does the treasury secretary have to be a lobbyist for wall street in europe?
http://www.nationofchange.org/does-treasury-secretary-have-be-lobbyist-wall-street-europe-1372777459
Its not news that the Wall Street banks have enormous influence over policy in Washington. After all, most of the big banks would have gone bankrupt in the financial crisis if not for the massive bailout engineered by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board.
But the handouts from the government did not end with the crisis. The government continues to provide a massive subsidy to the banks in the form of its implicit too-big-to-fail insurance. This means that creditors assume that if the big banks get in trouble again, the government would step in and bail them out, just like in 2008.
Since creditors believe the government stands behind these big banks, they are willing to lend them money at lower interest rates. Bloomberg news estimated the size of this subsidy at $83 billion a year. By comparison, the food stamp program is projected to cost $76 billion this year.
In other words, a few big banks will get a larger subsidy from the government than the tens of millions of people receiving food stamps. In the world of makers and takers, the big banks are industrial strength takers.