GustavBahler wrote:nixluva wrote:GustavBahler wrote:The point man on all the deregulation during the Clinton years was his own Secretary of the Treasury, who he appointed. No pass. Sorry, Obama had 8 years. There were countless fines issued in that time, with no jail time or admission of guilt in many cases. One big reason there was such a huge blowout of the Dems in the midterms is because no one was held accountable for the crash. Wall Street got bailed out, and Main Street got the shaft. People saw that.
Obama hired some of the same people who caused the crash to run a Wall Street friendly administration, instead of hiring reformers. Americans saw that, they knew it was more of the same. Thats one of the reasons we see these facists marching in the street.
Its an old story. After a period of great economic upheaval, people like Trump move in, and try to exploit the anger. Democrats have to offer a real alternative, real policies, to counter all the craziness. They have been sitting on their hands too long.
Thats one thing that many Dems seem to agree on, as well as independents.
Dude let's stop the BS. NOTHING had a greater negative impact than the Great Recession and Stock Market Crash. All those lost jobs and lost wealth was the issue and not a lack of Wall Street Prosecutions.I think you're grossly overstating the impact of a lack of Wall Street Prosecutions as the reasons for the Republicans taking over the House. What would that have done to stop foreclosures, increase wages or create more jobs? The MASSIVE loss of wealth was the real issue. There simply wasn't enough time to repair all that damage and the Voters took it out on the Dems which was STUPID because the Republicans almost to a man represent Big Business to such a degree that it's impossible for them to enact legislation that benefits Workers, the Poor, Minorities or the Elderly.
You're sighting one sliver of the much bigger problem. Wall Street Bankers going to jail doesn't fix the entire Economy even if they deserved it. The SYSTEM would still be in place with new faces in charge. It wouldn't have stopped the Massive profits and gains of Wall Street.
Lots of sophistry here. The damage from foreclosures had already been done, in part due to the massive deregulation, the unwillingness by the Clinton administration to regulate derivatives.
No, prosecutions wouldnt have stopped something that has already happened, clearly not arguing that. Prosecutions were to deter executives, and firms from engaging in risky, if not criminal behavior in the future.
You tell a person or a firm that you have get out of jail free card for the right price, that the price will pale to the overall profits. Of course people will keep doing what they are doing and just pay the fine. Not sure why this is so controversial. 8 years to build cases.
So here we are today, with the banks bigger than ever, the conditions that caused the crash still in place.
Obama's foreclosure relief plan was really a backdoor way to help the banks, the people his plan was supposed to protect Americans from. There was also not enough pushback on all the robosigning going on.
Millions of people were affected by these decisions, and you really believe they couldn't see what was going on in their own backyard?
You also are leaving out Dodd-Frank and the Republican Efforts to weaken and slow down it's implementation.
1. The Volcker RuleWHAT: The Volcker Rule intends to prevent commercial banks from engaging in speculative activities and proprietary trading for profit. In particular, it limits banks’ investments in hedge funds and private equity funds.
WHY: Commercial banks’ proprietary trading activities played a major role in the 2008 crisis. As a result, the banks experienced losses that placed depositors’ funds—and in turn, taxpayers’ dollars—at risk. By enacting the Volcker Rule, the government aims to regulate this kind of activity to keep depositors’ money safe.
WHO: The rule is named after former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, who is an elder statesman of financial matters and encouraged President Obama to include such a measure as part of financial reform.
WHEN: Regulators finalized the Volcker Rule in April 2014. Banks were required to comply by July 2015.
2. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
WHAT: The CFPB was created as an independent financial regulator to oversee consumer finance markets, including mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. The CFPB can write new rules, supervise certain financial companies, and enforce consumer protection laws through fines and other measures. (For example, the CFPB has already required major credit card issuers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to consumers for deceptive credit card practices.)
WHY: Prior to the CFPB’s creation, there was no single authority whose primary responsibility was preventing consumer abuse or predatory practices in financial markets. The CFPB also aims to inform and educate consumers on financial matters, empowering them to take control of their own finances and understand their money’s trajectories.
WHO: The agency is Senator Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, but President Obama did not believe she could be confirmed by the Senate to lead it. Instead of Senator Warren, Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, is the CFPB’s first and current director.
WHEN: The CFPB launched on July 11, 2011.
3. Capital and liquidity requirements
WHAT: The Federal Reserve set new standards for the amount and type of capital that banks and other depository institutions must have to protect against their exposures. The largest institutions, including Citibank, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, will be required to hold up to 9.5 percent of their assets in liquid capital (such as cash, government bonds, or other assets that are deemed to have a very low risk profile). However, some critics say this capital cushion is still far too low for the largest financial institutions.
WHY: Before the financial crisis, some large financial institutions had leverage ratios of roughly 50 to 1—in other words, they only had $1 in capital to protect against every $50 in liabilities. When the value of mortgage-related assets began to decline, firms’ balance sheets were quickly wiped out and the Federal Reserve was forced to step in to recapitalize them (with the exception of the failure of Lehman Brothers), or else allow further chaos in the financial system and broader economy. The new requirements will help ensure that banks can stay afloat significantly longer in case this happens again, without the drastic government bailouts necessary last time.
WHEN: A number of rules are going into effect on a rolling basis according to international standards. The largest financial institutions are required to meet the new capital standards by 2019, which means they will have leverage ratios nearer to 10 to 1—far more sustainable than before the financial crisis.
4. The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and designations
WHAT: The FSOC is an interagency group composed of heads and deputies of the Treasury Department and independent financial regulators to identify and monitor risks to the financial system. Its most important initial responsibility is designating systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs)—in other words, large, financially interconnected non-banks like AIG—for enhanced capital standards and regulation by the Federal Reserve.
WHY: The 2008 financial crisis proved that unsupervised non-banks were deeply engaged in financial activities that could put the broader financial system at risk. The most infamous non-bank bailout was the multinational insurance firm AIG, which required an $180 billion rescue from the federal government after it sold massive amounts of insurance without hedging its investments, as well as sold credit default swaps without adequate collateral or capital reserves.
WHEN: The first SIFI designations occurred in the summer of 2013 and included AIG, GE Capital, and Prudential Financial. Since then, the FSOC has also designated MetLife for enhanced supervision.
5. Derivatives regulations
WHAT: The Dodd-Frank Act gave the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission authority to regulate “over-the-counter” derivatives trading. (“Over-the-counter” refers to a type of financial trade that is negotiated and carried out by private parties, rather than on a formal exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange.) The Dodd-Frank Act also mandated that firms buying and selling derivatives need to use clearinghouses to do so. Clearinghouses are intended to reduce overall risk in the market by requiring collateral deposits and monitoring the credit-worthiness of firms engaged in derivatives trades. Clearinghouses are strongly capitalized in order to pay out losses if a firm defaults on its obligations.
WHY: When large numbers of homeowners defaulted on their mortgages in 2008, institutions with exposure to large amounts of certain types of derivatives linked to mortgages were wiped out, requiring cash infusions from the Federal Reserve to prevent outright collapse. These types of unregulated derivatives allowed too much risk to become distributed opaquely throughout the financial system and helped obscure the fact that system-wide capital reserves failed to match it.
WHEN: Ongoing. Roughly three-quarters of the 87 new derivatives rules required in the Dodd-Frank Act have been finalized.
6. Too Big to Fail and Living Wills
WHAT: The Dodd-Frank Act gave the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation “orderly liquidation authority”—in other words, the ability to wind down a large, failing financial institution as an alternative to bankruptcy. Large banks are also required to create “living wills,” or detailed plans that explain how they would manage their own failure without contaminating the broader financial system.
WHY: These measures are aimed at preventing market chaos and ensuring the government won’t need to provide another costly bailout in the event that a large financial institution fails. If banks are ultimately unable to submit acceptable plans, they could be required to break into smaller institutions.
WHEN: Ongoing. Regulators are currently considering whether the largest banks’ living wills are credible plans; in 2014, they sent the banks back to the drawing board after earlier versions were all rejected as inadequate.
8/18/2017 5:05 PM
