Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says the “strip-club” attitude of Washington and Wall Street only hurts the average investor and consumer, and it’s doing nothing to help the nation’s economy.
"Washington is like a strip club,”
he told CNBC. “You got people tossing dollars, and people doing the dance. But while the Washington-Wall Street strip club's going on, you got people out there in the middle of the country and all over America who are losing their homes, losing their jobs and wondering: 'How the heck doesn't somebody stand up and do something about it?'"
He is angry that no Wall Street executives went to jail for misdeeds that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.
"Absolutely they should have," he said. "These were the smartest people in the room. These were the people that were supposed to be the geniuses. These were all Ivy Leaguers, and they knew darn well what they were doing — shuffling paper around and getting paid ridiculous sums of money,” he said.
"They didn't produce things. They didn't make or manufacture. They weren't making an iPhone. They were betting on what an iPhone might be worth in a few years, and selling it off. It was a casino. And I got in trouble for saying that very thing eight years ago. I'd like to say, 'I was right,'" he said.
"If the same kind of shell game had been practiced on the street, do you think the cops in the bunco division wouldn't have gone down and busted 'em?" he said. "Does anybody ever accept responsibility for the fact that 60,000 manufacturing plants have closed in this country, 5 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since the year 2000? Every day I meet people ... who are today working two and three part-time jobs, and make less money than they used to make when they had one full-time job that paid 'em benefits and had a pension."
© 2025 Newsmax Finance. All rights reserved.