Gary Cohn: "Why Aren't The Other Hands Up?"

At a Wall Street Journal conference of CEOs earlier this week John Bussey asked, “If the tax reform bill goes through, do you plan to increase your company’s capital investment?”

1. Tax-overhaul backers say corporate rate cut will encourage investment by businesses
2. During #wsjceocouncil interview with Gary Cohn, WSJ asks CEOs to raise hands if they'll boost investment if rates cut
3. Few CEOS raise hands
4. Cohn asks: "Why aren't the other hands up?" pic.twitter.com/5PI60NlW0A

— Tim Hanrahan (@TimJHanrahan) November 14, 2017

Only a handful of those in the front raised their hand, leaving an incredulous Gary Cohn, on stage, to ask why nobody else was raising their hands.

The reasons for this are clear. First, corporations are enjoying record profits and any windfall in the tax bill that the Trump administration is pushing at the expense of the middle class would be largely inconsequently to all but a small number of companies. Second, corporate managers make investment decisions based on many factors, including the cost of the capital and other factors. Third, corporate managers when polled indicate time and time again that they have a preference for paying down debt, for making distributions to shareholders and for making acquisitions over making new capital investments with cash windfalls.

Gary Cohn, of course, couldn’t be expected to know this. His career at Goldman was that of a trader, not of an investment banker.

Now that he knows it, can he be expected to be something other than a shill for Trump’s misguided tax plan? Can anyone watching this video still avoid the reality that this tax plan only benefits the ultra-wealthy, and that any top-down, supply-side, trickle down benefits to the working class are dead on arrival?

There is nothing that demonstrates quite as vividly as Cohn's own reaction how the entire country is being converted into a banana republic right now.