Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will pledge Tuesday that if elected president he would act within his first year to break up banks deemed “too big to fail.”
The promise is included in a speech that the Vermont senator is scheduled to deliver in Manhattan on Wall Street reform, one of the pillars of his upstart campaign for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton.
In the address, Sanders plans to assert that “a handful of huge financial institutions simply have too much economic and political power over this country.”
“If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” Sanders will say, according to excerpts released by his campaign. “When it comes to Wall Street reform, that must be our bottom line.”
As he has on the campaign trail, Sanders will also call for the reinstatement of a modern Glass-Steagall Act to separate commercial banking, investment banking and insurance services. Critics have argued that the law’s repeal in 1999 under President Bill Clinton contributed to the global credit crisis.
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In his speech on Tuesday, Sanders will call for “a banking system that is part of the productive economy, making loans at affordable rates to small- and medium-sized businesses so that we create decent-paying jobs.”
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will pledge to break up the country's largest financial institutions within the first year of his administration should he win the White House next November. He plans to make that pledge in a speech in New York on Tuesday afternoon.
In a rare policy address detailing his financial regulation plans, Sanders will vow to create a "too-big-to-fail" list of companies within the first 100 days of his administration whose failure would pose a grave risk to the U.S. economy without a taxpayer bailout, according to aides familiar with his plans. He would force the banks and insurance companies to reorganize within a year.
"Greed is not good," Sanders plans to say, according to excerpts of his remarks. "And, here is a New Year's Resolution that we will keep: If you do not end your greed, we will end it for you."
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is attempting to preempt rival Bernie Sanders’s big Wall Street policy speech by suggesting that the Vermont senator’s plans wouldn’t do nearly as much as hers to prevent a future financial crisis.
The Democratic front-runner has developed policies aimed at reining in the “shadow banking,” an area that Sanders’s proposals have yet to address. He's set to speak Tuesday in New York.
“Unfortunately, Senator Sanders has so far taken a hands-off approach to some of the riskiest institutions and activities in our economy, which were among the biggest culprits during the 2008 crisis,” Gary Gensler, Clinton’s chief financial officer and the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in a statement, referring to the activities of hedge funds and high-frequency traders. “In his speech tomorrow, Senator Sanders should go beyond his existing plans for reforming Wall Street and endorse Hillary Clinton’s tough, comprehensive proposals to rein in risky behavior within the shadow banking sector.”
Not surprisingly, the Sanders campaign was less than enthusiastic about Gensler's assessment. "Senator Sanders won’t be taking advice on how to regulate Wall Street from a former Goldman Sachs partner and a former Treasury Department official who helped Wall Street rig the system," Michael Briggs, Sanders' communications director, said in an e-mail.
The self-proclaimed democratic socialist took in $73 million on the year, a figure most thought unimaginable when Sanders launched his dark horse candidacy in April. His campaign says it has about $28 million cash on hand.
Meanwhile, Clinton reported $37 million raised in the final quarter, bringing her total haul for the year to $112 million, with $38 million still in the bank.
Despite the apparent money edge Clinton has over her rival, Sanders’ fundraising haul assures that she won’t be able to deliver the knockout blow she has sought.
Clinton leads in the most recent Iowa polls, but a surprise win or better-than-expected showing by Sanders could spark a fresh round of donations from liberal Democrats ahead of the Feb. 20 New Hampshire primary, where Sanders has the edge in the polls.
A win in the Granite State would keep the river of fundraising flowing and threaten to drag the Democratic primary well into the spring, an outcome Clinton desperately hopes to avoid.
With former President Bill Clinton about 25 miles away in Nashua stumping for his wife, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told high school and college students from three dozen states Monday that while he respects Hillary Clinton, it is time for the country to part ways with what he called establishment politics.
“I’ve known Hillary Clinton for 25 years,” Sanders told about 500 students at the 2016 New Hampshire Primary Student Convention, hosted by New England College at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Manchester. He said he has “an enormous amount of respect” for her and considers her a friend.
But, responding to a question posed by a student, he said, “When you look at the major issues facing our country today -- the issue of income and wealth inequality, the issue of a corrupt campaign finance system, the issue of climate change, the issue of Wall Street and the incredible power that Wall Street has over the economic and political life of this country, I think if you look at those issues, what you conclude is that at this moment in our history, it is too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.
“What we need now is leadership that’s going to stand up to the billionaire class, stand up to corporate America and Wall Street, and stand up to the (conservative billionaire) Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and say, ‘You guys cannot have it all,’” Sanders said.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who’s repeatedly accused Donald Trump of being a divisive “demagogue,” opened a new line of attack Monday night on the Republican front-runner: lampooning his views on climate change.
Appearing at a rally here, Sanders referenced a three-year-old statement from Trump in which the real-estate mogul asserted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
“What an insight,” the Vermont senator told his audience in a sarcastic tone. “How brilliant can you be. The entire scientific community has concluded that climate change is real and causing major problems and Trump believes that it’s a hoax created by the Chinese. Surprised it wasn’t the Mexicans.”
The campaign staff of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, will open its Triad volunteer office today in Winston-Salem.
The office, at 95 Waughtown Street, will open at 5:30 p.m. and will be the second in the state. A Charlotte volunteer office opened several weeks ago.
At 7:30 p.m., Sanders staffers will present strategies for North Carolina and discuss critcal volunteer activities, including making phone calls to voters in Iowa and Nevada.
John Wisniewski just became a viable candidate for governor.
Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski is being named New Jersey chairman of the Bernie Sanders campaign, in what might be the smartest move by any potential contender in the 2017 gubernatorial race to succeed Republican Chris Christie.
When Sanders dresses down Wall Street Tuesday, Wisniewski will be at his side, and as his insurgent campaign for the presidency becomes an organization in New Jersey, the lawmaker stands to inherit a formidable structure just one year before he needs it to secure the gubernatorial nomination.
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Now it appears that Wisniewski may begin his campaign to succeed Christie with an ally in the White House, but if not, then he will command an organization of inspired activists who learn campaign skills because they share faith that America still works.
Sanders is leading a kind of revolution not seen in America since the youthful John F. Kennedy toppled an existing political structure and motivated a generation freshly returned from World War II to undertake peacetime public service.
Taking a key role in that effort could propel Wisniewski to the front of a pack in which he has been mentioned but previously was seen trailing.
Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will make his third appearance on "The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore."
Sanders will be an interview guest on Tuesday, then continue as a panelist on the show.
"The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore" airs at 11:30 p.m. ET after "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central.
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