Campaign finance reform advocates protest outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C., 2011. (Photo: takomabibelot/cc/flickr)
Wall Street Sneaks One Past the Goalie
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown
I have no comment to add here, but you should know that the Wall Street – Washington influence corridor is alive and well and open for business.
The banks got an Eleventh Hour rider attached to the new $1 trillion congressional spending bill that just passed. Here’s Common Dreams:
Further sticking it to the American people, Wall Street was also able to tuck into the omnibus bill a provision that will allow the country’s too-big-too-fail banks to return to the practice of gambling on derivatives—the same high-risk activity that precipitated the 2008 crash—with funds that are insured by taxpayers.
As former Wall Street executive and senior fellow at Campaign for America’s Future Richard Eskow explains, the amendment in question, which would repeal a key protection in the Dodd-Frank Act known as the ‘swaps push-out rule,’ was largely written by lobbyists for Citigroup.
“We are at a pivotal moment in the struggle to restrain the financial industry’s toxic blend of recklessness and political influence,” Eskow writes. “Bankers have had many political victories since their moment of financial failure, but those victories have been incomplete — until now. Has their hour come around at last?”
Guess who’s back in the game!
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