President Obama is calling on Congress today to put more money into agencies responsible for enforcing new financial regulations. Small chance. Wall Street lobbyists have made sure the Street can continue gambling with our money by (1) delaying and watering-down Dodd-Frank (not even the Volcker Rule, designed to make sure federally-insured deposits arent used in the Streets casino, is out yet); (2) diluting and contesting (through endless litigation) regulations that agencies were supposed to devise under Dodd-Frank; and (3) making sure those agencies havent had enough funding to enforce those regulations. Five years after the Street almost melted down, requiring a massive taxpayer-funded bailout and propelling the economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Recession, not a single top executive has been indicted, and almost nothing has changed. One of the biggest failures of the Obama White House (and Tim Geithner as Treasurer) was not to condition the bailout on the willingness of the banks to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act (separating commercial from investment banking -- an act that Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, and Bill Clinton had allowed to be eviscerated), and to put limits to the size of the big banks. Were not safe from another crisis, nor are we secure from the political power of the Street, until these are in place.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 15:47:17 +0000
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