An ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs who helped cause the 2008 financial crisis has claimed Bernie Sanders would ruin the economy and “screw up the US” if elected president, prompting Twitter to remind him of the Great Recession.
Billionaire Lloyd Blankfein tweeted on Wednesday that Sanders is “just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin [the American] economy and doesn’t care about [the American] military,” before adding: “If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.”
The tweet was immediately bombarded with negative criticism. Twitter users didn’t hold back against the man who claimed that banks were “doing God’s work” to justify giving his staff huge bonuses amid the 2008 financial crisis.
“’He’ll ruin our economy’ – Guy who ruined our economy,” one reply said. Another commenter mocked Blankfein trying to link Sanders to Russia. “I’m sure Putin spends every hour of everyday strategizing about how he can get Americans healthcare, education and housing.” A Bernie Sanders activist group also fired back at the billionaire, tweeting: “When you say ‘our economy’, whose economy would that be, Lloyd?”
It is not the first time that Sanders and Blankfein were drawn into an online spat. In 2019, when Sanders suggested that corporate stock buybacks should be limited, the pair got into an unpleasant back-and-forth on Twitter. Blankfein argued that stock buybacks would allow investors to reinvest in “higher growth businesses that boost the economy and jobs,” while Sanders said that spending money on them instead of increasing wages for workers just “increased the wealth of billionaires like [Blankfein].”
During Blankfein’s tenure as CEO of Goldman, he steered the investment bank into taking advantage of the 2008 financial crisis. The firm made incredible amounts of money by betting against mortgages, then lied to investors about it, and was eventually forced to pay $5.1 billion in damages for their role.