Trump’s
Banksters and the Rollback of Dodd-Frank
To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLUZhJTU__s
Donald Trump has ordered a rollback
of regulations over Wall Street, including the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010
to prevent another too-big-to-fail banking crisis.
Perhaps Trump thinks that we’ve
forgotten what happened when Wall Street turned the economy into a giant
casino, and then – when its bets went sour in 2008 – needed a giant taxpayer
funded bailout.
Maybe Trump thinks Americans forget
losing their jobs, homes, and savings in the fallout.
Many people who voted for Trump got
shafted. I hope they haven’t forgotten that while they suffered, not a single
bank executive went to jail.
Trump supporters need to join with
Democrats and progressives in stopping this rollback, and holding Trump
accountable.
The biggest banks are far bigger today than they were in 2008. Then, the five largest had 25 percent of U.S. banking assets. Today they have 44 percent.
If they were too big to fail then,
they’re too big period now.
Getting rid of Dodd-Frank triples
the odds of another financial crisis.
Meanwhile, Trump has brought more
banksters into his administration than any in any previous administration –
mostly, from Goldman Sachs.
The head of Trump’s economic council
is Gary Cohn who was president of Goldman Sachs.
Other Goldman alumni include
Trump’s right hand man, Steve Bannon, Trump’s pick for Treasury, Steve Mnuchin,
Trump’s pick for the securities and exchange commission, Jay Clayton and
another White House advisor, Dina Powell.
Now remember, a decade ago, Goldman
Sachs defrauded investors and ripped off its customers and it’s paid nearly $9
billion in government fines.
Many of Trump’s banksters were there
at that time.
Don’t let Trump and the Republicans
endanger our economy again. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations,"
and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving
Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect
magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR
ALL.
