Bill Clinton in 1999 Repealed Franklin Roosevelt’s “Glass Steagall Act“. This allowed the Corporate Banks to create bubbles to the detriment of ’The Middle Class’ using ‘derivative’ aka; unbacked mortgages. In order to move forward, we must not build our financial system around the failed concepts of speculation and manipulation, but around the cornerstones that made it strong: confidence and fairness. Earlier this year, expert witnesses testifying before the House Financial Services Committee correctly stated that, “investor confidence in U.S. equity market structure is perhaps at its lowest point since the Great Depression,” and the public believes “that the stock market was ‘not generally fair’ to small investors.” It should be no surprise that consumer confidence is low. The economy may be complex, but Americans understand that the Wall Street banks control an outsized portion of the economy, and that they have an outsized interest in their own profits. [Read the U.S. News Debate: Does the J.P. Morgan Loss Prove the Need for Tougher Bank Regulations?] People who share my views are rapidly growing in number. On July 25, 2012, Sandy Weill, the former chairman and CEO of Citigroup, in a major reversal, stated on CNBC: “What we should probably do is go and split up the investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers…have banks do something that’s not going to risk taxpayer dollars.” While these statements came from the former CEO of a firm that was given $45 billion by taxpayers, his words should not be taken without due consideration, irony, and regret. The growing ranks of supporters wanting a return to a better-regulated Wall Street include 78 cosponsors of H.R. 1489. The time is now to implement smart reforms to protect the American economy as well as the American consumer. Congress must act and reinstate Glass-Steagall so the public can be assured that the economy is working for them, not just for Wall Street’s CEOs.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 00:49:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015