Senator Maria Cantwell: Wall Street has a gambling problem.

Glad Cantwell's my Senator

Taxpayers have put more than $24 trillion on the line to resuscitate Wall Street after the economic meltdown of last year. With the help of this massive taxpayer support, the nation's largest banks are posting record profits. That, by itself, is not bad. After all, our economy runs on profit, and the whole point of the government aid was to get the banks out of intensive care. The problem is that many of these banks have resumed their old habit of using other people's money to gamble with the same risky unregulated derivatives that led us into this crisis.

In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and with job losses and home foreclosures mounting, it's no wonder the rest of us are asking how this can be allowed to continue.

Look no further than the powerful lobbying arm of the financial services sector, which has spent at least $220 million this year lobbying Congress to stave off new rules to prevent another collapse. That is over $500,000 in lobbying for every member of Congress, which might help explain why, to date, nothing has been fixed in our porous financial regulatory system. Americans want to know when Congress will put an end to the Wall Street's secret off-book gambling schemes and restore our capitalist system by requiring real transparency and true competition.

It appears that Wall Street is not acting as a force for economic expansion, providing access to capital for companies that make things. Rather, it seems, Wall Street is using government bailouts to lever up.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-maria-cantwell/wall-street-has-a-gamblin_b_340252.html

Is always Wall Street itself. They are the only group that behaves worse than insurance companies.

...you know they have gone way too far.

..... Perhaps this is a bit of Kabuki Theatre.

It might just be pandering.

send a letter of praise?

Not much real investment anymore, it's all crap.

It's theft, pure and simple. It's a crime against humanity.

The government and corporations are committing grand larceny on an Epic scale.

http://cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=303998

“...But the problem with the legislation before us is that it is choosing winners and losers in corporate America. It is inserting the Federal Government in a role in which they decide, along with the private sector, exactly how funds should be allocated.

“I am for the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government backing these institutions. What I am not for is turning the keys to the Treasury over to the private sector.

...“J.P. Morgan got the assets of that institution and benefited from that. In fact, J.P. Morgan predicted to me on a conference call the night they acquired Washington Mutual that after one year with their investment, they would have an over $500 million on that investment. That is a 27 percent returned in one year.

...“It is very convenient for us to now choose that we are going to add to J.P. Morgan's bottom line. In fact, if we would instead do what I am suggesting, we could have an equity proposal instead of having TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, as the roof over America.

...“I could not even get my amendment to be considered.

“So, so much for the transparency of the Senate..."

There's no GA meeting on kWall St. The 1-800 number for Gamblers Anonymous is posted in the casinos. The stock market is just a big if not a bigger gamble than any game in the casino.