In one big, bipartisan spending bill, our legislative gymnasts pulled off a breathtaking, flat-footed backflip for Wall Street. They then set a dizzying new height record for the amount of money deep-pocketed donors can give to the two major political parties. It was the best scratch-my-back performance you never saw. You and I didn’t see it, because it happened in secret — with no public hearings, debate, or even a vote. Tucked into the year-end spending bill known as a “cromnibus” was a provision allowing Wall Street’s most reckless speculators to have their losses on risky derivative deals insured by us taxpayers. Such losses were a central cause of the 2008 financial crash and subsequent unholy bank bailout. But with one, compact, 85-line section inserted deep inside the 1,600-page, trillion-dollar spending bill, Congress did a dazzling flip-flop, putting taxpayers back on the hook for the banksters’ high-risk speculation. That crash led to the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to spare taxpayers from future Wall Street bailouts.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 20:33:50 +0000
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