With Wall Street Holding the Strings, Republican-Controlled Congress Moves to Deregulate Big Banks
Just weeks after taking over both houses of Congress, the Republican party is already aggressively moving to weaken legislation aimed at reining in big banks and protecting the public.
According to the New York Times, Wall Street is holding the strings.
“The financial industry has been methodical, drafting technically complicated legislation that can pass the heavily Republican House with a few Democratic votes,” write Jonathan Weisman and Eric Lipton. “And then, once approved, Wall Street has pushed to tack such measures on to larger bills considered too important for the White House to block.”
Tucked inside of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act that President Obama signed into law on Monday is a provision that weakens the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform, aimed at regulating Wall Street’s risky business in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The measure, opposed by progressives, “scraps a number of Dodd-Frank financial regulations on several financial services industry sectors, dubbed ‘end users’ in Washington speak,” explains The Hill.
This development follows the passage in December of the Omnibus Spending Bill that, among other Wall Street friendly measures, included a repeal of a key Dodd-Frank derivatives rule. As Josh Silver, director of of Represent.us, explained, this provision was “literally written by big bank lobbyists.”
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