Why Democrats Can't be Trusted to Control Wall Street

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Democrats-Can-t-be-Tru-by-Robert-Reich-130524-248.html



Why Democrats Can't be Trusted to Control Wall Street
OpEdNews Op Eds 5/24/2013 at 18:09:01
By Robert Reich

Who needs Republicans when Wall Street has the Democrats? With the help of congressional Democrats, the Street is rolling back financial reforms enacted after its near meltdown.

According to the New York Times, a bill that's already moved through the House Financial Services Committee, allowing more of the very kind of derivatives trading (bets on bets) that got the Street into trouble, was drafted by Citigroup -- whose recommended language was copied nearly word for word in 70 lines of the 85-line bill.

Where were House Democrats? Right behind it. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrat of New York, a major recipient of the Street's political largesse, co-sponsored it. Most of the Democrats on the Committee, also receiving generous donations from the big banks, voted for it. Rep. Jim Himes, another proponent of the bill and a former banker at Goldman Sachs, now leads the Democrat's fund-raising effort in the House.

Bob Rubin -- co-chair of Goldman before he joined the Clinton White House, and chair of Citigroup's management committee after he left it -- is still influential in the Party, and his proteges are all over the Obama administration. I like Bob personally but I battled his Street-centric views the whole time I served, and soon after I left the administration he persuaded Clinton to support a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

[Democracyinkind]

1. A lesson most of us learned from 1993 on.

The Dept. of Goldman Sachs will crash this economy again, as soon as convenient.

[mbperrin]

2. Derivatives trading should be illegal. It serves no purpose other than to crowd out funds

from the actual world into gamblers' pockets.

And when the gamblers lose? We let the taxpayers fill 'em right back up again.

Willie Sutton had it so right.

[snot]

3. K&R'd---extremely important. People need to understand, "bad mortgages" are a straw man, relative to

the derivatives.

[OrwellwasRight]

4. K&R