Wisconsin comes before Wall Street (Sen. Russ Feingold) editorial.....

The article also tells of his efforts to make the "reform" bill meaningful. It is worth a read.


http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog

Wisconsin comes before Wall Street (Sen. Russ Feingold)
By Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) - 07/16/10 01:49 PM ET

A Journal Sentinel editorial Tuesday ignores my record when it suggests that politics played a role in my decision to oppose a deeply flawed financial regulatory reform bill. My record on these issues has been consistent: I side with Wisconsin over Wall Street every time.

In 1994, I was one of four senators to oppose the interstate banking bill, which has directly contributed to the creation of massive "too big to fail" financial institutions.

In 1999, I was one of eight senators to oppose repealing the Glass-Steagall protections that laid the groundwork more than a half-century of economic growth. And in 2008, I opposed the Wall Street bailout, known as TARP, in great part because it failed to include the reforms necessary to prevent another crisis.

I opposed the legislation that paved the way for the reckless practices of Wall Street, which sent our economy reeling, triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression and left millions of Americans to foot the bill. I will not now support a bill that leaves Wisconsinites vulnerable to another economic collapse.

You would think that the cataclysmic events over the past couple years would make a clear case for real reform. But despite its best opportunity in decades to enact meaningful reform, Washington did what it has done too many times before: caved to Wall Street.

Even Sen. Chris Dodd, one of the main architects of this bill, concedes it will not prevent another economic crisis, though that's exactly what this bill should do. We needed tough, serious reforms, but instead this legislation just papers over the biggest problems, giving Americans a false sense of security that is worse than no security at all.................

indeed

That should have been the FIRST thing done immediately after the bailout. The Dems should have jumped on the Financial crisis while it was hot, instead they dithered for a year on their Health Insurance Profit Protection Act. What a wasted opportunity.

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of any effort to re-regulate wall street.

Securing our economy from a repeat Cannot happen unless Glass-Steagall is put back in place, and everyone on all sides of this issue knows this.

By blatantly leaving out a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall our party is announcing up front that the reforms are just a song and dance act, meant to look impressive for the uninformed, but not meant to accomplish anything of substance.

Why the hell should Feingold bother giving false credibility to a song and dance that doesn't have any credibility on its own?

IF it really regulated the derivative market in any meaningful way,

IF it was independent of Fed manipulation, bullying and control,

IF it had teeth to demand compliance from the "to big to fail" institutions,

IF it didn't already look like Geithner was going to succeed in getting a controllable person put in charge of the new regulatory agency instead of a real Reformer,

If the new regulatory agency was going to have strength and independence to recruit, work with, and protect reformers of their own choice

Then this would be a start Feingold (and all of us) could whole-heartedly back.

But as it is, this bill is so flawed, and the agency it creates is so weak and so under the thumb of the fed, that we are going to have to fight like hell, uphill all the way, to make this work. It has potential. It is better than nothing. But it sure as hell isn't as good or as effective as simply putting Glass-Steagall back in place.

This bill does not even restore the financial framework of 1994! It is a mockery of reform. It still leaves the entire world's economy hostage to a few Wall Street criminal enterprises.