Clinton speech react: 'Is that it?' The Democratic front-runner manages to underwhelm both Wall Street and its reformers in her signature economic policy speech.

NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton gave a big economics speech here on Monday, and the snap reaction among Wall Street investors, economists and ardent financial reformers who thrill to the soak-the-rich rhetoric of Bernie Sanders was a collective: “Meh. What’s next?”

Clinton laid out the soft contours of a “growth and fairness economy” in a speech designed to appeal to struggling middle-class workers with promises of higher pay and more generous federal policies.


But she left out many hard specifics on tougher tax policy toward the rich and corporate America. And she offered limited pledges to crack down on big Wall Street banks while hitting her strongest notes promising to toss rogue bankers in prison while ripping recent worker-productivity comments from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Despite those few moments, this was hardly Thomas Piketty invading the land of Wall Street titans and flipping over tables piled high with gold. And there were no radical new proposals aimed at reversing America’s long slide into wage stagnation.

“She appears to have taken a page out of the Elizabeth Warren book on going after bankers and brokers and fat cats and people who may have broken the law,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment office at BMO Private bank. “I’m sure a lot of polling went into that. But in terms of inequality and profit-sharing and general economic redistribution, she was a lot longer on problems than she was on solutions.”

And Clinton sounded some of her by now very familiar themes, invoking her love of being a grandmother and arguing that middle-class wage stagnation since the end of the Great Recession was exacerbating income inequality while pledging that something must be done. But that something, according to Clinton, mainly consists of boosting the minimum wage and increasing overtime pay, something President Barack Obama has been pushing for some time.

Clinton also reiterated her long-held belief that the lower “carried interest” tax that some private equity and hedge fund managers pay on large chunks of their hefty take-home pay should be boosted to the ordinary income rate. But that was widely expected and not new. Wall Street mostly expects it will have to give up that benefit.

Clinton did gently push into some new ground by urging corporate America to share more of its record profits with average workers and not just top management. But Clinton offered little in the way of direct prescriptions for doing this, leaving that for future speeches.

“I will propose ways for companies to share more of their profits with employees,” Clinton said. “Later, in New Hampshire, I’ll have more to say about how we will do this.”

She also argued for tax relief for small businesses and broader corporate tax reform along with comprehensive immigration reform. But she did not go into specifics on any of these issues.

Other proposals also harkened back to Obama’s efforts, including an economic infrastructure bank to pay for much-needed upgrades to the U.S. transportation and communications systems. She again pressed for policies to address the pay gap between men and women, another familiar theme from the campaign trail, along with more early-childhood education.

Clinton perhaps hit her high point with a direct attack on recent comments from former Bush, who said last week that Americans need to “work longer hours” to increase economic growth. To significant applause, Clinton cited hard-working nurses and other Americans and said, “They don’t need a lecture. They need a raise.”

In a note that struck some as odd given the popularity of the services, Clinton specifically criticized “gig economy” companies, a group that includes upstarts such as Airbnb and Uber. These types of scrappy young companies have often provided corporate homes for former Obama administration officials. Former top Obama adviser David Plouffe is now a senior executive at Uber.

Defenders of Uber and companies like it say they are fighting entrenched and sluggish transportation incumbents such as cab companies. Getting rid of this opposition and allowing upstart companies to thrive would be a better path to faster growth than siding with their opponents, some analysts say.

“I think a lot of people view the sharing economy as a prime example of U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship,” said James Pethokoukis of the free market American Enterprise Institute. “They are breaking up these monopoly hotel chains and taxicab companies and allowing more people to provide not just great services but to provide more income to workers.”

Pethokoukis gave Clinton stronger marks for taking on corporate “short-termism” that focuses on quarterly earnings and stock buybacks rather than long-term investment. It’s an issue popular with Wall Street investors such as Larry Fink of Blackrock and tech investor Marc Andreessen, among others. “Republicans should look to get on board that issue as soon as possible,” Pethokoukis said.

Clinton also continued to straddle a middle ground on trade deals after strongly pushing for a free-trade agreement with Asia during her tenure as secretary of state. The halfway stance has enraged members of the Obama administration struggling to get the Asia deal done while also failing to excite ardent opponents of free trade deals on the left.

Many on the left strongly opposed to free trade and in favor of cracking down harder on Wall Street have gravitated to Sanders and, to a much lesser degree, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

“Growth here at home and growth an ocean away are linked in a common global economy,” Clinton said on Monday. “Trade has been a major driver of the economy over recent decades, but it has also contributed to hollowing out our manufacturing base,” she said. “We do need to set a high bar for trade agreements, supporting them if they create jobs. … But we should be prepared to walk away if they don’t.”

Clinton also found herself in a bit of a muddle as she praised the economy under her husband, former President Bill Clinton. But she did not note that Bill Clinton presided over the collapse of the Glass-Steagall wall between investment and commercial banking and unleashed a massively speculative market boom in technology stocks.

In perhaps her sharpest section, Clinton said that as a senator from New York, she learned “firsthand” the positive role Wall Street can play in growing the economy by helping innovators raise capital. But she also slammed bankers who “piled risk upon risk” heading into the crisis and cited her early calls to crack down on derivatives and subprime lending.

She pledged to both defend existing financial reform and go even further, almost hinting at a need to break up the largest banks, something sure to go down poorly with some of Clinton’s biggest supporters on Wall Street. “We have to go beyond Dodd-Frank; too many of our major financial institutions are still too complex. … I will offer plans to rein in excessive risk taking on Wall Street and ensure that stock markets work for everyday investors, not just high-speed traders.”

O’Malley last week issued specific proposals on this front. Clinton has yet to do so.

Financial reformers gave her mixed grades. “It’s a good start, but after all this listening, planning and thinking by the runaway leading candidate, I expected more,” said Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets, a pro-reform group. “The American people deserve a concrete, specific, comprehensive plan that really protects them from Wall Street recklessness and that she as president can be held accountable for once in office.”

Another financial reformer said the anti-Wall Street crowd was waiting to see whether Clinton will “put in place a team of advisers who have a demonstrated history of supporting meaningful reform and tough enforcement, or chooses instead to surround herself with the same crowd of revolving door insiders.”

The real test for Clinton on Wall Street will come when and if she turns this rhetoric into actual policy prescriptions. Big Wall Street titans heavily funding Clinton’s campaign and other business interests fully expect to take some heavy rhetorical hits as the Democratic front-runner fights off the Sanders surge. But they do not expect Clinton to try and fully reshape their industry.

Many conservatives breathed a sigh of relief after the speech, having feared a fresh set of innovative proposals that might have required serious responses. “I think it’s a horse race between what’s more tired, her or the material,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the conservative American Action Forum. “There really isn’t anything new here. It’s really more of the same, and I don’t understand how that would produce an outcome different from the last six or seven years.”