{"id":18827,"date":"2016-01-06T09:26:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=18827"},"modified":"2016-01-06T09:26:59","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:26:59","slug":"bernie-bedazzles-banksters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/bernie-bedazzles-banksters\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie Bedazzles Banksters!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Banksters have been an ongoing drain on the US economy, siphoning off what little equity Americans have left, and redistributing it to the 0.1%.  Republicans have been their active allies and supporters.  A few Democrats have also been purchased.  The remaining Democrats have tried, but have not been effective.  There is, however, a champion against the Bankster blight.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0106Bernie\"Bernie Sanders has declared war on the biggest players in Wall Street\u2019s financial sector, saying they are overrun with \u201cgreed, fraud, dishonesty and arrogance,\u201d and criticizing his top rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, as being na\u00efve about what needs to happen to create a financial system that \u201cworks for all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo those on Wall Street who may be listening today, let me be very clear,\u201d Sanders said in a midtown Manhattan speech<\/a> on Tuesday. \u201cGreed is not good. In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation<\/strong>. And here is a New Year\u2019s resolution that I will keep if elected president: If you do not end your greed, we will end it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanders laid out a 10-point program to deeply change the nature of the financial sector<\/strong>, while occasionally digressing to emphasize how much more sweeping his proposals are compared to Clinton’s. As always, he started by recounting how the \u201c20 richest people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans\u201d\u2014and said the finance industry has spent \u201cbillions\u201d to get Congress and federal agencies to deregulate almost all areas of the financial industry while weakening consumer protection laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey spent this money in order to get the government off their backs and to show the American people what they could do with that new-won freedom,\u201d he said. \u201cThey sure showed the American people. In 2008, the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street nearly destroyed the U.S. and global economy. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings.\u201d Sanders continued, \u201cWhile Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world with no strings attached, the American middle class continues to disappear, poverty is increasing and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are the 10 major components to Sanders\u2019 Wall Street reforms.<\/p>\n

1. End too-big-to-fail.<\/h6>\n

The underlying logic of this federal policy is that the biggest banks cannot fail and shut down, even if they make terrible investments or wreak great harm to the economy, because the U.S. economy and millions of ordinary people would become financially destitute. Sanders said this \u201cscheme…is nothing more than a free insurance policy for Wall Street.\u201d Compared to before the crash of 2008, the biggest banks in the country are larger than ever, he said, adding, \u201cif a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2008, the taxpayers of this country bailed out Wall Street because we were told they were \u2018too big to fail,\u2019\u201d Sanders said. \u201cYet, today, three out of the four largest financial institutions [JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo] are nearly 80 percent bigger than before we bailed them out. Incredibly, the six largest banks in this country issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards and more than 35 percent of all mortgages. They control more than 95 percent of all financial derivatives and hold more than 40 percent of all bank deposits. Their assets are equivalent to nearly 60 percent of our GDP. Enough is enough!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanders concluded, \u201cA handful of huge financial institutions simply have too much economic and political power over this country. If Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican trust-buster, were alive today, he would say, break \u2018em up. And he would be right.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

I have shared only the introduction and the first of ten steps in Bernie\u2019s plan.  Click through for the other mine\u2019  His plan is worthy of your support.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Banksters have been an ongoing drain on the US economy, siphoning off what little equity Americans have left, and redistributing it to the 0.1%.  Republicans have been their active allies and supporters.  A few Democrats have also been purchased.  The remaining Democrats have tried, but have not been effective.  There […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}