Sanders takes aim at Wall Street, Clinton in speech

[kscarbel2]

Although Sanders is arguably too old to run, he brings a lot of important points to the table (and is clearly genuine). Wall Street.......amounts to being a government-supported scam.

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Reuters / January 5, 2015

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders warned on Tuesday that financial-sector greed was "destroying the fabric of our nation" and said the starting point of any Wall Street reform effort is breaking up "too big to fail" banks.

"If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist; when it comes to Wall Street reform, that must be our bottom line," Sanders said in a blistering speech. He said allowing banks that are too big is essentially providing them with a "free insurance policy" to make risky investments knowing the U.S. government will prevent their collapse.

Sanders also called for structural reforms to the Federal Reserve, making credit rating agencies nonprofit entities, and a tax on speculative investments. He urged increased penalties for financial fraud or malfeasance by institutions, calling fraud the business model of Wall Street.

His remarks were laced with direct and indirect criticisms of the policies and track record of primary campaign front-runner Hillary Clinton, whose constituency when she was a U.S. senator from New York included the financial industry. The former secretary of state, however, has taken a tougher stance against Wall Street as a presidential candidate.

Sanders and Clinton have tussled over the best way to curb the risky behavior on Wall Street that caused the 2008 financial crisis and triggered the worst U.S. economic slump since the Great Depression.

Sanders favors breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and reinstating a version of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment banking activities.

Clinton has endorsed an approach that would break up large banks if they take excessive risks. She also believes that reinstating Glass-Steagall, an idea popular with progressive Democrats, would not address the types of institutions that have risen since the law was written in the 1930s.

Glass-Steagall's main provisions were repealed in 1999 during the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton - a fact that Sanders highlighted in his speech.

The back-and-forth between Sanders and Clinton over breaking up banks and regulating the so-called shadow banking sector intensified this week, with one of Clinton's top Wall Street advisers, former U.S. financial regulator Gary Gensler, criticizing Sanders as not focusing on regulating non-bank institutions such as hedge funds and insurance companies.

Sanders said Tuesday that if elected, "Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks will not be represented in my administration."

Gensler, before serving as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama and a U.S. Treasury Department official under Bill Clinton, was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson were also Goldman alumni.

Sanders highlighted how he has pushed for legislation to reinstate Glass-Steagall alongside Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of progressives. He also quoted another progressive icon, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, as criticizing Clinton's proposals to regulate Wall Street as too weak.

On the Federal Reserve, Sander said it should not pay financial institutions interest for the money they keep at the Fed and that such institutions should instead pay the U.S. central bank a fee. He also said he would not put financial industry executives on the Fed's presidentially appointed board.

Individual companies were also name checked by Sanders. He said that JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co are nearly 80 percent bigger than when they accepted money from the U.S. government during the 2008 bailout.

[kscarbel2]

The Guardian / January 5, 2016

Bernie Sanders sought to rekindle the anger of the Occupy Wall Street movement in a major policy speech in New York on Tuesday that revealed how he would aim to dismantle much of the modern investment banking system within months of taking office.

Amid a slew of new pledges were proposals ranging from seizing control of credit rating agencies to turn them into not-for-profits, capping credit card and ATM fees, and preventing banks from earning interest on deposits made at the Federal Reserve.

Declaring that the “business model of Wall Street is fraud”, the Democratic presidential hopeful also fleshed out longstanding promises to jail bank executives and introduce a sweeping new transaction tax on speculation.

“Greed, fraud, dishonesty and arrogance, these are the words that best describe the reality of Wall Street today,” Sanders told supporters in midtown Manhattan. “To those on Wall Street who may be listening today, let me be very clear. Greed is not good. In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation.”

The uncompromising language is a familiar feature of the Vermont senator’s fiery stump speech, but Tuesday’s address included detailed policy proposals for the first time, some of which suggest he would use executive actions rather than wait to achieve consensus in Congress before acting if elected to the White House.

Within 100 days of taking office, Sanders said he would require the Treasury Department to compile a “Too-Big-to-Fail list of commercial banks, shadow banks and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the United States economy without a taxpayer bailout”.

These, he claimed, would then be broken up within a year under existing authority granted to the president under Section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Vermont senator also stepped up his previously guarded criticism of frontrunner Hillary Clinton, ridiculing her claims to be tough on Wall Street reform and quoting the former labor secretary Rob Reich blasting the secretary of state for “finagling” on the subject.

“My opponent says that, as a senator, she told bankers to ‘cut it out’ and end their destructive behavior,” teased Sanders. “But, in my view, establishment politicians are the ones who need to ‘cut it out’.”

Earlier in the campaign, Sanders pulled an attack ad accusing Clinton of selling out to Wall Street donors, but his promise to avoid negative campaigning appeared further strained as he reminded the audience of her large speaking fees from bank appearances.

“My opponent, Secretary Clinton says that Glass-Steagall [bank reform] would not have prevented the financial crisis because shadow banks like AIG and Lehman Brothers, not big commercial banks, were the real culprits. Secretary Clinton is wrong,” he claimed, pointing to the role of traditional banks in financing the riskiest lending.

“Secretary Clinton says we just need to impose a few more fees and regulations on the financial industry. I disagree,” he added.

Though Sanders has long stressed that his version of “democratic socialism” should not be seen as wanting to nationalise industries, he also pledged to turn multibillion-dollar credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch into not-for-profit institutions that would have exclusive power to assess the health of corporate debt.

“We cannot have a safe and sound financial system if we cannot trust the credit agencies to accurately rate financial products,” he said. “And, the only way we can restore that trust is to make sure credit rating agencies cannot make a profit from Wall Street.”

And the senator listed half a dozen prominent cases where he says bank executives unfairly escaped prosecution, claiming it was an outrage that banks had been fined $204bn since 2009 but no one had gone to jail.

Sanders also called for a national “usury law” to regulate interest rates charges by lenders.

“The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for those who charged people usurious interest rates,” he said. “Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitchforks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.”

Many of these measures would cause palpations in the business community if ever enacted but mirror the demands of campaigners for financial justice who came to prominence after the 2008 banking crash in so-called Occupy protests across the world.

Though Sanders continues to trail Clinton by a large margin in national opinion polls, his top advisers insisted they were “well positioned” in both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primaries, during a separate briefing call for reporters.

“If elected president, I will rein in Wall Street so they can’t crash our economy again,” concluded Sanders in his speech. “Will they like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules if I’m president? You better believe it.”

[Outbehindthebarn]

I like Bernie. The most genuine of the bunch by far.

[41chevy]

I like Bernie. The most genuine of the bunch by far.

And this is why Hillary will most likely win . . . God Help Us

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html