MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Hillary and Bill Clinton became fabulously wealthy after Bill left office. (Photo: Mike Mozart)

NBC News blared the headline "Hillary Clinton Struggles to Explain $600K in Goldman Sachs Speaking Fees" this morning in response to a revealing answer that Hillary Clinton gave in a CNN town hall meeting last night, reporting:

"Well, I don't know. That's what they offered," she [Clinton] said when asked about the fees by CNN host Anderson Cooper in a forum televised by the network with less than a week away from the Granite State's first-in-the-nation primary. Clinton had a lucrative turn on the paid speaking circuit after she stepped down as secretary of state, which rival Bernie Sanders has used as fodder against her.

"I wasn't committed to running. I didn't know whether I would or not," she added when asked why she took the money knowing it would look bad if she ran. She said she did not regret taking the money, noting that other former secretaries of states have given paid speeches and saying that no one can influence her.

In analyzing Hillary's financial relationship with Wall Street, Carmen Yarrusso writes for Truthout that,

Collectively, she and her husband Bill have parlayed their political experience into at least $125 million in speaking fees alone. According to Bloomberg, Hillary was paid $12 million in the 16 months after leaving as secretary of state. Knowing she'd likely run for president, Goldman Sachs, Deutsch Bank, Morgan Stanley (and other big Wall Street corporations) gladly paid her $2.9 million in speaking fees.

Given that a primary focus of the Bernie Sanders campaign is to oppose the ability of Wall Street and wealthy 1 percenters to have an inordinate impact on elections, as well as to expose how they foster income inequality and engage in high-risk financial practices, Hillary Clinton's response last night appeared astonishingly bumbling and disingenuous. Furthermore, the issue of her speaker fees - particularly from the three Goldman Sachs speeches she gave for approximately $675,000 in remunerations - has been repeatedly brought up in debates and from reporters. Given that she has said that she will not ask Congress to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act - and serious concerns exist about her vague assertions that she will get tough on Wall Street - it is a challenge for many voters in the United States to take seriously her claim that she is going to reform the financial industry.

On top of that, The Washington Post reports that Hillary Clinton fibbed last night about declaring that she no longer receives much money from Wall Street:

The most problematic part of her answer came when she insisted something that is demonstrably untrue: “They’re not giving me very much money now, I can tell you that much. Fine with me...."

The latest FEC reports reveal that Hillary reached a major milestone during the fourth quarter of 2015: Donors in the financial sector have now given more to support her campaigns than Bill’s....

“With the $21.4 million that Wall Street has given for her current White House bid, Clinton is on track to quickly exceed the nearly $23 million that she raised in her three previous campaigns combined from the PACs and employees of banks, hedge funds, securities firms and insurance companies."

However, there is an even more telling common sense indicator of where Hillary Clinton's thinking is about Wall Street, income inequality and the new Gilded Age. Since Bill Clinton left the White House, the Clintons have unapologetically pursued wealth. MoneyNation discusses the estimated net worth of the Clintons:

Hillary Clinton’s net worth is $31.3 million. Our Hillary Clinton net worth number comes from analyzing her 2015 U.S. Public Financial Disclosure Reports. Bill Clinton has an estimated net worth of $80 million. That gives a combined Bill and Hillary Clinton net worth of $111 million dollars.

A Demos think tank article concludes that it "it takes nearly $8 million to join the wealthiest one percent" in the United States. That means the Clintons are - in terms of their finances and lifestyle - far beyond the dividing line with the other 99 percent of those who live in the US.

One must also include the Clinton Foundation - which raised $278 million in 2013 according to a 2015 NPR article - as part of the many intertwined financial tentacles of Clinton Inc.

Hillary Clinton is intimately tied to the Clinton Foundation not just through her daughter Chelsea, who is its vice-chair, but through numerous of her associates who go on and off of its payroll. The Atlantic Magazine calls it just one of the "tangle of conflicts presented by the Clinton Foundation and the many overlapping roles of Bill and Hillary Clinton." A foundation may sound purely charitable, but in the case of high-profile, powerful individuals, it is hard to distinguish the overlap between fundraising and personal political and financial opportunities. In many cases, including the Clinton Foundation, the "charitable organization" becomes another platform for trafficking in power and wealth.

A closer look at the money that Hillary Clinton has received personally and politically from Wall Street, her robust support of the financial sector until Bernie Sanders challenged her for the nomination and her seemingly late-state interest in income equality, all reveal what she has chosen to become: a proud member of the 1 percent and the interaction of power, money and influence that comes with that "distinction."

One doesn't need to assemble a complete list of Hillary Clinton's financial and political relationships to Wall Street to know where she is coming from on issues like reining in the financial sector and income equality. Her passion has been to accumulate wealth and power since 2000, not to redistribute income to those who are falling further behind economically.

Clinton's interests are evident without debates or town forums.

She has chosen to pursue the full privileges of being a member of the 1 percent - and nothing is more revealing than that.

Not to be reposted without permission of Truthout.