GRAFT: While Goldman Sachs was in the middle of laying off 1,700 workers in 2013, it decided to spend more than two-thirds of a million dollars on Hillary Clinton. And what did it get for its sizable investment? Very expensive pabulum.

On Saturday, WikiLeaks released the complete transcripts of Clinton's three appearances at Goldman Sachs events in the span of five months in 2013. These are the transcripts that Clinton adamantly refused to release during the primaries, when Bernie Sanders was calling for them to be made public.

At the time, pundits wondered if the speeches contained remarks that might undercut Clinton's support with the Democratic Party's increasingly leftist base. Was she too cozy with Wall Street? Did she promise them anything if elected? And so on.

But it turns out that Clinton was probably more concerned with the fact that that the transcripts would reveal how banal her remarks were. That would, in turn, raise questions about why Goldman Sachs was willing to part with so much money for three hours of mostly worthless clichés and bromides that bear little resemblance to the policies Clinton is pushing now.

There's only one real possible explanation. Clinton was cashing in on her tenure in government, and Goldman Sachs was buying influence. They used to call the former graft, and the latter crony capitalism.

Despite their billing, these were not Clinton speeches, but Q&A sessions — two of them were conducted by the very sycophantic Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and one by the co-head of its Investment Management Division.

As a reader service, we've read the complete transcripts of all three events, and have pulled together a sampling of the kind of "insights" for which Goldman Sachs paid Clinton $225,000 an hour to deliver.

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Foreign Policy

"One thing I've learned is that there's no one that knows what's going to happen in the Middle East."

"Clearly what's going on in this complicated world of ours is on the top of a lot of people's minds."

"The trend lines are both positive and troubling."

"We're in a time in Syria where they're not finished killing each other."

"The sharing of intelligence requires the gathering of intelligence and the analysis of intelligence."

"President Xi is doing much more to try to assert his authority, and I think that is also good news."

"(Xi) is very much committed to coming up with some plans."

"We obviously want China to be successful and to be responsible."

"So that's what you get paid all those big bucks for, being in positions like I was just in trying to sort it out and figure out what is the smartest approach for the United States and our allies can take that would result in the least amount of danger to ourselves and our allies going forward."

"I would certainly not count the Europeans out, but I think they have a lot of work to do."

"I would like to see us go as far as we possibly can with a real agreement, not a phony agreement."

"I would love it if we could continue to build a more positive relationship with Russia."

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http://www.investors.com/politics/editor...75000-for-this/