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Main Street Wins: Senate OKs Wall Street Reform, Obama to Sign
In a “historic shift of power” from Wall Street to Main Street, the Senate this afternoon approved sweeping Wall Street reform legislation and sent it to President Obama for his signature.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, says the bill, which will rein-in some of the most reckless Wall Street/Big Bank practices that shoved the nation’s economy over the cliff,
represents a historic shift of power—away from big bankers and CEOs to working families and Main Street. For years, Big Banks have profited on the backs of working families. Millions of working families lost their jobs and still can’t find work because of the reckless and selfish actions of Wall Street and the big banks.
The 60-39 vote caps a nearly yearlong fight that pitted an army of Wall Street lobbyists against a grassroots movement of financial reform activists from union, consumer and community groups. At one time the financial industry was spending an estimated $1.4 million a day to derail Wall Street reform.
Just this April, more than 15,000 people marched on Wall Street and in May, thousands more marched on K Street in Washington, D.C., demanding Wall Street reform. We also generated tens of thousands of e-mail messages and phone calls and rallied outside banks and Wall Street financial institutions. Such mobilization helped ensure that many of the Wall Street reforms working families advocated are in the final product.
The bill includes new rules on how banks handle derivatives. Derivatives are the complex and risky financial products developed by Wall Street and Big Banks that were at the heart of the financial collapse. The bill regulates banks’ hedge fund operations and gives shareholders more of a say on corporate governance.
It also creates a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to rein in subprime mortgages, payday lending and abusive credit practices. The bill protects taxpayers from footing the bill for failing financial institutions by giving government regulators the authority to liquidate the companies by breaking them apart, selling assets and forcing creditors and shareholders to take losses—not the taxpayers.
Senate and House Republicans have stood nearly shoulder to shoulder with Wall Street and the Big Banks in opposing reform. Just three House Republicans voted for the bill’s final version last month. Today, Maine’s two Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) voted for it. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) voted against the bill, saying he wanted to see even tougher measures. Says Trumka:
After the financial meltdown brought on by Wall Street’s greed and irresponsibility, it would have been an outrage for the status quo to stand. Yet all but three Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted against reforming our bloated and unaccountable financial sector.
This vote will make it a lot harder for big bankers to indulge their greed at the expense of working people.
Trumka also says the bill is not the final chapter in reform and that rules addressing “too big to fail” financial institutions and legislation to make Wall Street pay its fair share to create the 8 million jobs it helped destroy are still needed.
He also called the vote “a defining line in the sand” for voters in November.
Working families will be dedicated to supporting leaders who vote to create jobs and hold Wall Street and Big Business accountable. Voters now have a clear picture of those who stand on the side of Main Street and those who choose instead to stand on the side of Wall Street. We will not forget.
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12 Comments
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Those Republicans that voted against this bill should LOSE IN NOVEMBER!They are the Devil’s children and will be with him in the afterlife!
They will enjoy manual labor with slave labor pay when they are shoveling coal or the deval!
I think we already know that most republicans stand opn the side od wall street and say the hell with main street
FINALLY…. but we cannot let up!!! Whirlpool is sending thousands of jobs from Indiana to Mexico…..when will these big corporations get penalized for outsourcing jobs??? The ‘ecnonomy’ starts with having JOBS…then investing in our youth by not out pricing education… Game on labor!!!! Don’t sit back…let’s continue to force them to change things for the middle class!
Was it really the best reform we could get?
Russ Feingold persisted in not voting for it.
“DC Wrap: Feingold the only Dem to oppose Wall St. overhaul
7/16/2010
U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold was the only Senate Democrat to vote against a bill to overhaul Wall Street regulation Thursday.
Feingold, of Middleton, joined with 37 Republicans in voting against a cloture motion on the legislation. Three New England Republicans — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts — provided the 60 votes needed to move the bill ahead.
“At the outset of the debate over the financial regulatory reform bill, I made clear that my test for this bill would be whether it prevents another economic crisis,” Feingold said in a statement on the cloture vote. “Unfortunately, this bill falls short.”
U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Milwaukee, voted in favor of the motion.
Hours later, the Senate approved final passage of the bill 60-39, with Feingold voting against the bill and Kohl voting in favor.
- By Andy Szal”
http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=203303
A good article from Robert Reich:
The Finance bill: A Mountain of Legislative Papers, A Molehill of Reform
Friday, July 16, 2010
Thursday the President pronounced that “because of this [financial reform] bill the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes.”
As if to prove him wrong, Goldman Sachs simultaneously announced it had struck a deal with federal prosecutors to pay $550 million to settle federal claims it misled investor — a sum representing a mere 15 days profit for the firm based on its 2009 earnings. Goldman’s share price immediately jumped 4.3 percent, and the Street proclaimed its chair and CEO, Lloyd (“Goldman is doing God’s work”) Blankfein, a winner. Financial analysts rushed to affirm a glowing outlook for Goldman stock.
Blankfein, you may recall, was at the meeting in late 2008 when Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson decided to bail out AIG, and thereby deliver through AIG a $13 billion no-strings-attached taxpayer windfall to Goldman. In a world where money is the measure of everything, Blankfein’s power and influence have grown. Presumably, Goldman can expect more windfalls in future years.
Although the financial reform bill may have clipped some of Goldman’s wings — its lucrative derivative business may require Goldman to jettison its status as a bank holding company, and the access to the Fed discount window that comes with it — the main point is that the Goldman settlement reveals everything that’s weakest about the financial reform bill.
The American people will continue to have to foot the bill for the mistakes of Wall Street’s biggest banks because the legislation does nothing to diminish the economic and political power of these giants. It does not cap their size. It does not resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated commercial (normal) banking from investment (casino) banking. It does not even link the pay of their traders and top executives to long-term performance. In other words, it does nothing to change their basic structure. And for this reason, it gives them an implicit federal insurance policy against failure unavailable to smaller banks — thereby adding to their economic and political power in the future.
The bill contains hortatory language but is precariously weak in the details. The so-called Volcker Rule has been watered down and delayed. Blanche Lincoln’s important proposal that derivatives be traded in separate entities which aren’t subsidized by commercial deposits has been shrunk and compromised. Customized derivates can remain underground. The consumer protection agency has been lodged in the Fed, whose own consumer division failed miserably to protect consumers last time around.
On every important issue the legislation merely passes on to regulators decisions about how to oversee the big banks and treat them if they’re behaving badly. But if history proves one lesson it’s that regulators won’t and can’t. They don’t have the resources. They don’t have the knowledge. They are staffed by people in their 30s and 40s who are paid a small fraction of what the lawyers working for the banks are paid. Many want and expect better-paying jobs on Wall Street after they leave government, and so are shrink-wrapped in a basic conflict of interest. And the big banks’ lawyers and accountants can run circles around them by threatening protracted litigation.
Why do you think Goldman got off so easily from such serious charges of fraud?
Reliance on the discretion of regulators rather than structural changes in the banking system plays directly into the hands of the big banks and their executives and traders who contribute mightily to Democratic and Republican campaigns. The flow of money virtually guarantees that regulatory agencies won’t be adequately staffed to enforce the law, that penalties for violations won’t be overly onerous, and that all loopholes (what’s a “derivative”? what has to be listed on exchanges? exactly how much capital must be on hand for which transactions? How are the various forms of predatory lending to be defined?) will be easily stretched in future years. Wall Street lawyers will have a field day. The profit-for-nothing sector of the economy (law, accounting, finance) will continue to grow buoyantly.
Make no mistake: As long as there’s no fundamental change in the structure of Wall Street — as long as the big banks stay as big and are allowed to grow bigger, and have every incentive to invent new financial gimmicks with which to bet other peoples’ money — they will remain too big to fail, and too politically powerful to control.
Goldman’s share price, as well as those of JP Morgan Chase, Citicorps, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America, will no doubt soar the basis of the final bill because their future profits are almost guaranteed. The pay of their executives and traders, and of the managers of hedge funds and private-equity funds they deal with, will likewise accelerate. In the short term the economy will benefit, at least to the extent financial entrepreneurship is now the apex of American wealth and innovation. But over the longer term we will be much weaker for it.
Congress has labored mightily to produce a mountain of legislation that can be called financial reform, but it has produced a molehill relative to the wreckage Wall Street wreaked upon the nation.
If what Feingold and Reich are saying is true, why is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO giving it such a high-five?
Are we experiencing another ‘replay’ of Obama’s ‘historical’ moment with health care?
We can only assume that, since every progressive voice in American politics has denounced the Franken-Dudd Financial reform bill as a complete, I repeat, I complete 2000 page surrender to Wall Street, the capitulation of Trumka and the AFL-CIO leadership to the lunacy of the current Democratic leadership is the result of complete insanity. Much like the insanity which dominates all of the Democratic leadership.
A victory for Main Street? My god Trumka, even using that overworked catch phrase should be enough to compel your to fire your ghost writers, but that would merely reflect a kind of literay triviality. That you would believe it is truly insane.
For the past week, JP Morgan and company have had 90 team meetings to work out how to maneuver under the new law. They have discovered that they can now speculate MORE under this new law, than they could before it passed. Do you understand that. Why didn’t the AFL-CIO staff read the #$@*(($ bill before you completely discredited yourself with this completely insane response.
Please, please stop sucking up to a corrupt and cynical Democratic leadership. Just to make a point, I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN. NEVER VOTED REPUBLICAN IN MY LIFE!
But understand the only reason people are thinking of voting Republican is “…the ain’t Democrats.
Look at the polls: Obama’s strong disapproval rating is 17%, Peolosi’s is 19%, Harry Ried’s strong disapproval rating is 19%.
As the Washintong Post reports over 68% of the American people do not believe that either Obama or the Congress are capable of making an correct decision. Trumka, that’s 68% and they are right. The only Democrat with a strong approval rating is Hilary Clinton.
Trumka what the H..l are you thinking?
There cannot be any power shif until we get publicly financed
elections. The Supreme Court decision ‘Citizens United” assures
corporate rule, to think otherwise is naive. Labor cannot and should not compete with corporate $. Power to the people.
US LABOR PARTY.
I have not heard one plain English explanation of what the 2000 or 7000 pages in the act said? All I know is that as long as Wall Street Bankers are enforcing it, it will be meaningless. Get rid of Geitner
Let’s look at another, less talked about result, “Where, o, where, is the incentive for buying American?” The answer, ,”No where.”
China, Japan, India, Thailand, Singapore,Tiwain…the list is endless, but mostly Asiatic. Where can one buy a suit of clothes, made in the U.S.A.? How much of an American automobile is American made? We use the gimmick of American and Canadian Made to protect the union members in our neighbor to the north, but why the rest of the world?
Our copper mines in New Mexico are still closed. There is little mining elsewhere in NM which at one time supplied many, many kinds of minerals to the manufacturing industry and to homes. Now we clothe everything in “green” economy and therefore, we cannot heat our homes with coal a much more economical fuel that petroleum products.
In the 1970s we had wind farms all over NM and the west only to have big oil surreptitiously move them out once the oil shortage was declared over. Today people are elated that gasoline is two-fifty a gallon, but it was less than a decade ago that it was less than a dollar a gallon and less than twenty-five years ago that it was less than half that. The American worker does just that: works, works, works. Big business does everything it can to see that one more “works” is added to this decade and the next and the next. If we have to increase our labor pool by importing uneducated worker, so what? The next generation will be those children who have bee somewhat educated.
Unfortunately big labor works hand-in-glove (the worker’s hand, the elitest’s glove) with big business to see that these workers are on hand and ready to bend the back one more time. Wouldn’t it be too bad if these multinational farms went broke because they couldn’t import workers?
America is on the brink of losing its identity. Very, very shortly we will be a land of the wealthy with the fiefs, peasants, peons doing the work for black bread and water.
You can still buy just about everything you want American made you just have to take the time to surch for it , I do and I’m pleased to say it is better quality and sometimes cheaper the problem is you must buy on line, the stores must be mostly republican owned and don’t like supportimg the USA working man . Remember what W said these companies leaving the USA is good for America.
Next time you want to buy MADE IN AMERICA look for it on line you’ll be supprised of whats still out there, there are still some Americans that corporate greed has not got to them , there real Americans