Tighter Financial Regulations

Who doesn’t think we need tighter financial regulations?
by Charlie Leck

Doesn’t everyone in the entire friggin’ country think we need tighter financial regulation after the banking disasters of 2008? After watching the way the banking industry conducted itself for the last decade, don’t you believe Congress should move to more strictly regulate the financial industry? Doesn’t everyone?

Well, not the banking and financial industry itself. It doesn’t. With the aid of a recent Supreme Court decision that lifts restrictions on the donation of money by corporations to political campaigns, there comes a flood of cash streaming from the big banks into the coffers of very conservative Republican candidates. Is anyone surprised?

Right now, on Wall Street, there is an immense backlash against President Obama. He’s just been too hard on them. Let’s see, first he managed to get them billions and billions of dollars to bail themselves out of deep, deep trouble. Then he suggested that Congress look into reinstating strong regulations that would prevent the financial industry from getting into this kind of trouble again.

The NY Times quotes Thomas Nides, an executive at Morgan Stanley and Chairman of the Securities and Financial Markets Association as saying: “I am a big fan of the president, but even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t feel good.” [read entire NY Times story]

JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Chase are just a few of the dozens of big banking companies that will be sending lots of money to the Republican National Committee this year, to assist them in their election efforts.

Here’s what it means!
It means the little guys are going to be asked again to give and give and give, in order to off-set the mega millions spent by the big guys. We’ll have to join together and send in whatever we can afford to provide the funds for Democratic Party candidates to stand up to the giant interests of big money. If people – if all of us – will open up and give a little bit, we can match the insane spending of the big financial interests that want to stop regulation.

Let’s just hope our money gets spent wisely.