~d Now, the House is scheduled to vote on a bill that would roll back these derivative regulations and let banks go back to the same set of rules that let them break the economy in the first place. This brings us to insane part: According to the New York Times, the bill is currently enjoying “broad bipartisan support” in the House. So, why is it that both parties have found a way to agree on a substantive regulatory change at a time when partisan bickering is supposedly making any progress impossible? It’s certainly not because the public is up in arms about rolling back derivative regulations — most Americans have never heard of derivatives trading, let alone pressured their Member of Congress to deregulate it. No, this is happening for a very different reason: Big bank lobbyists wrote this bill. That’s not a cute turn of phrase or an exaggeration — The New York Times reports that 70 of the 85 lines in the new House bill reflect recommendations made in a piece of model legislation drafted by lobbyists for Citigroup, another bank that played a major roll in the 2008 crisis and also received billions of federal stimulus dollars. The same report also revealed “two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word.” You can even view the original documents and see how Citigroup’s lobbyists redrafted the House Bill, striking out ideas they didn’t like and replacing them with ones they did. Citigroup is quite literally writing its own rules.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 14:04:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015