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AFL-CIO: Stronger Financial Reform Would Have Saved Jobs
with 15 comments
By Simon Johnson
The Brown-Kaufman SAFE Banking Amendment proposed a hard size cap on our largest banks, limiting their assets to a very small fraction of the size of our economy. The premise was simple – and could fit on a bumper sticker (or in a campaign flyer for November) – “too big to fail” is too big to exist.
But this proposal to modify the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill failed in the Senate in early May, by a vote of 33-61, with 27 Democrats voting against the idea. Since that time, Democratic supporters have been asking their representatives the obvious question: Why did you vote against Brown-Kaufman?
Interestingly, no senators yet have replied – at least on the record – that the power of the megabanks was too great to be overcome. Instead, there are three main arguments going the rounds. Read the rest of this entry »
The Brown-Kaufman SAFE Banking Amendment proposed a hard size cap on our largest banks, limiting their assets to a very small fraction of the size of our economy. The premise was simple – and could fit on a bumper sticker (or in a campaign flyer for November) – “too big to fail” is too big to exist.
But this proposal to modify the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill failed in the Senate in early May, by a vote of 33-61, with 27 Democrats voting against the idea. Since that time, Democratic supporters have been asking their representatives the obvious question: Why did you vote against Brown-Kaufman?
Interestingly, no senators yet have replied – at least on the record – that the power of the megabanks was too great to be overcome. Instead, there are three main arguments going the rounds. Read the rest of this entry »
