Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Brad Sherman Team Up to Break Up America’s Biggest Banks
Building off the momentum from his 2016 campaign launch Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking aim at America's banking behemoths with an aggressively named new bill he drew up with Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., called the "Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act."
Shutterstock
Building off the momentum from his 2016 campaign launch Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking aim at America’s banking behemoths with an aggressively named new bill he drew up with Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., called the “Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act.”
The congressional tag team will introduce their measure on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. A preemptive announcement released Tuesday about the unveiling, slated to be held in the Senate Radio and TV Gallery at 11:30 a.m. EST, said the aim of the effort is “to break up the nation’s biggest banks.”
Also read: VIDEO: Sen. Bernie Sanders: ‘We Need a Political Revolution in This Country’
A bold move, if seemingly improbable, but we’ll take it over the many implemented acts of legislative hypocrisy that turned out to have the opposite effect in recent history.
The bill’s title draws upon the same rationale that banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America capitalized upon — both while playing roulette with the global economy and then while putting the squeeze on two successive American administrations to bail them out — to illustrate precisely why those same institutions shouldn’t be able to survive in the same destructive form that allowed them to wreak havoc on an unprecedented scale.
“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis,” Sanders said of the driving idea behind his and Sherman’s joint project. “If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”
That’s one way to try to flip the script on Wall Street’s biggest players. The details remain to be revealed, and a GOP-controlled Congress will no doubt act swiftly to block the bill, but then, Sanders is in the running to become boss of both houses.
Meanwhile, he’ll also be working this measure into the national conversation and campaign discourse about the 2008 financial catastrophe that, far from being contained by government interventions ostensibly designed to manage the fallout, has further widened the nation’s economic gap into a chasm.
–Posted by Kasia Anderson
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., argues "[We] do not need to wait on the outcome of that criminal investigation before moving forward."
It's going to take more than just a well-aimed blow from an underdog's slingshot to bring down the banking monster that our current system of grabby-hands capitalism and compliant government has created.
Wall Street sees no need for more regulations of course, but unfortunately for Main Street Americans still reeling from the last financial crisis, President Obama may turn out to be the banking industry's biggest ally.
A look at the day's political happenings, including a Wisconsin Republican who says "some girls rape easy," why Todd Akin should never be allowed to weigh in on scientific matters again and two congressional candidates nearly come to blows at a debate.
A look at the day's political happenings, including the Wisconsin recall election, the next step in the battle to legalize same-sex marriage in California and Bill O'Reilly's election prediction.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.