(Laughter)
As you know, my husband tried very hard to change the culture of this misbegotten underclass, by kicking them off the government teat, by poisoning their milk with harsh, bitter regulation, and by disciplining them with the most arbitrary, racist, punitive, devastating criminal laws in US history, laws which Richard Nixon, the Southern strategists, the slave catchers, could only have dreamed of. He also passed NAFTA, which told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to discipline themselves as workers, and learn to be competitive in the global sweatshop, or face certain extinction. But they have not learned their lesson.
(Hissing)
The effects prove themself. Under President Clinton — I like the sound of that!— America saw the longest, most prodigious reaming of the undesirable classes in our history, putting them firmly in their places. And they loved it! He felt their pain! And relished it! Because he was inflicting it!
(Applause)
And I will too!
(Applause)
Now today — today, another capitalist crisis looms, bigger and more dangerous than 2008, and again we hear sentimental cries for populist reform. I believe we have to stave off these demands to reform the banking and the financial system, and restructure the economy more equitably. You can’t build an economy without the smart people—the Titans and Gods of Finance—like you–to direct the economy, and for the smart people to do their work, you need to be rewarded for your efforts, and you need a free hand to exercise your brilliance.
(Applause)
Books like “The Spirit Level” and organizations working for equality, certain politicians, spew a ridiculous myth of populism and the benefits of equality. But the fact is, we can’t create profitable businesses without exploitation, and we can’t grow the economy without speculation and inequality, and we certainly can’t boost our economy into the stratosphere without allowing you to exercise your amazing financial intelligence and acumen in fiscal number-crunching, speculation, numbers-running and fraud!
(Applause)
Just think of this: can you imagine a football game without gambling? It would be dull, mind-numbing—who would watch steroid-addled jocks rut and slam into each other mindlessly without having put down money on the outcome? Who would pay the huge salaries for these vapid idiots? It’s only because you have bet on the outcome that people become excited about the sport: it becomes life-and-death-thrilling! It becomes paint-your-face-get-shit-faced exciting! Act-stupid-exciting! That’s what you do: you add excitement, thrill, value, and enthusiasm to the dull, dirty job of growing the economy, you make the game exciting, sexy, which draws more money into the game, the casino, that expands the excitement, grows the customer base, develops the economy, and that’s priceless! You speculate, stimulate, titillate, dynamize, satyriasize the entire economy! I am such a fan! Go Goldman Sachs!
(Does little cheerleading number, complete with hand gestures)
Gooold-Maaan-Sachs!
(Applause)
Let’s tell the truth: America is struggling—despite the endless fabrication about “the recovery”– because we are not yet running the way we should. Banks are still over regulated. It’s over-regulation that creates financial catastrophe! Despite your huge paychecks and squirreled away assets, I know that you are worried: worried that some “socialist” demagogue might come along and confiscate it all and put you all in jail. With president Obama, you were in good hands: he’s one of us. (Good thing you ponied up $981K for his campaign). He took good care of you, had your back, covered your financial rear. But populist sentiment is rising up again, more strongly than before, and the unwashed masses are full of resentment, anger, jealousy. They are angry that they don’t have jobs, that they are in debt, that they can’t scrape a living together, even though they are working, 2,3,4 jobs to put shelter over their heads. That their children are starving. That they cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel. They are angry about the 100 million people driven into the brink of starvation and the global food riots that they claim you caused with your commodity futures speculation. The $5Trillion of value lost from the markets that they claim you collapsed. The millions who lost their homes and are now on the verge of homelessness. The trillions funneled to you in loans, write-offs, bribes to keep the system going. Even when I was working for Barry (Goldwater), I felt that same irrational resentment. Now it’s at an all time high. Irresponsible single mothers, uneducated immigrants, lead-drinking ghetto-strutters, homeless, crying, babies, starving senior citizens, obnoxious, entitled African Americans who object to having bullets pumped into their bodies by police: all these people are angry, entitled, and making noise, and they are endangering our democracy and economy, our greatness.
(Hissing)
I hear this everywhere I go. A single mother, with three children—wants to go to college, find enjoyable, well-paid work and also enjoy the emotional luxuries of motherhood—all at the same time. Everyone feels entitled to everything. She even wants housing. Now even I couldn’t do all these things, despite my incredible privilege and intelligence. But they want it all, now. Three children?
(Booing)
A grandmother, playing with children—it makes her happy like a cow, but she still feels entitled to be paid. Because she wants to feed her drug habit, she wants to sell them for more money….she wants it all!
(Booing)
A student, with an unmarketable degree in women’s studies, specializing in medieval feminist villanelles, wants debt forgiveness, and a high-paid job putting her non-existent skills analyzing romance language texts to use and profit in a rewarding cause. She also wants a pony, a sensitive but dominant lover, a villa on the Riviera, and World Peace!
(Cackles).
(Laughter)
Millions of working sad-sack Americans have similar fantasies. They want more money. More pay. Decent wages for hard work. They think it grows on trees. They think that money will grow and nuzzle up to them in their sleep, when they have no money-appeal. They think they can tax Other People’s Money to get what they want. They don’t realize Money has to be jacked up the ass, stuck in the veins with meth, dragged out and pimped to make more! You have figured out how to make your money work, turned it into a profit-generating prostitute! The future expected earnings of a profit-generating prostitute! That you’ve shorted! These people, idiots, all of them, they expect money to come to them! Without Scheming! Without reaming others! By working hard and being good! Like puppies and ponies! Like flowers after a downpour! Like the lilies of the valley! Like utopian visions of a drug-addled socialist!
(Laughter)
Wages need to be kept down, and people just need to work harder. Damn harder. At least as hard as Bill worked to keep Haiti down.
(Applause)
We must lower incomes for low-value working schmucks, so they give up on any notions of a middle-class life. But more than that, we must reduce the slick, unsustainable bigotry of expectation: the profit-sucking cage of entitlement, expectation, and imagination. We must drive income down steadily and siphon that surplus wealth to you, the captains of finance, so that we can build a strong economy that is innovative, powerful, that acknowledges and rewards your acumen…
(Applause)
And that will be my mission, from the first day I am president to the last. I…
(Applause)
I will get up every day thinking about you, the hard-working Wizards of Finance, Lords of Capital, Economic Giants of Innovation, Noble Titans that make us strong and powerful!
(Applause)
I came from a petit-bourgeois family with a drapery business that exploited workers to give me good middle-class life, a first-class education, and my incorrigibly elitist beliefs. It put me on third base, instead of striking out. As I try to steal home, I will be thinking about all the Wall Street bankers that I represented in New York and the “advice” that they gave me, and I will work with them—for you– to give them the maximum freedom to do what’s best for them. Because what’s best for Wall Street is what’s best for the US. What’s best for Goldman Sachs is what’s best for the planet. I promise to take on this challenge against the clamoring, whining, agitating babies demanding for major changes in our economy and the global economy, demanding for equity and justice. These demands are stupid beyond belief.
(Laughter)
