In case any have forgotten: Taibbi from 2010 on how corporate democrats colluded with republicans to kill financial reform
"But Dodd-Frank was neither an FDR-style, paradigm-shifting reform, nor a historic assault on free enterprise. What it was, ultimately, was a cop-out, a Band-Aid on a severed artery. If it marks the end of anything at all, it represents the end of the best opportunity we had to do something real about the criminal hijacking of America’s financial-services industry. "
"Do we admit that control over the economy in the past decade was ceded to a small group of rapacious criminals who to this day are engaged in a mind-numbing campaign of theft on a global scale? Or do we pretend that, minus a few bumps in the road that have mostly been smoothed out, the clean-hands capitalism of Adam Smith still rules the day in America? In other words, do people need to know the real version, in all its majestic whorebotchery, or can we get away with some bullshit cover story?"
"In passing Dodd-Frank, they went with the cover story."
"we were a nation subsisting on an elaborate check-bouncing scheme ... And it was all made possible by two major deregulatory moves from the Clinton era"
"The story of how the last real shot at reining in Wall Street got routed tells you everything you need to know about how, and on whose behalf, our government works. It was Congress at its most cowardly, deceptive best, with both parties teaming up to subject reform to death by a thousand paper cuts ..."
"Republican and Democratic leaders were working together with industry insiders and deep-pocketed lobbyists to prevent rogue members like Merkley and Levin from effecting real change. In public, the parties stage a show of bitter bipartisan stalemate. But when the cameras are off, they fuck like crazed weasels in heat."
"Democratic leaders had teamed up with Republicans behind closed doors to double-cross Merkley and Levin."
"Geithner acted almost like a liaison to the financial industry, pushing for Wall Street-friendly changes on everything"
"the Schumer coalition suddenly decided that the de minimis exemption for banks simply wasn’t big enough ... banks could now put up to 40 percent more into high-risk investments ... For Bank of America alone, it comes to $6 billion."
"the so-called “Lincoln rule,” put forward by Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, which would have forced big banks to spin off their derivatives desks in the same way the Volcker rule would have forced them to give up proprietary trading. Banks would have to make a choice: Either forgo access to the cheap cash of the Federal Reserve, or give up gambling with dangerous instruments like credit-default swaps ... This, obviously, could not be permitted."
"Dodd came up with a hastily composed, five-page substitute to the Lincoln rule that would create a “financial stability” council with the power to unilaterally kill the rule ... Dodd agreed to withdraw his substitute two days before the Senate vote – but given his track record of legislative maneuvering on behalf of big banks, his fellow Democrats weren’t about to take him at his word. A group of senators from Dodd’s own party – including Maria Cantwell of Washington – arranged to stay on the Senate floor in shifts, ensuring that there would be someone there to object in case Dodd tried to push his substitute through during one of those quiet, empty-hall, C-SPAN moments when no one was looking.
The fact that a group of Democrats had to come up with a scheme to prevent one of their own leaders from dropping a roofie in their legislative drinks pretty much sums up the state of affairs in Congress. "
" a group of 43 conservative House Democrats calling themselves the “New Democrat Coalition” refused to support the reform bill unless the toughest part of the Lincoln rule – section 716 – was gutted. "
"The new deal allowed banks to keep their derivatives desks by moving them into subsidiary units and exempted whole classes of derivatives from regulation ... About 90 percent of the derivatives market was exempted."
Read the whole thing: with democrats like these, who needs republicans ?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/wall-streets-big-win-190723/That is how the sausage is made.
sidd