January 6, 2016

10 Powerful Reasons Why Bernie Scares Wall Street

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/10-powerful-reasons-why-bernie-scares-wall-street



Some of Sanders' suggestions: Break up banks. Tax speculators. Cap interest rates.

Bernie Sanders has declared war on the biggest players in Wall Street’s financial sector, saying they are overrun with “greed, fraud, dishonesty and arrogance,” and criticizing his top rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, as being naïve about what needs to happen to create a financial system that “works for all Americans

Here are the 10 major components to Sanders’ Wall Street reforms.

1. End too-big-to-fail.
2. Break up the biggest banks.
3. Pass a 21st-century Glass-Steagall Act
4. End too-big-to-jail
5. Criminalize Wall Street’s business mode
6. Tax the casino culture
7. Reform the financial rating agencies
8. Cap credit card interest and ATM fees
9. Let the USPS offer banking
10. Reform the Federal Reserve


Just the Beginning

As striking as Sanders’ reforms sound, he said they were unlikely to be sufficient to ensure that American capitalist excesses do not harm the country again.

“No president, not Bernie Sanders or anyone else, can effectively address the economic crises facing the working families of this country alone,” he said. “The truth is that Wall Street, corporate America, the corporate media and wealthy campaign donors are just too powerful.”

But Sanders said that new rules of the financial game could be written and that government could force Wall Street to follow them.

“Yes, we can make our economy work for all Americans,” he said. “And so my message to you today is straightforward: If elected president, I will rein in Wall Street so they can’t crash our economy again. Will they like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules if I’m president? You better believe it.”
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I WANT someone who scares the hell out of Wall Street. Not someone who doesn't even acknowledge the problems, or pretends they can't be fixed

January 5, 2016

Sanders' Economic Plan Best for the 99 Percent

Roger Hickey Co-Director, Campaign for America's Future

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-hickey/sanders-economic-plan-bes_b_8906166.html

Here's the bottom line: The middle class is in crisis, and Secretary Clinton's proposals merely tinker at the margins of that crisis. They would not shift the fundamental direction of an economy that is growing more unequal every day.

The Democratic presidential campaign -- unlike the Republican circus -- has actually produced a debate in which each candidate's economic agenda has gotten better and more populist. But as you can see at candidatescorecard.net/, there are also big differences.

Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agree that America's long period of declining wages and growing inequality has been due to chronic slow growth and high unemployment. In Hillary's words "getting closer to full employment is crucial to raising wages." Both are committed to some amount of increased public spending on infrastructure and investments in "green industries." But the difference between the two candidates on public investment is a matter of scale.

Hillary Clinton wants $275 billion more in infrastructure investment in the next five years.

Bernie Sanders would increase by $1 trillion our public investments in jobs-creating infrastructure over the same five year period - creating one million new jobs, while helping to retool the US economy to reduce carbon emissions.

Hillary will simply be Wall street leaning status quo. We need the change the Obama Couldn't bring.