the German Federation of Jewish citizens expressed confidence that despite the resurgence of anti-Semitism following Hitler's rise to power, “the power of the public authorities will protect the Jews.”

Said Lloyd Wertheim, owner of Berlin's finest department store of the same name: “the calls of the Socialist Left to take away my wealth and redistribute it to idlers and slackers really hurt my feelings, so they leave me with no choice but to support Hitler on March 5.”

Other wealthy Germans of Hebrew descent profess a lack of concern over the new Hitler Government.  They say they don't take him seriously and expect the institutions of a civilized Germany to protect them.  Marcus Goldman, a Berlin investment banker apparently not entirely familiar with American geography, said “it's not like the Nazis would invade our synagogues and shoot us in cold blood.  This isn't the Wild West.  This is Berlin, not Pittsburgh.”