Don’t Believe Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton just delivered her first speech on economic policy. In it, she vowed to raise taxes on the wealthy and to regulate Wall Street more effectively to “fix” economic inequality in the U.S. As the Wall Street Journal reported,

“…[O]ver the course of this campaign, I will offer plans to rein in excessive risks on Wall Street and ensure that stock markets work for everyday investors, not just high-frequency traders and those with the best or fastest connections. I will appoint and empower regulators who understand that too big to fail is still too big a problem. We will ensure that no firm is too complex to manage or oversee. And we will also process individuals as well as firms when they commit fraud or other criminal wrongdoing.”

One way to tell if a presidential candidate plans to keep their promises is to research who provides their campaign contributions. Hillary Clinton has a long history in politics that dates back to 1999. Accordingly, there is a treasure trove of campaign finance data that can be unearthed. This important work is carried out by The Center for Responsive Politics.

Hillary Clinton was a senator from New York between January 2001 and January 2009. As the table below shows, she was the third highest recipient of Wall Street money during that time period. First and second place were taken by none other than President Barack Obama and former presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, respectively. Furthermore,three of her top five contributors were none other than investment firms Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan Chase.

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