Silvers: We Need Comprehensive Financial Reform
AFL-CIO Director of Policy Damon Silvers has a prescription for moving our economy forward: Make the financial sector the servant of the real economy—not its master.
Silvers debated American Bankers Association President Edward Yingling on the need for financial reform in a hard-fought discussion at the Aspen Institute yesterday, and the differences between the two were most apparent when it comes to protecting consumers and applying stronger rules to banks, credit cards and the mortgage industry.
Silvers, who sits on the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), says we cannot allow the financial industry to drive our economy into the ground again. We must have new, tough regulations that protect consumers and put the financial sector to work for the real economy. And we absolutely can’t bail out the CEOs and stockholders of failed banks.
Showdown in Chicago: Thousands Protest Bankers
UPDATE: Check out photos and a video from today’s rally.
More than 5,000 people are packing the streets of downtown Chicago this morning, chanting, marching and rallying against Big Bankers and financial institutions that have taken taxpayer money and are using it to give big bonuses to CEOs and to lobby against financial reforms that would ensure they don’t go back on the public dole.
The crowd is marching to the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, site of the American Bankers Association meeting, to protest the banking industry’s greed and irresponsibility that crippled our economy, leaving millions of workers behind.
After the house of cards they built collapsed, bankers and the financial industry took $700 billion in taxpayer funds for a bailout. But rather than reform their failed practices, they want to go back to business as usual—with the chance of again precipitating another financial collapse and need for taxpayer bailout in coming years.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who is joining union members and allies at today’s events, has a clear message to bankers: You work for us.
Showdown in Chicago
 |
|
I’m in Chicago for the American Bankers Association meeting. Oddly, I haven’t been invited to the Roaring ’20s dance party I hear they’re having.
Why wouldn’t they celebrate the era of wild money and hot times (which slid into the Great Depression)? After all, the bankers are doing well these days.
They’re doing well because after financial institutions caused the global economic crisis, we bailed them out, to the tune of some $700 billion.
Now they’re in good enough shape to pay the suits $7 billion in bonuses for driving working families and our economy to our knees—to the verge of a second full-fledged depression.
Things might be turning around for the bankers, but for the rest of us, unemployment heads toward 10 percent and home foreclosures continue to devastate families and communities. Working families have lost health care, pensions and savings—and in exchange we’ve gotten predatory lending, outrageous overdraft fees and sky-high credit card interest rates.
Dancing with Jay and Daisy
 |
|
When you’re a member of the American Bankers Association (ABA) meeting in Chicago amid the worst U.S. jobless crisis and most disastrous economy since the 1930s Depression, what’s the logical move to make?
Dress up in a Roaring ’20s costume and party like it’s 1929.
Proving yet again that not only do taxpayer-bailed-out CEOs have no shame, word has it that they plan to flaunt their taxpayer-fueled wealth in our faces, the ABA is sponsoring its Roaring ’20s party in conjunction with its Oct. 27–29 meeting.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will lead thousands of mad-as-hell Americans in a rally outside the ABA meeting on Oct. 27, demanding financial reform and re-regulation that will allow us to rebuild our communities, our lives and our economy.
(If you’re in Chicago, join us Oct. 27 at 10:30 a.m. CST. The march departs from the corner of East Wacker Drive and Stetson Avenue. After about a 15-minute march, the rally will be outside the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers at 301 E. North Water St.)
Because when they’re not stocking up on Jay and Daisy attire, Big Bankers and financial institutions are using the $700 billion in taxpayer bailout money to attack proposals like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would actually help working people while decreasing the chance of another Big Bank-fueled financial meltdown. Of course, they’re not using all of our money to fight reform. Some of it—about $7 billion—is going to bonuses for top CEOs.
Dorgan: Financial Regulation Not a Four-Letter Word
Congress must pass strong, effective financial regulations to prevent another economic meltdown and to protect the American consumer, a leading senator said. Speaking this morning at the New America Foundation, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), said the nation’s economic wreckage can be traced back to the decision a decade ago to deregulate the financial system.
Not only did deregulation open up opportunities and incentives for risky banking behavior, but federal regulators who were supposed to be watching the financial industry weren’t doing their jobs, Dorgan said.
As early as 1994, Dorgan warned of the risks posed by one of the key ingredients in the recent financial collapse: the complex financial packages known as derivatives. In a Washington Monthly magazine cover story, “Very Risky Business,” he predicted the cascading failures of large lending institutions, the collapse of Fannie Mae, taxpayer-funded bailouts.
David vs. Goliath: The Fight Begins for Reform of the Financial Industry
|
||||
Most Americans want strong regulation of our nation’s financial markets, according to a poll released today by Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), a coalition of nearly 200 investors and civil rights and community organizations.
The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners, surveyed 900 likely voters in 77 “Blue Dog” or conservative Democratic districts and those in politically competitive Democratic districts.
More than two-thirds of voters in all the districts support creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) to “create and enforce a strong set of rules to require fair, affordable, understandable and transparent financial products like bank loans, mortgages and credit cards for families and small businesses.”
When asked if there was too much, too little or just the right amount of regulation of banks, the stock market and credit card companies, voters agreed, by a 23-point margin, there’s too little rather than too much regulation.
Trumka, ACTU’s Burrow Call for Corporate Accountability, Jobs
As the G-20 Summit begins in Pittsburgh, union leaders from around the world are coming together to demand tough new rules that put people ahead of corporate profits.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today the world’s major economies need continued short-term stimulus, more progressive tax systems and serious public investment in job creation and regulation of the financial system—coordinated internationally—to prevent the wealthy few from benefiting at the expense of workers. We need to create new norms for responsible business conduct and make sure the economy is benefiting workers, Trumka said.
This G-20 Summit must be nothing less than a jobs summit, seeking solutions to our international job crisis through fundamental economic reforms.
Throughout the world, working men and women must have a voice, and a place at the G-20 table, and the global unions are prepared to fill that role….In solidarity, we can bring about an economic recovery, and we can do it now.
