First, do no cheating
Maybe it’s time to do something about the hypertrophied financial “industry” that has an unfortunate tendency to break the global economy ever few years?
On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) headlined an event that launched a new coalition calling itself “Take On Wall Street.”
The group includes lawmakers like Warren, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), labor leaders like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka and the AFT’s Randi Weingarten, as well as civil rights groups, community groups, and the organizing giant Move On. It aims to put pressure on lawmakers at all levels to pass stricter rules governing the financial system.
Operating on two principles — “No cheating, and no pushing the risks on taxpayers,” as Warren put it — it’s making five key demands: breaking up the biggest banks; ensuring access to non-predatory banking products, including through the United States Post Office; ending the carried interest tax loophole that allows hedge fund managers to use a tax break for investment income on the income they make at work; reining in executive bonuses; and imposing a financial transaction tax.
It seems like a good idea to me. They award themselves too much money, and they break everything.
In her remarks, Warren noted some of the accomplishments that have been achieved under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, particularly the $10.1 billion in consumer relief brought about by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But she argued that things have to go further. “We have made a lot of progress under the Dodd-Frank financial reforms,” she said. “But we’ve also got a lot more to do.”
In particular, she called for a reinstatement of a “21st century Glass-Stegall,” a law that previously separated riskier investment banking activities from commercial deposits, and to “break up the big banks.” Given that banks have grown larger and more concentrated since the financial crisis, she warned that taxpayers are still not free from the possibility of having to bail them out again in the future. “Dodd-Frank imposed some discipline, but let’s get real,” she said. “Dodd-Frank did not end too big to fail.”
Too big to fail should end. Enough already.
Everyone who wanted to know why Sen. Warren isn’t running for President? This is why–she’s doing damn fine work right where she is.
Amen.
Krugman is a great one to read on this stuff. See, for example
A Victory Against the Shadows
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/a-victory-against-the-shadows/
Do what Switzerland did. If a bank blows up or requires government assistance all bonuses paid in (say) the past five years have to be returned.
And also, if a bank needs government assistance, all managers are paid according to public service salary scales.
Freemage #1:
If Warren ever did run as an anti-Wall Street Presidential candidate she would have to counter a massive smear campaign from Establishment Democrats.
<i}The group includes lawmakers like Warren, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), labor leaders like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka and the AFT’s Randi Weingarten, as well as civil rights groups, community groups, and the organizing giant Move On. It aims to put pressure on lawmakers at all levels to pass stricter rules governing the financial system.
There’s absolutely no point in passing stricter rules with regards to Wall Street until legislation is passed putting rigorous limits on mass immigration.
Importing tens of millions of vulnerable workers who’ll toil for far less than minimum wage is what fuels all of this bullshit.
That is the method by which wealth is transferred from the pockets of working people to the pockets of the rich. That is why the gap between rich and poor has never ceased to widen since the passing of the immigration act back in 1965.
That’s the benchmark year.
Before that date rates of unionization had always increased since unions began in the 19th century, and before that date wage increases were always higher than rates of inflation. After 65 rates of unionization trail off and the gap between the middle classes and upper classes begins to grow. That gap has grown so large, the middle class has pretty much ceased to exist.
Until this question is addressed the people and organizations cited above aiming ” to take on” Wall Street are doing little more than fellating it.
In her remarks, Warren noted some of the accomplishments that have been achieved under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, particularly the $10.1 billion in consumer relief brought about by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
That 10 billion in relief was taken off the pay cheques of beleaguered blue-collar workers and then thrown to the underclass that mass immigration has been so instrumental in creating. Blue collar people have the unenviable task of subsidizing the enormous pool of cheap illegal labor that so threatens their already meager wages.
I shall now brace myself for taunts of ‘bigot’ ‘racist’ and ‘xenophobe’…
Actually, John, I’m going to call you a patsy, a chump getting played by conservatives who want you to scapegoat immigrants (unless you’re Native American, that would be your ancestors) instead of looking at actual numbers of job losses to automation and outsourcing. Also, you’ve completely failed to look at the right-wing attack on workers via “Right to Work” law meant to gut unions, and actual banning of public worker unions in some states
Patsy. Chump.
Either struggle with shaking off the lies, or embrace that xenophobe and racist really were the right terms for you after all. .