Four months before she jumped into the presidential race, Hillary Clinton spent a lunch hour in a Midtown New York City conference room huddling with a dozen of the world’s leading economists and left-leaning policymakers. The group—assembled by former Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz, and which included former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz—had a straightforward task: to help the already odds-on Democratic nominee forge a strategy for accelerating the American economic recovery. Clinton knew the challenge would define her candidacy, and, if all went well, her presidency itself. But the solutions weren’t obvious. The recovery, then five years old, had both found its footing and revealed its fundamental weakness. Corporate profits and the stock market were soaring again, but wages remained stalled, fueling widespread frustration that good times had returned only for those at the very top.
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Dennis Kelleher, president of the nonprofit Better Markets, points to her push for restoring the derivatives-trading provision as a testament to her commitment. “She not only didn’t need to do it, there are only a few of us who know what the damn thing is,” he says. “She seems to be intent on regulating both the biggest banks and the shadow banking system quite aggressively.”
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To read the full Fortune article by Tory Newmyer click here.
