Yes, Bernie Sanders Knows Something About Breaking Up Banks --New York Times

[Csainvestor]

Breaking up the banks would involve arcane and complex regulatory moves that can trip up any banking policy wonk, let alone a presidential candidate. But, taken as a whole, Mr. Sanders’s answers seem to make sense. Crucially, his answers mostly track with a reasonably straightforward breakup plan that he introduced to Congress last year.

Here are the most relevant parts of the exchange.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/upshot/yes-bernie-sanders-knows-something-about-breaking-up-banks.html?smid=tw-upshotnyt&smtyp=cur&referer&_r=0

[Jackie Wilson Said]

1. I found him to be sincere and willing to admit when he didnt have the answer.

The answer may well be only in the congress, which is troubling, but I would rather have someone willing to talk about it, than not.

[Jitter65]

2. Good plan. There will be no chance getting it through Congress and Bernie knows that. nt

[Peace Patriot]

5. Ok, just let the RW 'think tanks' put ideas out there.

Dumb. You gotta start somewhere. And having a guy who's been working on these issues for decades as President of the United States is a good way to COUNTER those RW bullshit ideas for padding the pockets of the uber-rich. A guy with tremendous energy (looking good despite the most cruel campaign schedule ever created), who will "bully-pulpit" the RWers until they crawl off to their villas in Panama.

It's just dumb not to fight back. Dumb, dumb, DUMB!

And, BTW, that's HOW you get a better Congress.

[RufusTFirefly]

6. Why? Is it because the American people don't want to break up the banks?

Or is it something else?

Once we courageously acknowledge the problem, we can start on the road to recovery.

If we say that we can't end the domination of the One Percent because the One Percent controls Congress, that fine. But then we must stop deluding ourselves and concede that we no longer live in a democracy.

I'm not ready to give up yet. And neither is Bernie.

[kristopher]

11. Well said.

Consider giving it it's own thread.

[Armstead]

9. Yes so we should never try to do anything EVER

[bvar22]

22. "It is not necessary to see the whole staircase,

...just take the first step." Dr Martin Luther King


The first step to breaking up the Too Big to Fails is to vote for Bernie.

[notadmblnd]

3. I'd bet he knows someone who might have an expert opinion or two on how to go about it

I'm not going to name names but her initials are E.W.

[riderinthestorm]

4. K&R! nt

[amborin]

7. KNR and from the NY Times, no less

[Armstead]

8. Ooops.....a 3D analysis

[BernieforPres2016]

10. Why should breaking up the major banks be hard?

Take Bank of America as an example. I would guess that there are at least 200 banks and financial institutions in there that were independent entities 30 years ago. Many of them were very large institutions on their own at a state, regional or even national level. Here are some names you may know from the past that all folded into Bank of America over the years (and it is worth noting that hundreds or thousands of jobs were cut in virtually every one of these acquisitions/mergers:

Security Pacific
Continental Bank
NCNB (which had absorbed a huge number of banks itself over the years)
Robertson Stephens
FleetBoston Financial
MBNA
U.S. Trust
LaSalle Bank
Countrywide Financial
Merrill Lynch

Standard Oil was broken up into 90 different companies starting after a Supreme Court ruling in 1911 that agreed with a lower court ruling that it was an anti-competitive monopoly in violation of the Sherman Act.

I remember when the old ATT was broken up into 7 "Baby Bells" in 1982.

[mhatrw]

12. OK, but it can't be done ANYMORE.

because

[Gothmog]

13. 9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview

Here are some more facts about how poorly informed Sanders is https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/05/9-things-bernie-sanders-shouldve-known-about-but-didnt-in-that-daily-news-interview/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Nine moments in the Sanders conversation left me agape. From his own plans for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks to how he would handle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to dealing with the Islamic State, the man giving homegirl Hillary Clinton a run for her money seemed surprisingly out of his depth. The bold in the text is mine for emphasis.

1. Breaking up the banks

Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing [breaking up the banks]?

Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.

Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?

Sanders: Well, I don’t know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.

Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, “Now you must do X, Y and Z?”

Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.

Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?

Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.

2. The legal implications of breaking up a financial institution

Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I’m a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order…

Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator.

Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I’m not quite…

Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It’s something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

3. Prosecuting Wall Street executives for the financial collapse of 2008

Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments?

Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes.

Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?

Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don’t. But if I would…yeah, that’s what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that’s illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives.

Daily News: I’m only pressing because you’ve made it such a central part of your campaign. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it.

Considering this is the core of his campaign message, Sanders should know all of the points covered in 1, 2 and 3 inside and out. He should have been able to lecture his interrogators into a stupor with his detailed knowledge. Instead, Sanders sounded slightly better than a college student caught off-guard by a surprise test in his best class just before finals.

Sanders has a talking point but has not considered any of the implications of what this talking point means and how to implement this talking point. This interview is scary.

[Csainvestor]

14. This is garbage reporting with an agenda.

The New York times article refutes this garbage point by point.


Breaking up the banks would involve arcane and complex regulatory moves that can trip up any banking policy wonk, let alone a presidential candidate. But, taken as a whole, Mr. Sanders’s answers seem to make sense. Crucially, his answers mostly track with a reasonably straightforward breakup plan that he introduced to Congress last year.

Here are the most relevant parts of the exchange.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/upshot/yes-bernie-sanders-knows-something-about-breaking-up-banks.html?smid=tw-upshotnyt&smtyp=cur&referer&_r=0

[Gothmog]

15. You are wrong-Sanders is clueless as to how to implement his proposals

If you read the transcript, you should be worried about Sanders lack of knowledge here

[casperthegm]

17. Would Hillary know the answers?

The reason nobody is asking that is because she is bought and paid for, so no need to ask someone who is fine with banking as it is, right?

[frylock]

16. WaPo is looking to break their '16 smears in 16 hours' record today.

[Gothmog]

20. The interview speaks for itself

This is one of Sanders' key policies and it was clear from the interview that Sanders has no idea as to how to accomplish this goal.

[brush]

19. Agreed. Very scary. The guy that has voters all over the country screaming Bernie or bust . . .

Last edited Wed Apr 6, 2016, 07:19 PM - Edit history (1)

is all "talking points" with no real grasp of how to accomplish what he's talking about.

The implications for the Democratic Party if he gets the nomination is frightening.

The ads that can come out of that interview . . . boy oh boy . . . he sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about at all, what with the obstructionist that would come from the repugs.

It's as if he's unaware at all of what Obama has been up against for 7 years.

[brush]

18. You seriously think the NYT article makes him look good . . .

depending on legislation to be passed to break up to-big-to-fail banks?

That's preposterous in light of all the obstructionism that Obama has faced from the repugs.

Sanders expects such legislation to come out of a repug-dominated Congress.

Sorry, that's pie-in-the-sky naivete.

[Jefferson23]

21. Recommend. n/t

[felix_numinous]

23. Once again America has to break up the bloated monopolies

nearly a century ago it was done--and an economic boom followed.

[kgnu_fan]

24. He knows in and out of complexity and he is not willing to give short one-liner answers.