…Mrs. Clinton described how banks were holding back on lending because they were “scared of regulations.” She urged banks to allow greater transparency and help policy makers come up with solutions. “We’re all in this together,” Mrs. Clinton told the audience. Most strikingly, Mrs. Clinton did not defend the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight legislation, a major achievement of President Obama and congressional Democrats in the wake of the crisis — and a target of Wall Street lobbying ever since. Instead, Mrs. Clinton suggested that it had been passed for “political reasons” by lawmakers panicked by their angry constituents….Another (Hillary) adviser, Mandy Grunwald, disagreed with Mr. Schwerin about releasing the 2014 (Deutsche Bank) speech. Referring to Mrs. Clinton by her initials, Ms. Grunwald argued that the speech had not been hard enough on Wall Street. The remarks, Ms. Grunwald said, “make it sound like HRC DOESN’T think the game is rigged — only that she recognizes that the public thinks so.” Ms. Grunwald added: “They are angry. She isn’t.””, October 15, 2016, The New York Times, Excerpt from “Hacked Transcripts Reveal a Genial Hillary Clinton at Goldman Sachs Events”, By AMY CHOZICK and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

“Could it be any more clear, that the liberal view that the financial crisis was caused by greedy and reckless bankers, is a false political narrative? I don’t think so. Here you have a mainstream Democrat (and now her party’s Presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton privately disagreeing with the more liberal members of her own party…..Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and their followers, but she and her advisors are saying, they have to publicly agree with them and continue this false narrative for political reasons.”, Mike Perry, former Chairman and CEO, IndyMac Bank

Hacked Transcripts Reveal a Genial Hillary Clinton at Goldman Sachs Events

By AMY CHOZICK and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Hillary Clinton visited a campaign office on Friday in Seattle with Senator Patty Murray of Washington. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

In a 2013 paid speech hosted by Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton said she had not yet decided whether she would run for president again.

But she did offer some friendly advice to the bank’s chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, when he asked what he would need to do to mount his own hypothetical bid.

“I think you would leave Goldman Sachs and start running a soup kitchen somewhere,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Then you could be a legend in your own time, both when you were there and when you left.”

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign declined to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street firms during the Democratic primary contests, when her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, intensely criticized her for accepting roughly $225,000 per speech.

But on Saturday, transcripts of three appearances at Goldman Sachs events were released by WikiLeaks, part of a trove of thousands of emails obtained by hackers who illegally breached the email account of one of Mrs. Clinton’s top aides.

The genial relationship she appeared to have with Mr. Blankfein and other Wall Street executives at the events would not have served Mrs. Clinton well in the Democratic primary contests, when Mr. Sanders used the speeches to portray her as being too close to Wall Street.

But for Mrs. Clinton, who is often criticized as overly scripted, her relaxed, off-the-cuff exchanges at these private events also revealed a side that she has struggled to show voters under the intense glare of a presidential race.

While the emails released last week showed Mrs. Clinton’s cadre of campaign aides agonizing over jokes she should tell in public and calculating political implications, the transcripts revealed Mrs. Clinton freely dispensing her own quick wit before a closed-door audience.

In one question-and-answer session with Mr. Blankfein, Mrs. Clinton relayed an argument she had had as secretary of state, when she tried to persuade a Chinese diplomat that his country had no more right to claim the South China Sea than the United States had to the Pacific Ocean.

“He says to me, ‘We’ll, you know, we’ll claim Hawaii,’” Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Blankfein. “And I said: ‘Yeah, but we have proof we bought it. Do you have proof you bought any of these places you’re claiming?’”

Mr. Blankfein interjected: “But they have to take New Jersey.”

“No, no, no,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We’re going to give them a red state.”

At these events, which took place in June and October of 2013, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly demurred when asked about her future plans, but it was also clear she was contemplating the political landscape if she were to run again.

Mrs. Clinton said that if she mounted a presidential campaign, she would need to begin raising money in 2014 or “early the following year.” And she expressed concerns about how the news media covered campaigns.

“Our political press has just been captured by trivia,” Mrs. Clinton said at a C.E.O. conference in South Carolina at which Mr. Blankfein moderated a discussion. “And so you don’t want to give them any more time to trivialize the importance of the issues than you have to give them. You want to be able to wait as long as possible.”

Excerpts from some of her speeches had previously been released by WikiLeaks, shortly after a recording surfaced in which her opponent, Donald J. Trump, made crude remarks about women. The Clinton campaign has refused to verify the authenticity of the transcripts, which came from the hacked email account of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman. The campaign has blamed the Russian government for the hack and WikiLeaks — whose founder, Julian Assange, is a critic of Mrs. Clinton — for releasing the emails in a coordinated effort to help Mr. Trump, a view echoed by the Obama administration.

The emails released Saturday included a fuller version of Mrs. Clinton’s previously leaked answer to a question posed by Timothy J. O’Neill, a senior Goldman executive, at a symposium hosted by the firm. Asked how Wall Street banks should approach efforts by Washington to impose tougher regulation and oversight, Mrs. Clinton made a show of empathy and spoke gently.

She detailed her time working with Wall Street as a senator from New York and confided that the “conventional wisdom” of blaming Wall Street banks for the financial crisis was an “oversimplification.” Mrs. Clinton described how banks were holding back on lending because they were “scared of regulations.” She urged banks to allow greater transparency and help policy makers come up with solutions.

“We’re all in this together,” Mrs. Clinton told the audience.

Most strikingly, Mrs. Clinton did not defend the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight legislation, a major achievement of President Obama and congressional Democrats in the wake of the crisis — and a target of Wall Street lobbying ever since. Instead, Mrs. Clinton suggested that it had been passed for “political reasons” by lawmakers panicked by their angry constituents.

“I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all,” Mrs. Clinton said of the overhaul.

Mrs. Clinton took a far stronger line in public, particularly after she began her second bid for president. In a January 2016 speech in New York, amid her tough primary campaign with Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Clinton vowed to defend the Dodd-Frank Act and expand financial regulation to new territory, such as hedge funds and high-frequency traders.

But most of Mrs. Clinton’s insights involved foreign policy and her experiences as the nation’s top diplomat, including concerns about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, the rise of anti-Japanese sentiment in China and a strikingly prescient prediction about the spread of nationalism in Europe.

Mrs. Clinton presented the Pentagon’s argument against establishing a no-fly zone in Syria, a policy that she has advocated in her 2016 campaign. Noting that American pilots would have to enforce the no-fly zone, she said, “We’re not putting our pilots at risk,” and added, “You’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”

Other hacked emails suggest Mrs. Clinton’s campaign had deep concerns about the Wall Street transcripts being made public.

In November 2015, as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was refusing to release transcripts of her paid speeches, her speechwriter, Dan Schwerin, suggested anonymously leaking to a reporter excerpts from one particular speech he wrote for her: A 2014 address to Deutsche Bank.

In that speech, he said in the email, “I wrote her a long riff about economic fairness and how the financial industry has lost its way, precisely for the purpose of having something we could show people if ever asked what she was saying behind closed doors for two years to all those fat cats.” He also acknowledged that it was “definitely not as tough or pointed as we would write it now.”

Another adviser, Mandy Grunwald, disagreed with Mr. Schwerin about releasing the 2014 speech. Referring to Mrs. Clinton by her initials, Ms. Grunwald argued that the speech had not been hard enough on Wall Street.

The remarks, Ms. Grunwald said, “make it sound like HRC DOESN’T think the game is rigged — only that she recognizes that the public thinks so.” Ms. Grunwald added: “They are angry. She isn’t.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on October 16, 2016, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Genial Clinton Emerges in Hacked Transcripts of Goldman Sachs Talks.

…and were the root-cause of the 2008 financial crisis. The liberal narrative of the crisis, that it was caused by greedy and reckless bankers, has never been proved true in court and is being proved false with time. Unfortunately, because this false narrative was propagandized by our liberal government (who had motive to deflect blame away from itself) and media, we are destined to repeat the same mistakes of too much “well-intended” government intervention and distortion of fair and free markets and endure more financial crises.”, Mike Perry, former Chairman and CEO, IndyMac Bank

“Despite losing the battle to raid pensions to fund affordable housing, the Clinton administration won the war by using HUD quotas and the little-known Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and banks to serve government goals. HUD housing quotas ultimately required that 55% of all loans purchased by Fannie and Freddie had to be subprime-type loans. President Clinton’s financial regulators used the CRA to force banks to make subprime loans. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in 2008 congressional testimony, the “early stages of the subprime market . . . essentially emerged out of the CRA.” By the time the crisis broke, federal regulators had used the CRA and HUD quotas to destroy mortgage-credit standards and fill the financial system with 31 million subprime-type mortgages. No less than 76% of those mortgages were issued, held or guaranteed by the federal government.”, Phil Gramm, “The Subprime Superhighway”, The Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2016

Opinion

The Subprime Superhighway

The U.S. and Europe are lowering capital standards for ‘investments’ in public infrastructure—ignoring the lessons from 2007-08.

PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By Phil Gramm

More government spending, particularly for infrastructure projects, is the mantra in Washington and other capitals. But two factors stand in the way. First, the governments of most developed economies are broke. According to their own government figures for 2015, the total public debt of European Union members as a share of GDP is 85%, U.S. debt is 101% and Japanese debt is 229%. Second, the rates of return on infrastructure investments are generally low. As European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said in an interview last October, “There aren’t many public investments with a high rate of return.”

With infrastructure spending so popular and government coffers so empty, the appeal of subverting private wealth to serve government objectives has become even more attractive. The latest scheme to do so is the European Union’s attempt to “incentivize” more insurance investment in public infrastructure as part of its “Solvency II” regulatory regime. In January the EU lowered capital standards for infrastructure investments by as much as 40% but cited no major errors in the old risk model or any new empirical evidence to justify the change. Instead, the EU repeatedly emphasized its need for “€2 trillion in [infrastructure] investment” by 2020.

The U.S. seems set to follow Europe’s lead. The Treasury Department’s new Federal Insurance Office released a report last year encouraging “state insurance regulators to assess the current [risk-based capital] approach and explore appropriate ways to increase incentives for infrastructure investments by insurers.”

Haven’t we seen this movie before? Didn’t lowering capital standards in the mortgage industry have a bad ending? Remember the subprime-mortgage meltdown and the 2007-08 financial crisis?

The most infamous modern effort to make private wealth serve government goals began on Sept. 12, 1992, when candidate Bill Clinton called for private pension funds to “invest” in government priorities, such as affordable housing and infrastructure. As President Clinton’s point man on harnessing private wealth for public use, then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich drooled over the sheer size of private-pension wealth. “In all, America’s pension funds hold assets that total $4.6 trillion,” he said in 1994 congressional testimony. “If $4.6 trillion worth of one-dollar bills were laid end-to-end, they would stretch a distance equal to 907 round-trip journeys from Washington, D.C., to the moon.”

In a 1994 letter to this newspaper, Mr. Reich promised “competitive, risk-adjusted rates of return” for pensions “plus ancillary benefits, such as affordable housing, infrastructure improvements and jobs.” Yet even the unions, the Clinton administration’s most reliable allies, flatly rejected sacrificing their life savings for government goals.

Despite losing the battle to raid pensions to fund affordable housing, the Clinton administration won the war by using Housing and Urban Development quotas and the little-known Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and banks to serve government goals. HUD housing quotas ultimately required that 55% of all loans purchased by Fannie and Freddie had to be subprime-type loans. President Clinton’s financial regulators used the CRA to force banks to make subprime loans.

As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in 2008 congressional testimony, the “early stages of the subprime market . . . essentially emerged out of the CRA.” By the time the crisis broke, federal regulators had used the CRA and HUD quotas to destroy mortgage-credit standards and fill the financial system with 31 million subprime-type mortgages. No less than 76% of those mortgages were issued, held or guaranteed by the federal government.

The EU and the U.S. seem determined to repeat this sad history, only this time lowering capital standards and providing “incentives” for insurers to invest in roads, railways, airports and bridges. If U.S. insurers push back, it isn’t hard to imagine a future Treasury secretary questioning their “economic patriotism” and pressuring them to fund infrastructure. Thanks to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, the Treasury Department already claims power over 30% of the insurance industry. This authority will expand as the Treasury and Federal Reserve work with international regulators to impose the G-7 Financial Stability Board’s international capital standards on U.S. insurers.

Those who question the threat faced by insurance policyholders need only remember that imposing Community Reinvestment Act on the insurance and securities industries was the greatest unfulfilled demand by Democrats in the debate on the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Had they succeeded, the misery caused by the subprime crisis would have been even deeper and more widespread.

The European Commission’s impressment of the insurance industry to fund infrastructure sounds like predatory behavior. Last year the commission said that “if insurers were to increase their investment in infrastructure to even 0.5% of total assets, which seems achievable, this would mean an extra €20 billion of [infrastructure] investment.” The commission speaks as if it had found a pirate’s treasure map, and piracy seems what they have in mind.

Wealth cannot serve two masters. Individuals buy insurance to promote the well-being of their families. Pressuring or “incentivizing” insurance companies to do anything other than to protect policyholders steals wealth from its rightful owners. Now regulators want to gamble the insurance policy you purchased to protect your loved ones on the profitability of projects like the California High-Speed Rail Authority. We already know how this story ends.

Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.