(From TWD)
While bill weakening isn't leading to the likes of Cosmo Truck Guy Brown to still give it the full support, Russ Feingold has had enough with the Financial Reform Bill dissipating in power.
The Wisconsin Senator simply states he cannot support the bill.
Wall Street and its allies have been calling the shots in Congress for decades, so they must be glad to see how things are shaping up on financial regulatory reform. Congress is about to vote on a final bill that fails to fix the key flaws in the bills passed by both the House and Senate. At the start of this process I made clear that I had a simple test for financial reform -- will it stop another financial meltdown? This bill fails that test, and I won't support legislation that fails to protect the people of Wisconsin from the pain of another economic disaster. And I don't need to be lectured about this issue by people who supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which paved the way for this terrible recession.
Feingold brings up not just the events of 1999 in his lengthy write up of his thoughts, but also his experience with how big banks made major headway in his homestate while he was a Senator in Madison in the 90's.
I've seen this too many times before. When I was in the Wisconsin State Senate, I chaired the Senate Banking Committee for nearly a decade, and fought against enactment of an interstate banking law that resulted in the concentration of financial assets and most large Wisconsin banks being bought up by even larger out-of-state banks.
Though the Senator does admit that there are good things in this potential bill that the Senate will vote on it seems after the Independence Day break, like the stern regulations methods implemented, Feingold is not satisfied at the lack of willing focus on the key fundamental element of what caused the financial crisis.
Economist Dean Baker called this bill a "fig leaf," and former IMF Economist Simon Johnson has slammed the bill's failure to address "too big to fail." These experts paint an accurate picture of this bill's failings, and frankly those failings shouldn't come as a surprise. Many of the critical actors who shaped this bill were present at the creation of the financial crisis. They supported the enactment of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, deregulating derivatives, even the massive Interstate Banking bill that helped grease the "too big to fail" skids. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the final version of the bill looks the way it does, or that I won't fall in line with their version of "reform."
There will be some out there calling Feingold's stance "unrighteous and being overtly principled for his own moral grounds" instead of "doing the right thing" and supporting this bill.
But while others may think that, Feingold highlights the exact problem of why we were suppose to do this whole financial reform in the first place. To make fully certainly that we don't have another financial crisis, shouldn't we do everything possible by attacking the exact main fundamental problem first before the other areas of needed improvement?
New rule regulation rules are fine. But just like with the health insurance reform bill, it's all about the enforcement of those rules that is the key element of protection for the people.
And even with that characteristic possibly in the current Fin Reg bill, it still may not be enough without attacking the number one culprit of it all.
It certainly isn't enough in the mind of Russ Feingold.
(From TWD folks, have a good rest of your day, thanks for reading, and thanks for even rec'd it.)