Senate Votes For Wall Street; Megabanks To Remain Behemoths

Source: The Huffington Post

A move to break up major Wall Street banks failed Thursday night by a vote of 61 to 33.

Three Republicans, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada, voted with 30 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in support of the provision. The author of the pending overall financial reform bill in the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, voted against it. (See the full roll call.)

The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), would have required megabanks to be broken down in size and capped so that their individual failure would not bring down the entire system.

Under Brown-Kaufman, no bank could hold more than 10 percent of the total amount of insured deposits, and a limit would have been placed on liabilities of a single bank to two percent of GDP.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/senate-votes-for-wall-str_n_567063.html

* Akaka (D-HI)
* Baucus (D-MT)
* Bayh (D-IN)
* Bennet (D-CO)
* Carper (D-DE)
* Conrad (D-ND)
* Dodd (D-CT)
* Feinstein (D-CA)
* Gillibrand (D-NY)
* Hagan (D-NC)
* Inouye (D-HI)
* Johnson (D-SD)
* Kerry (D-MA)
* Klobuchar (D-MN)
* Kohl (D-WI)
* Landrieu (D-LA)
* Lautenberg (D-NJ)
* McCaskill (D-MO)
* Menendez (D-NJ)
* Nelson (D-FL)
* Nelson (D-NE)
* Reed (D-RI)
* Schumer (D-NY)
* Shaheen (D-NH)
* Tester (D-MT)
* Udall (D-CO)
* Warner (D-VA)

But so are Jack Reed and Chuck Schumer.

Notice how I did not end this message with an angry rant calling them filthy traitors and DINOs and demanding they be kicked out of the party. Did anyone notice that?

:think:

With the crap that flies around this place daily I cannot tell the difference anymore.

Looks like it hasn't stopped people from linking him to the DLC Consevedem corporatist crowd. :puke:

Wonder why he voted for it? It doesn't hurt to be on the right side of this issue. :shrug:


Can't please everyone me guesses.

If you read just Kerry's quotes here, you hear the things he always said. He is NOT anti- big business - he did vote for Gramm Rudman. There is nothing in any of his quotes there that were contrary to the Kerry seen when he chaired the small business committee.

It is not at all clear to me that this would have helped in 2008. Let's assume that it was and the 5 big banks had each been split into two. There would then be 10 moderately large banks. However, from reading Sorkin's book, ALL of them did the same thing - speculating with derivatives based on mortgage based securities. ALL of them were in some very real degree of financial disaster.

I admit that I do not know all the provisions of this bill, but if those limits are the gist of it - we would be fooling ourselves to think that we have made anything safer by voting this in. There is nothing that I can think of that would convince me that the theoretical 10 companies would not have acted like the 5 did.

I think an amendment that splits companies into banks and into non-banks - a modern Glass Stegall - which would also create 10 companies out of the 5 would be better than creating 10 combination banks. I also think laws on the acceptable amount of leveraging would do more.

If you look at the list, there are some interesting people voting against it - including many of the best liberal including Lautenberg, Kerry and Reed. I have looked, but there aren't statements by any of them.

"too evil" or or "too foolhardy."

just as do Schumer (NY) and Gillebrand (NY).

That wouldn't, however, explain Kerry's vote.

Fidelity Investments is headquartered in Boston - while not "Wall street", they are in the same industry. RI to lower Manhattan is not a reasonable commute.

And fuck you Dodd, I guess we know what line of work you'll be in when you retire.

Tell me, who should get their jobs then?

go on. This is not a small issue, I don't sweat the smaller compromises, but this is very bad for our country.

I support progressive challengers with my money, and the longer we keep guys like this who will make these kinds
of concessions, we are going no where.

Ultimately, we need public funded elections.

He's the richest U.S. Senator; and the poorest used to be Joe Biden, with a mere $2.5 million, give or take.

Kerry ran 4 Senate campaigns with NO PAC money and sponsored legislation with Wellstone on campaign financing. If you look at donations, you need to remove the Presidential campaign before comparing to other Senators.

It could be that Kerry thinks there are better ways to insure that there will not be a repeat of 2008. The question is whether the problem would have occurred had the 5 big banks been split into 10 in 2007. As ALL 5 were in trouble - it is very possible that all 10 of them would have done the same thing -driven to be competitive when fortunes were made on those derivatives.

Splitting banking from riskier activities, legislating leverage - which Cox let go to 40 from 12 both seem more direct at saving the financial system.

I have yet to read a Kerry explanation. (International competition?)

not "corporate citizens".

that Congress has, I'm disinclined to believe he works for "corporate citizens".

Kerry also supported NAFTA, which hasn't worked out too well for the country's citizens.

"Strong Economy: "I believe that we're stronger when we create good-paying jobs here at home - not shipping them overseas."



On the plus side, he did vote against repeal of Glass-Steagall, even though Clinton has said he wanted it on his desk ASAP.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00105

or "progressive liberal Dem" bloggers :sarcasm:

You seem more disturbed about what some DUers may post about Kerry than you seem about how Kerry voted on the "too big to fail" issue. And not all that long after Congress told us taxpayers had to bail out companies solely BECAUSE they were too big to fail.

Votes in Congress will affect you in real life. What your fellow DUers post won't--unless you choose to have them affect you emotionally--but that would be your choice. You cannot opt out of being affected if America has to bail out the behemoths again.

Except he and others took the sneak route and voted for the Cochran amendment, which killed off the bill. The value of this vote was the banksters had to show themselves, so now we have a list of the whores!

I wonder what Kerry has to say about it?

I certainly hope she is retiring in '12. But w/ this vote it looks like she is rounding up her money.

Watch out for the hype.


Most Hilarious Cartoon, Ever!

I feel no kinder toward those who voted against this who have a (D) after their respective names than I feel toward the Republicans who voted against it.

:grr: :grr: :grr:

Yeah!

They RUINED the Phone Company back in the day....



More reform without changing anything. :eyes:

This country is doomed.

unfortunately, those economists have been left out of the administration.

Wall Street provided the best economists it could offer.

A family member was one of the ATT inhouse counsel who worked on the ATT break up team for two years. ATT was thrilled about that how that lawuit ultimately settled, with a capital THRILLED.

The suit began and ended under a Republican. Go figure.

This seems like basic common sense. It's like they want these banks to grow to where they were, to fail again and have this shit reoccur.

And that mix of Dems really makes me realize that it really is all just a song and dance.

However, if one institution is so big / powerful, I worry they may be able to get around any type of regulation.

BTW, how would you enforce the debt ratio deal? Monitor every transaction involving every large financial institution?

Assume we limited debt in some way, but a company that is "too big to fail" broke that law, then was on the verge of failing. Wouldn't we have to bail it out anyway?

And, you're right. With all the funny accounting and subsidiary creation that goes on to hide bad "assets" and debt, I'd rather have size limits. Can't recall now which company, but there was one that shifted its bad assets to an affiliate every time quarterly financial reports were due.


Why do we need to re-invent the wheel?

American taxpayers did just fine with antitrust laws and Depression Era laws, without killing the economy. Republicans AND Democrats have been dismantling those laws at the same time the number of lobbyists in Washington increased. The result was that the global economy was on the verge of collapse.

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown,

should be the ones in charge of writing up the reform...sigh.

Bill Nelson just lost a vote

the senators from my former state (NY) not surprisingly are apologists for wall street, lots of revenue is brought into the state coffers by financial institutions....but what about everyone else?

with the exception of a few social issues how are democrats any different from republicans?

Love that two-party system!

This government sucks.

thus causing the massive no's from the dems, but alas, no rider, just more stupidity at the expense of the people of this nation.

He's from Delaware, a state with a large banking industry.

In the meantime, perhaps we should put more of our money into independent banks/credit unions to prevent too big to fail.

if there ever was a time where the obviousness of corruption was most evident, it is now and it is in both political parties...

You suck.

In the next primaries, Democratic voters need to eliminate all Senators that voted with Wall St.

They blatantly showed who they serve by this vote, and it's definitely not us, it's their finance industry masters.

too big to fail? no, especially if they have us lowly peons to bail them out.

politicians of almost all political stripes believed monopolies were a dangerous thing and broke them up when needed...

on this and was NOT one of the three Republicans who crossed over.