The following is an excellent excerpt from the book “THE ESSENTIAL BERNIE SANDERS and his Vision for America” by Jonathan Tasini from Chapter 6 “Wall Street: Too Big to Fail? Too Big to Exist” on page 45 and I quote:
“I haven’t seen anybody prosecuted and joining Bernie Madoff in jail as a cell mate.”
–Francisco Ramos, forty-seven,
Florida land surveyor
“For many years—before it became popular—Sanders has been one of the leading critics of Wall Street and the big banks. He supports breaking up the big banks so they are no longer able to play such a major role in economic decisions. He also is pushing a bill for a financial transactions tax—a tiny surcharge on the sale of stocks, bonds, derivatives, Treasury securities, and other financial instruments traded daily in vast quantities. Such a surcharge could, by various estimates, raise between $50 and $350 billion per year in a way that for most taxpayers would be painless and would help underwrite Bernie’s proposal to make a four-year college degree free. He has supported previous financial tax efforts going back to 2013, when he got behind legislation introduced by then senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR). –J.T.
From Bernie’s marathon
Senate floor speech, December 10, 2010
I think what is most surprising for the American people is not just the bailout of Wall Street and the financial institutions, and the bailout of large American corporations such as General Electric, but I think the American people would find it very strange that at a time when the American automobile sector was on the verge of collapse, the Federal Reserve was also bailing out Toyota and Mitsubishi, two Japanese carmakers, by purchasing nearly $5 billion worth of their commercial paper from November 5, 2008, through January 30, 2009.
While virtually no American-made cars or products of any kind are bought in Japan, I think the American people would be shocked to learn that the Fed extended over $380 billion to the Central Bank of Japan to bail out banks in that country.
Furthermore, I think the American people are interested to know that the Fed bailed out the Korea Development Bank, the wholly owned, state-owned Bank of South Korea, by purchasing over $2 billion of its commercial paper. The sole purpose of the Korea Development Bank is to finance and manage major industrial projects to enhance the national economy not of the United States of America but of South Korea. I am not against South Korea. I wish the South Koreans all the luck in the world. But it should not be the taxpayers of the United States of America lending their banks’ money to create jobs in South Korea. I would suggest maybe we want to create jobs in the United States.. At the same time, the Fed also extended over $40 billion for the Central Bank of South Korea so that it had enough money to bail out its own banks.
What we saw is people on Wall Street operating from a business model based on fraud, based on dishonesty, understanding that the likelihood of them ever getting caught was small, that if things get very bad, they would be bailed out by the taxpayers, understanding that they are too powerful to ever be put in jail, to be indicted, understanding that in this country when you are a CEO on Wall Street, you have so much wealth and so much power and so many lawyers and so many friends in Congress, you could do pretty much anything you want and not much is going to happen to you—and they did it. Their greed and recklessness and their illegal behavior destroyed this economy.
What they did to the American people is so horrible. Here we had a middle class which was already being battered as a result of trade agreements, loss of manufacturing jobs, health care costs going up, couldn’t afford to send their children to college—that had gone on for years—and then these guys started pushing worthless and complicated financial instruments and the whole thing explodes.
Today, after we bailed out all these large banks, three out of four of them are now much larger than they were before. Today, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—the four largest financial institutions in this country—hold about $7.4 trillion in assets, and that is equal to over half the Nation’s estimated total output last year. Four financial institutions have assets worth more than 52 percent of our total output last year.
Instead of breaking up these folks, these large institutions, we let them get bigger. The four largest banks in America now issue one out of every two mortgages, two out of three credit cards, and hold $4 out of every $10 in bank deposits in the entire country.
If any of these financial institutions were to get into major trouble again, taxpayers would be on the hook for another substantial bailout. We cannot allow that to happen.
From Bernie’s introduction to the
Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, May 6, 2015
In the midst of this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is Wall Street.
As we all know, the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street drove this country into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college.
The middle class is still suffering from the horrendous damage huge financial institutions and insurance companies did to this country in 2008.
Now, I voted for Dodd-Frank, but let’s not kid ourselves. Dodd-Frank was a very modest piece of legislation. Dodd-Frank did not end much of the casino-style gambling on Wall Street.
In fact, much of this reckless activity is still going on today.
It seems like almost every day we read about one giant financial institution after another being fined or reaching settlements for their reckless, unfair, and deceptive activities.
In fact, since 2009, huge financial institutions have paid $176 billion in fines and settlement payments for fraudulent and unscrupulous activities.
Bank of America alone has paid $57.9 billion, JPMorgan has paid 31.4 billion, and Citigroup has paid $12.8 billion in fines and settlements.
Bank of America has been fined for foreclosure abuses, selling toxic mortgage-backed securities, LIBOR manipulation, and currency rigging.
It should make every American very nervous that in this weak regulatory environment, the financial supervisors in this country and around the world are still able to uncover an enormous amount of fraud on Wall Street to this day.
I fear very much that the financial system is even more fragile than many people may perceive.
This huge issue cannot be swept under the rug.
It has got to be addressed. . . .
No single financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of Americans or to our nation’s economic well-being.
No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure would send the world economy into crisis.
If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist and that is the bottom line.
And, let’s be clear: the reason we are here today is not just because of the danger these institutions pose to taxpayers.
The enormous concentration of ownership within the financial sector is hurting the middle class and damaging the economy by limiting choices and raising prices for consumers and small businesses.
Today, just six huge financial institutions have assets of nearly $10 trillion which is equal to nearly 60 percent of GDP. These huge banks handle more than two-thirds of all credit card purchases, write over 35 percent of the mortgages, and control nearly half of all bank deposits in this country.
If the American people are wondering why tens of millions of Americans are being charged interest rates of more than 20 percent on their credit cards, while big banks can receive virtually zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve, the lack of competition in the banking industry is a major reason for that.
If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, do you know what he would say?
He would say break ’em up. And he would be right.
And that’s exactly why we are here today.
The bill that I am introducing today with Congressman Brad Sherman would require regulators at the Financial Stability Oversight Council to establish “Too Big To Fail” list of financial institutions and other huge entities whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk on the United States economy without a taxpayer bailout.
This list must include, but is not limited to: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley.
All of these financial institutions have already been deemed “systemically important banks” by the Financial Stability Board, the G20 body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system.
Within a year, the Treasury Secretary would be required to break up financial institutions on this list so that they cannot cause another financial crisis ever again.
Importantly, under this bill, none of the institutions on the “Too Big To Fail list” would be able to receive a taxpayer bailout from the Federal Reserve; nor could they gamble with the federally insured bank deposits of the American people while they are on this list. . . .
The function of banking should not be about making as much profits as possible gambling on derivatives and other esoteric financial instruments.
The function of banking should be to provide affordable loans to small businesses to create jobs in the productive economy.
The function of banking should be to provide affordable loans to Americans to purchase homes and cars.
Wall Street cannot be an island onto itself.
The position I hold today is not something new for me.
In 1994, I cast the only no vote in the House Financial Services Committee against legislation that allowed large out-of-state banks to acquire locally owned community banks. . . .
In 1999, I helped lead the opposition against repealing the Glass-Steagall Act that allowed commercial banks, insurance companies, and investment banks to merge, and I was one of the leading opponents of the efforts of Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Lawrence Summers [who] all told us how wonderful it would be if we deregulated Wall Street back in the ’90s.
Now, I know that passing this bill will not be easy.
The fact of the matter is that Congress does not regulate Wall Street; Wall Street regulates Congress.
But the time has come to say enough is enough!
The time has come to truly end too big to fail!
Bernie Facts
• Bernie led the charge for the first-ever top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve board that found the Fed had made $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the recent financial crisis.
• Bernie introduced the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act in May 2015, to break up the largest banks so that the people would not be on the hook for the cost of bailing out one or more of those banks to avoid economic chaos. Bernie was not new to such efforts: In 2009, with the banking crisis in full swing, he introduced a similar bill (also titled the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act) and then, determined to push the issue, reintroduced the bill in 2013.
• Bernie has introduced a financial transaction tax, which would enact a small fee on Wall Street transactions. It is similar to efforts he supported in the past.”
(REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, DONALD TRUMP, SAYS THE HEDGE FUND DEALERS ARE GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER. NOW, MY QUESTION IS—WHICH CANDIDATE HAS THE BEST SOLUTION TO STOPPING THE CORRUPTION GOING ON IN WALL STREET? AFTER READING CHAPTER SIX OF THIS BOOK TITLED “WALL STREET: TOO BIG TO FAIL? TOO BIG TO EXIST” AND THE BOOK TITLED “THE ESSENTIAL BERNIE SANDERS AND HIS VISION FOR AMERICA” BY JONATHAN TASINI, IT DESCRIBES VERY DESCRIPTIVELY WHAT IS GOING ON IN WALL STREET AND WHAT CRIMES THEY ARE COMMITTING. SINCE HE IS ONE OF THREE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, AND SHOWING UP WITH WELL POLL NUMBERS, THE REMAINING DEBATES BETWEEN THE THREE CANDIDATES MUST DECIDE WHO IS THE MOST CAPABLE OF SOLVING THIS DECEIVING WAY OF RUNNING OUR BANKING SYSTEM, WHICH ONLY BENEFITS THE ELITIST 1 PERCENT THAT ARE RUNNING THEM BECAUSE THE 99 PERCENT, THAT ARE GETTING EXPLOITED, WILL KEEP ON LOSING, UNLESS THE CANDIDATES CAN DETAIL IN THE PRIMARIES JUST EXACTLY HOW THEY ARE GOING TO HANDLE THE BIG BANKING LOBBY THAT IS RUNNING WASHINGTON. LIKE SENATOR DICK DURBIN (D-ILL) SAID, “THE BANKS ARE VIRTUALLY RUNNING WASHINGTON.” OTHER BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ON THIS SUBJECT, ELLEN BROWN “THE WEB OF DEBT” AND BETHANY MCLEAN “ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE” AND MANY OTHERS. A LOT OF THEM, I’VE EXCERPTED ON MY BLOG SITE (WORDPRESS) BECAUSE I’VE SEEN OVER THE YEARS, FOR APPROXIMATELY 23 YEARS, I READ AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY GARY WEISS IN BUSINESSWEEK CRITICIZING THE ROLE OF THE GROWING, UNREGULATED DERIVATIVE MARKET AND WHAT THE BIG UNREGULATED INVESTMENT BANKERS AND WALL STREET WOULD DO WITH IT. THE MOVIE “TOO BIG TO FAIL,” BASED ON ANDREW ROSS SORKIN’S BOOK, MADE ALL THESE PREDICTIONS EVEN MORE SCARY. WE CANNOT, AS A COUNTRY, OR EVEN WORKING WITH OTHER COUNTRIES, IGNORE THIS PROBLEM ANY LONGER.
LaVern Isely, Progressive, Overtaxed, Independent Middle Class Taxpayer and Public Citizen Member and USAF Veteran
isely 