Lessons Of 2008 Long Forgotten: House Passes Banker-Backed Bill

• Congressmen approve reduction in oversight for risky investments

By Mark Anderson

A fundamental thing that Americans need to fathom these days is that Wall Street is writing the nation’s banking laws—and now it’s bullish on amending the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Indeed, the nation’s top financial vultures keep circling the Capitol, intent on significantly altering Dodd-Frank even before it’s finally implemented. And they’ve made enough progress to justify calling on AMERICAN FREE PRESS readers to sound the alarm.

Citigroup is the main culprit. It’s acting as a virtual unofficial division of Congress in order to make sure that “impersonal market forces” forever smile upon Wall Street. But the “free market” really means freedom from any meaningful regulation—with the provision of nearly total protection at the same time—for those huddled at the top of the financial pyramid. It means privatizing the profits for a select few bankers while saddling the rest of us with their losses.

An overview of this ongoing infamy posted at AllGov.com, a comprehensive online resource that broadly monitors the federal government, noted: “A Citigroup lobbyist . . . was primarily responsible for authoring the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act,” a bill approved by the House of Representatives 292-122 in early November.

The word on Capitol Hill is that this bill, which the White House claims to oppose, would wipe out Section 716 of Dodd-Frank, “Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities.” That section “requires banks to use a non-bank entity for trading commodity, energy and other swaps.

In other words, if the legislation becomes law, financial institutions could return to conducting high-risk trading with funds that are backed by the FDIC (i.e. the taxpayer),” AllGov.com pointed out, while adding: “Citigroup was responsible for recommendations made in 70 lines of the 85-line bill,” citing the research of New York Times writers Eric Lipton and Ben Protess.

According to these reporters, the bill contains a couple of essential paragraphs copied “word for word” from a draft submitted by Citigroup, which Citigroup had developed “in conjunction with other Wall Street banks,” AllGov.com also noted. Thus, Wall Street institutions, if they get their way, could return to gambling with risky “investments” and make the taxpayer cover their losses again if they make bad bets.

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