Happy Anniversary? This year it will be one full decade since the Wall Street meltdown-- triggered by greed-driven, irresponsible banksters and the politicians who allowed them (for a regular flow of bribes) to get away with murder-- that threw the economy into the Great Recession. Austin Frerick is running for an Iowa congressional seat occupied by a garden variety corrupt conservative incumbent, Wall Street ally David Young. Austin isn't beating around the bush when he discusses Young's lock-step subservience to the banksters, who have done so much damage in southwest Iowa. "How sad is this reality. I don't even bother to first look at Congressman Young's website anymore for his position on things. I just look at a list of his donors. It's an easier way to figure out his position on things I've learned. In 2017, he took $4,500 from Wells Fargo so there's your answer and another example of the Congressman putting corporate America ahead of working Americans." Can you imagine what would have happened had we had as incompetent a bunch of imbeciles then as we have now with the Trump Regime? Well... you may not have to imagine-- and it won't just be the fault of the Republicans this time. Let me start with two lists of senators:
• Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)• Joe Donnelly (D-IN)• Jon Tester (D-MT)• Mark Warner (D-VA)• Tim Kaine (D-VA)• Chris Coons (D-DE)• Tom Carper (D-DE)• Claire McCaskill (D-MO)• Joe Manchin (D-WV)• Gary Peters (D-MI)• Michael Bennet (D-CO)• Doug Jones (D-AL)• Angus King (I-ME)
Those are the senators who have already vowed to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans to give the banksters the power to rip off consumers and crash the system again. Below are the Democratic senators who say they are still "on the fence."
• Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)• Bill Nelson (D-FL)• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)• Chris Murphy (D-CT)• Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)• Maggie Hassan (D-NH)• Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
What does Elizabeth Warren think about this? She boiling-- albeit mostly quietly. (The bolding was hers, not mine) Mostly-- but not entirely. "In 2008, Wall Street’s reckless greed crashed our economy," she reminded Massachusetts voters yesterday. "While millions of hard-working people lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings, the big banks got a $700 billion no-strings-attached bailout from the American taxpayers. A bailout and nobody went to jail for causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. After the crash, Congress passed legislation called Dodd-Frank, which put new rules in place for the biggest financial institutions to stop another crisis and taxpayer bailout. But now, less than a decade later, Senate Republicans-- and some Senate Democrats-- are getting ready to gut a lot of those rules for some of the country’s biggest banks. The bank lobbyists have been hitting Capitol Hill hard, and they have a Dodd-Frank rollback bill lined up with the support of every Republican and twelve Democrats. We need to make some noise about this big wet kiss to the big banks by reminding Senators as loudly as possible: they work for the American people, not for big bank lobbyists."
...Dodd-Frank said that every bank with more than $50 billion in assets-- that’s roughly the 40 biggest banks, or the top 0.5% of all banks by size-- would have tougher rules than smaller banks. That means mandatory stress tests to analyze how they would react to another financial crisis and plans for how they would break apart, sell off assets, and liquidate in bankruptcy if they started to fail. There’s a reason for this common-sense oversight of big banks: They are so big that they could potentially bring down the whole economy again if they failed and taxpayers didn’t bail them out again. The bill that could be up in the Senate in the next few weeks would let almost 30 of the 40 biggest banks in the country could go back to looser rules like the ones that let them run wild before the 2008 crisis. What could possibly go wrong?!? The big bank lobbyists want you to believe that this bill is protecting poor little mom and pop banks from getting buried under red tape. But this bill is aimed at helping the big guys. These 30 banks got nearly $50 billion in taxpayer bailouts during the 2008 crisis. And remember Countrywide? It was at the heart of the financial crisis. At its peak, Countrywide was financing one out of every five mortgages in the country. It was a major player in blowing up the economy. You know how big Countrywide was when it was leading the toxic mortgages that blew up our economy? About $200 billion-- smaller than some of the banks that would be turned loose by this bill. Let’s be clear: Banks of all sizes are making record profits right now. And if that wasn’t enough, the Republican tax bill just gave away billions to the big banks. They are swimming in money. There is no reason at all to roll back the rules on these big banks so they can pad their pockets even more-- and cut them loose to take on wild risks again. The American people-- Democrats, Republicans, and Independents-- want tougher rules on big banks, not weaker ones. It’s time to hold Republican AND Democratic Senators who support this bill accountable for siding with their big bank donors instead of working families. I get it: Wall Street has money and power. But there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The only way to slow down this Bank Lobbyist Act is if we speak out and fight back... The big banks will do anything they can to pass this dangerous bill into law. We need you out there giving everything you’ve got.
It's not easy for a senator to attack members of her own party. Candidates for Congress may be reluctant to do it as well, but we asked some of the Blue America-endorsed candidates. Orange County progressive Sam Jammal was up early this morning tweeting about it and I asked him to expand on his comments. He was happy to: "Congress is once again reverting back to its old ways of being a body by and for the big banks," he told us. "The Senate is now attempting to roll back policies explicitly put in place to avoid another financial meltdown. This is just plain stupid. These rules were put in place to stop another crisis. You don't get rid of them because they have been working so well that we haven't had another financial crisis, so they are no longer needed. This is like going on a diet and then once you lose all the weight you needed to lose, you declare you are fit and revert back to a hamburger every day since the original diet worked and is no longer needed."Same for Tim Canova, the south Florida progressive going top against Wall Street ally Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He's worked for years on this program and pointed out that "Giant regional banks are trying to mischaracterize this bill as an effort to help small banks and rural communities. In reality, this legislation would relax regulatory oversight of dozens of huge banks with more than $50 billion in assets. This may well undermine not just consumer protections, but the safety, soundness, and stability of the financial system. Instead of deregulating big banks, Congress should be creating public banking alternatives, including a national infrastructure bank, to serve the needs of our local communities."Ellen Lipton, is running for Congress in an open Michigan district. She's not having any of the Republican-lite nonsense: "If there's any issue to take a stand on, and NOT engage in bipartisan hand-holding, it would be this one. The elimination of this regulation would allow an institution like Countrywide off the hook. I served in the Legislature when over 10,000 Michigan homeowners were cheated out of over $120 million dollars because of Countrywide's predatory lending practices. Communities decimated by the actions of these banks are just starting to rebuild after a decade. Since these senators seem to be in such a giving mood, maybe they should think about providing relief to these REAL communities. And calling these mega-corporations 'community banks' does not make them any less culpable or in need of continued oversight."DuWayne Gregory is the progressive Democrat running for the Long Island South Shore seat occupied by Peter King. He gas his eyes on Republicans, not on the demented Democrats making common cause with them. "The Republicans are at it again," he said today. "This is proof positive that the so called Trump Make America Great Again agenda is all about bringing the country back to perilous times. The time when unscrupulous banks acted carelessly and crashed the economy which lead to turmoil where millions of people lost their jobs and homes. Peter King supported the bailout of Wall Street banks last time while voting against help for the auto industry and there is no doubt he will bail them out again. This attempt brings new meaning to the phrase 'fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.' Republicans in Congress have to be sent a message loudly and clearly their agenda is wrong for America and vote them out this November."This week Zack Warmbrodt's Politico piece that was behind their pay wall and laid out the parameters of the problem, went public. We've discussed it already... even before was written, bit the mainstream media calls the paid off senators "bipartisan" and the senators who are standing up to fight for Americans and for America as the ones "driving a wedge between Democrats and threatening to magnify the party's divisions as it fights to win back Congress this year." Of course Politico refers to the bribe-happy extremists as "moderates," instead of corrupt conservatives while disparaging "Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and their activist allies" as "working to undercut the party's centrists before the vote, with several of the moderates" before "tough reelection campaigns this year."Do voters want banksters to be able to rip them off again? Will that make it easier to win reelection for corrupt conservatives like Heitkamp, McCaskill, Donnelly, and the rest of the Bail-out Caucus? Who feeds this narrative to a gullible, thought-free media? Lobbyists? Over drinks?UPDATE: A Texas Dem Who Wants To Stop Bankster FraudLillian Salerno, the progressive candidate running in the north Dallas seat held by Wall Street shill Pete Sessions, pointed out that "Rolling back protections crafted specifically to guard against a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis is the wrong way to go. I believe there are ways to ensuring rural communities and entrepreneurs have ample access to credit without exempting financial institutions of up to $250 billion from requirements that are designed to limit systemic risk and guard against another Great Recession. Ten years after the financial crisis, it's smart to take a critical look at what changes have worked, and which ones could use an update, but citizens know the difference between providing small businesses with some flexibility and a giveaway to powerful corporations. The Banks and financial institutions with household names like American Express that this legislation exempts are hardly mom-and-pop shops. I am more concerned with the financial well being of American families, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs, and the stability of the American economy than providing relief to Wall Street."