Steve Bannon's journey to economic nationalism

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Wed Mar 15, 2017, 02:08 PM - Edit history (3)

It has been my experience that if you access articles in The Wall Street Journal. via the authors' Twitter feeds, you can go around the paywall. Try linking via the tweet.

Meet Marty Bannon, the 95-year-old inspiration for Steve Bannon's economic nationalism
https://www.wsj.com/articles/steve-bannon-and-the-making-of-an-economic-nationalist-1489516113 … … via @WSJ

Link to tweet

Steve Bannon and the Making of an Economic Nationalist

The controversial White House counselor says his father’s 2008 financial trauma helped crystallize his antiglobalist views and led to a political hardening; ‘I’m going to be totally wiped out’

By Michael C. Bender

March 14, 2017 2:28 p.m. ET

RICHMOND, Va.—On Oct. 7, 2008, in the cramped TV room of his modest home here, Marty Bannon watched with alarm as plunging stock markets dragged down his shares of AT&T, the nest egg he built during a 50-year career at the company. ... His five children, including current White House counselor and chief strategist Steve Bannon, had often joked growing up that their devout father, a product of the Great Depression, would sooner leave the Catholic Church than sell those shares. The stock symbolized his deep trust in the company and had doubled as life insurance for his children.

As he toggled between TV stations, financial analysts warned of economic collapse and politicians in Washington seemed to mirror his own confusion. So he did the unthinkable. He sold. ... Marty Bannon, now 95 years old, still regrets the decision and seethes over Washington’s response to the economic crisis. His son Steve says the moment crystallized his own antiestablishment outlook and helped trigger a decadelong political hardening that has landed him inside the West Wing, just steps away from President Donald Trump.

“The only net worth my father had beside his tiny little house was that AT&T stock. And nobody is held accountable?” Steve Bannon, 63, said in a recent interview. “All these firms get bailed out. There’s no equity taken from anybody. There’s no one in jail. These companies are all overleveraged, and everyone looked the other way.” ... No White House official has more influence on a wider portfolio of issues than Steve Bannon, who has become a litmus test for how people view the Trump administration. For supporters, he is helping to deliver on Mr. Trump’s fiery populist promises, with their emphasis on punishing illegal immigrants and U.S. companies aiming to move jobs out of the country. The left has painted him as isolationist, sexist and anti-immigrant.

There were many factors that turned Steve Bannon into a divisive political firebrand. But his decision to embrace “economic nationalism” and vehemently oppose the forces and institutions of globalization, he says, stems from his upbringing, his relationship with his father and the meaning those AT&T shares held for the family. ... “Everything since then has come from there,” he says. “All of it.”
....

Write to Michael C. Bender at [e-mail]

Appeared in the Mar. 15, 2017, print edition as 'Bannon’s Journey to Economic Nationalism.'

Michael C. Bender: @MichaelCBender

White House reporter, @WSJ | [phone], [e-mail] | Via @bpolitics, @TB_Times, @pbpost, @daytondailynews, @DailySentinelGJ & @TheLantern

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[font color=red]ETA: mahatmakanejeeves adds: [/font]

Full disclosure: I held shares of Washington Mutual in 2008. I had paid good money for them. The company went belly-up in September 2008. What is left of my shares trades for a few pennies on the dollar. I didn't become a white nationalist as a result.

[CrispyQ]

1. +1 for your full disclosure statement. -nt

[Volaris]

2. Awwww...is the wittle wepubwican sad cause the wittle wepubwican got

EXACTLY WHAT THE REPUBLICAN FUCKING VOTED FOR???
Steve Bannon must be one hell of a Simple Bitch. No sympathy for them, none. No More and not EVER again.

[Moral Compass]

3. Strange reaction

His dad dumped his shared of ATT and lost his shirt so his boy Steveo becomes an economic nationalist and wanting to destroy the entire system?

That is some serious dissonance.

There's no logical path from holding a stock that is one of the blue chips and having it plunge and wanting to deconstruct the administrative state.

In other words, he's crazy. I would think he would have have wanted more regulation not less.

Huh?

(Full disclosure: I lost about $750,000 in the various stock market crashes and, like the author, my newly found poverty didn't turn me into an economic nationalist.)

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. whoops. That was me with the WaMu. I have edited the OP to make note of that.

Thanks.