Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway Congress Just Snuck Into a Must-Pass Spending Bill

[think]

This legislation would basically help only the largest five banks in America. Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs.

Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway Congress Just Snuck Into a Must-Pass Spending Bill
—By Erika Eichelberger | Wed Dec. 10, 2014 2:27 PM EST

The bill, drafted almost entirely by Citigroup, would allow banks to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money.



A year ago, Mother Jones reported that a House bill that would allow banks like Citigroup to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money was written almost entirely by Citigroup lobbyists. The bill passed the House in October 2013, but the Senate never voted on it. For months, it was all but dead. Yet on Tuesday night, the Citi-written bill resurfaced. Lawmakers snuck the measure into a massive 11th-hour government funding bill that congressional leaders negotiated in the hopes of averting a government shutdown. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation.

"This is outrageous," says Marcus Stanley, the financial policy director at the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. "This is to benefit big banks, bottom line."

As I reported last year, the bill eviscerates a section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act called the "push-out rule":

Banks hate the push-out rule…because this provision will forbid them from trading certain derivatives (which are complicated financial instruments with values derived from underlying variables, such as crop prices or interest rates). Under this rule, banks will have to move these risky trades into separate non-bank affiliates that aren't insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and are less likely to receive government bailouts. The bill would smother the push-out rule in its crib by permitting banks to use government-insured deposits to bet on a wider range of these risky derivatives...


Read more:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/spending-bill-992-derivatives-citigroup-lobbyists

[lonestarnot]

1. Yes.

Finally. Some discussion. They aren't even waiting to start their kill.

[think]

9. Would be nice to see the Dems run with this and fight hard against lobbyist malfeasance

At least Warren is leading the way....

[dmosh42]

2. Names need to be attached and bear responsibilty for their support!

[lonestarnot]

3. Where is everyone?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

4. Since they're too big to fail and we'll be covering their losses anyway, what's the difference?

Might as well make it official.

[lonestarnot]

6. Apparently Wall Street thinks it's in the bag. Market up.

[librechik]

5. we don't have a representative government

when this passes WITH the giveaway, just the latest in a long line of WTF--of course. moments we have had since the coup.

[pampango]

7. CNN: Dem backlash throws spending bill in doubt

A backlash from Democrats over add-ons to a massive government spending bill is throwing passage of the measure into doubt and once again raising concerns about a government shutdown.

The top concerns from Democrats center on a proposal to ease banking regulations in the Dodd-Frank law and a measure that would allow wealthy donors to give considerably more money to the political parties.

Though Republicans hold a significant majority in the House, Speaker John Boehner is expected to lose anywhere from 40 to 60 conservatives in his party who oppose the bill because it doesn't block the President's immigration executive action. Democrats will need to provide votes to offset those losses, setting up the sort of political brinksmanship that has become typical in Washington.

Democrats who negotiated the deal defended the end result, saying Republicans had pressed for six different changes to Dodd-Frank but Democrats were able to whittle it down to one. Democrats also said they successfully removed more than two dozen environmental items and a handful of gun-related policy provisions sought by Republicans.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/politics/dem-backlash-spending-bill/

Not hard to believe that what republicans originally proposed was even worse than it is now.

[closeupready]

8. Kabuki theater of the absurd - absurd idea that Dems will persist in fighting.

This is going to pass.