WALL STREET BANKS GET A GREAT, “RETURN ON THEIR INVESTMENT” IN THE GOP

CITIGROUP actually writes the addition to the US federal funding bill that nullifies parts of Dodd-Frank banking regulations.

 

According to some of those that have the duty of watching Wall Street, back in 2010, when the president’s suggested that Wall Street bankers helped cause the financial crisis, the securities and investment industry have since been in “Obama-rage”.  Due to this so-called “rage”, the bankers have stopped their normally equal financial support for both political parties and have been investing heavily only in the Republican candidates.

Due to that investment, and the highly imaginative inputs from the Citigroup banking lobbyists, they literally wrote the bank’s deregulation language that was inserted into the latest federal funding bill.  Yes, the same inputs that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made so much noise about recently that strikes down important parts of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations.

The regulation in question is for the one on the key banking areas that had been determined to have caused the Great Recession of 2008.

One of the goals of Dodd-Frank and the financial reform was to stop banks from taking big risks with American depositors’ money.  As most Americans understand, since the late 1930’s, bank deposits have been federally insured against loss.  However, if the banks are free to gamble with depositor’s money, they can play a game of “heads they win, tails, we the taxpayers lose”. That’s exactly what happened back in the 1980s when President Reagan deregulated the savings-and-loan institutions which promptly ran off the tracks. That deregulation cost S&L depositors billions of dollars.

With these latest 70 words added by the Citigroup lobbyists into the funding bill, the banks are now open to reviving that “wild run” again, using American depositor’s savings and investments.

The Dodd-Frank regulation had tried to limit this kind of financial hazard in various ways, including a rule barring insured institutions from dealing in exotic securities.  These were the kind that played such a big role in the past financial crisis. And that’s the exact rule that has just been rolled back.

Why President Obama agreed to sign this bill is beyond anyone’s imagination, and it definitely explains Senator Warren’s comments against both Citigroup and against her own president’s White House decisions.

Those that are against the banks again having this ability, they have made it clear that it is “indefensible” that the lobbyists were allowed to actually write the language for the House to insert into the bill.  It is even more “indefensible”, that this same president that had blamed the financial debacle on the bankers, that he would actually sign the bill….?

Now, there are some parts about this issue that make it possibly not as bad as it seems.

That reason being, that the worst part of the crisis of 2008 was mostly caused, not by the insured financial businesses, but instead by the uninsured financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and A.I.G.

 

Yes, we taxpayers still saved some of these organizations, but the most important parts of the financial reform involve today’s consumer protection.  In addition, having the important enhanced ability of regulators to both police the actions of insured financial institutions and if necessary, to allow these institutions to be taken into receivership in times of crisis. 

Oh, this is all well and good.  But I would have preferred (and would sleep a lot better) if the Citigroup lobbyists had been told by those Republicans in the House of Representatives to “take a hike”.  However, due to Citizens-United and these giant Wall Street organization’s excessive political donations, they virtually own most of the House Republicans, so that ain’t going to happen….ever.

…Wall Street: the GOP’s favorite street in New York City.

Basically, this latest funding bill is not a good sign for our financial future. You'd also be hard-pressed to find any Republican who thinks that regulating Wall Street is a good idea.  So, with the GOP now running both Houses in Congress, you can look forward to more of the same morally bankrupt actions with the tax payer’s dollars in the coming months.

The political party and the people who brought the economy down in 2008 are now being given another chance to do it one more time.

 

Now is the time for more prayer and spiritual intervention.  That's about all we have left.

Copyright G.Ater  2014