Election Year Issues - Banking

Bank Reform

Eliot Spitzer: Clean Up The Banks 

Eliot Spitzer was the guest for On-Point on July 23rd to talk about "Clean Up the Banks."

Among the key issues...

• No significant changes in regulations since the failures of 2008.
• To Big to Fail...these banks are even bigger.
• Fiduciary responsibility is being ignored.
• Greed

Spitzer points out the ideology that got traction began in the 80's with the Reagan Administration when deregulation began in earnest. The checks on banking put in place during the Great Depression were stripped away. The breaks came off. The major crisis of the economic crisis were going through was only a matter of time. Proponents of deregulation assured us the bankers would regulate themselves.

Spitzer recounts a conversation he had with lawyers for Merrill Lynch. They admitted their guilt but, they said they were not as bad as their competitors. They viewed this as a defense! As if there is a sliding scale of unethical behavior. Spitzer calls it moral relativism. In other words, Merrill Lynch cheated their clients out of hundreds of millions while their competitors were cheating their clients out of billions.

Election Year Issues

Here's a list of election year issues.

• Distribution of Wealth.
• Growing poverty rates.
• Big Business - Monopolies.
• Banking Regulations.
• Big Business Influence in Politics
• Labor Laws.
• Public Health.
• Immigration.
• Environmental Issues.
• International Trade.
• Equal Opportunity Issues.

The list is from 1900. All of these issues were addressed in the period between 1900 and 1914 in what is known as the Progressive Era. They came about as issues because of changes in what drove our economy from agrarian to industrial. The changes were made to make the lives of average citizens better. In many cases, they did. We are going through a change again from national and regional to global. The issues above still have relevance.