Gen X Chronicle brings you the latest installment of Today in Trump Land, where we chronicle the doings, comings and goings of the Trump Administration. I say comings and goings because no other American Presidential administration has had such a high rate of turnover as the current one. It would seem that as Special Counsel Robert Mueller closes in on Trump’s Russia ties, the canaries really are fleeing the coal mine.
So here we go.
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Tuesday, March 5th: It’s Cohn today. Yup, that’s right, President Trump’s top economic advisor, Gary D. Cohn, announced today that he will be stepping down soon from his position as advisor to the President and head of the National Economic Council.
The reported reason for Cohn’s departure is the absolutely crazy steel and aluminum tariffs on imports that Trump announced last week, and his professed desire for a trade war. Cohn was reportedly vehemently opposed to a trade war, and ultimately lost an internal struggle with the President on the issue.
During his year in the Trump Administration, Cohn was known as a free-trade supporting Democrat who worked to counter several economic nationalist policies floated by Trump. Wall Street reacted to news of Cohn’s pending departure by experiencing a drop in stock futures of 300 points in after-hours trading, showing just how much corporate America valued Cohn’s steady free-market oriented stewardship of the economy.
Now before we cry crocodile tears over Cohn’s departure, let’s be clear on a couple things. Cohn was a dedicated free-trader in the mold of Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s powerful Treasury Secretary, who moved seamlessly between government and the private sector. Cohn was an investment banker who worked for Goldman Sachs for nearly twenty years, where he did the bidding of the nation’s corporate and financial elites.
Perhaps most famously, in 2010 he went before Congress and declared that Goldman actually lost money during the mortgage crisis of 2008-09, declaring that “we did not bet against our clients.” Which, as any fair-minded economist will tell you, is just absolute BS. Goldman was a critical player in the mortgage-backed securities financial crisis, and a Justice Department investigation found that it bore direct responsibility for some of its worst effects. Goldman was ultimately forced to pay $5 billion for its wrongdoing.
So Cohn is a banker through and through, and that’s where his allegiances lie. When he left Goldman Sachs in 2016 to take a role in the Trump Administration, his severance package came to $285 million. Which is absolutely crazy, and criminal, but that’s what today’s hyper capitalist US economy delivers to its greatest guardians of private wealth.
And when you consider that just today, West Virginia teachers won their two-week long strike to achieve a 5% pay raise, which will be added to their average salary of $46,000, it becomes even more bonkers.
That’s right, Wall Street rewarded Gary Cohn with $285 million in severance for his fealty to monied interests, and West Virginia teachers had to fight it out and go on strike for a raise that amounts to less than $3,000 per year.
Sickening, is what it is, especially when you consider how vital the role of teachers is in educating our nation’s youth. This is particularly true in a poor state like West Virginia that’s experiencing a critical opioid crisis, and where more and more children are being abandoned by their drug-addicted parents, with teachers forced to fill the void.
So clearly I’m no fan of Gary Cohn, and I won’t cry any tears as he departs. But his departure does reveal yet again how terrible a manager Trump is, and how little confidence in him or belief in his policies his top advisors have.
So we won’t mourn Gary Cohn. And the media paeans to “our many Gary” are simply the corporate media crying for the loss of one of their own. But it does indicate that Trump’s world continues to unravel, as ever more canaries flee the coal mine due to Trump’s venal and erratic nature.
Does Cohn’s departure set the stage for even more key top advisors to leave? Who knows. There really aren’t that many other top folks left, other than Chief of Staff John Kelly, and Jared and Ivanka.
So that’s today’s roundup from the ever-more-corrupt, ever-more-shady, and ever-more-chaotic Trump Administration.
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We at Gen X Chronicle will keep the updates rolling, and we hope you’ll check in from time to time to see what the latest developments are.
After all, nothing less than the very future of our democracy is at stake.
