Then hired him back as soon as the controversy dropped.

https://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187

But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At press conferences in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing -- the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 -- contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012.

I didn't write the article.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/10/establishment-democrats-progressive-medicare-1052215

The united front that helped Democrats save Obamacare just a year ago is falling apart over single-payer health care.

Deep-pocketed hospital, insurance and other lobbies are plotting to crush progressives’ hopes of expanding the government's role in health care once they take control of the House. The private-sector interests, backed in some cases by key Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign alumni, are now focused on beating back another prospective health care overhaul, including plans that would allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare.

This sets up a potentially brutal battle between establishment Democrats who want to preserve Obamacare and a new wave of progressive House Democrats who ran on single-payer health care.

"We know the insurance companies and the pharma companies are all putting tens of millions of dollars into trying to defeat us," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who co-chairs the Medicare for All Congressional Caucus. "Which I take as a badge of honor — that they’re so concerned about a good policy that they're going to put so much money into trying to defeat it."

The rift could come into full view in the opening weeks of the new Congress, as the party long bound by a need to defend the Affordable Care Act tries to embrace a new health care vision it can carry into the 2020 presidential campaign.

House Democratic leaders already are emphasizing the need to align behind a more pragmatic agenda focused largely on shoring up Obamacare, without peering too far into the future.

“We want to continue promoting the idea of accessibility and improving the Affordable Care Act,” said incoming Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.). “That should be the primary goal that we have.”

It's a sentiment shared by the major lobbies that fought alongside Democrats against Obamacare repeal and now want to reap the benefits. These interest groups contend that, after a decade of upheaval in health care, the public would prefer simple fixes that strengthen the ACA over a headlong rush into another dramatic overhaul of the system.

https://www.wnd.com/2008/03/59405/

Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that’s the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The worldwide economic downturn called the Great Depression, which persisted from 1929 until about 1939, was the longest and worst depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. While originating in the U.S., it ended up causing drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in virtually every country on earth. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the Great Depression ranks second only to the Civil War as the gravest crisis in American history.”

Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that’s the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The worldwide economic downturn called the Great Depression, which persisted from 1929 until about 1939, was the longest and worst depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. While originating in the U.S., it ended up causing drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in virtually every country on earth. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the Great Depression ranks second only to the Civil War as the gravest crisis in American history.”

The recession was an ordinary business cycle. We had repeated recessions over hundreds of years, but what converted [this one] into a major depression was bad monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve System had been established to prevent what actually happened. It was set up to avoid a situation in which you would have to close down banks, in which you would have a banking crisis. And yet, under the Federal Reserve System, you had the worst banking crisis in the history of the United States. There’s no other example I can think of, of a government measure which produced so clearly the opposite of the results that were intended.

And what happened is that [the Federal Reserve] followed policies which led to a decline in the quantity of money by a third. For every $100 in paper money, in deposits, in cash, in currency, in existence in 1929, by the time you got to 1933 there was only about $65, $66 left. And that extraordinary collapse in the banking system, with about a third of the banks failing from beginning to end, with millions of people having their savings essentially washed out, that decline was utterly unnecessary.

At all times, the Federal Reserve had the power and the knowledge to have stopped that. And there were people at the time who were all the time urging them to do that. So it was, in my opinion, clearly a mistake of policy that led to the Great Depression.

Although economists have pontificated over the decades about this or that cause of the Great Depression, even the current Fed chairman Ben S. Bernanke, agrees with Friedman’s assessment that the Fed caused the Great Depression.

At a Nov. 8, 2002, conference to honor Friedman’s 90th birthday, Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve governor, gave a speech at Friedman’s old home base, the University of Chicago. Here’s a bit of what Bernanke, the man who now runs the Fed – and thus, one of the most powerful people in the world – had to say that day:

I can think of no greater honor than being invited to speak on the occasion of Milton Friedman’s ninetieth birthday. Among economic scholars, Friedman has no peer. …

Today I’d like to honor Milton Friedman by talking about one of his greatest contributions to economics, made in close collaboration with his distinguished coauthor, Anna J. Schwartz. This achievement is nothing less than to provide what has become the leading and most persuasive explanation of the worst economic disaster in American history, the onset of the Great Depression – or, as Friedman and Schwartz dubbed it, the Great Contraction of 1929-33.

… As everyone here knows, in their “Monetary History” Friedman and Schwartz made the case that the economic collapse of 1929-33 was the product of the nation’s monetary mechanism gone wrong. Contradicting the received wisdom at the time that they wrote, which held that money was a passive player in the events of the 1930s, Friedman and Schwartz argued that “the contraction is in fact a tragic testimonial to the importance of monetary forces.”

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/glass_steagall_act.asp

The Glass-Steagall Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1933 as the Banking Act, which prohibited commercial banks from participating in the investment banking business. Glass-Steagall was sponsored by Senator Carter Glass, a former Treasury secretary, and Rep. Henry Steagall, a member of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee. The act was passed as an emergency measure to counter the failure of almost 5,000 banks during the Great Depression. Glass-Steagall lost its potency in subsequent decades and was partially repealed in 1999.

Apart from separating commercial and investment banking, the Glass-Steagall Act also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which guaranteed bank deposits up to a specified limit. The act also created the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and introduced Regulation Q, which prohibited banks from paying interest on demand deposits and capped interest rates on other deposit products. (It was repealed in July 2011.)

The Glass-Steagall Act's primary objectives were twofold: to stop the unprecedented run on banks and restore public confidence in the U.S. banking system; and to sever the linkages between commercial and investment banking that were believed to have been responsible for the 1929 market crash. The rationale for seeking the separation was the conflict of interest that arose when banks were engaged in both commercial and investment banking (e.g. the tendency of such banks to engage in excessively speculative activity).

The Glass-Steagall Act's partial repeal in 1999 by the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) is believed in some circles to have contributed to the 2008 global credit crisis. Commercial banks worldwide were saddled with billions of dollars in losses, due to the excessive exposure of their investment banking arms to derivatives and securities, tied to U.S. home prices. The severity of the crisis forced Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, top-tier independent investment banks, to convert to bank holding companies. Coupled with the acquisition of other prominent investment banks Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch by commercial banking giants J.P. Morgan and Bank of America, respectively, the 2008 developments signaled the final demise of the Glass-Steagall Act.