Sanders Counters Clinton With Bank Haymaker: Tale of the Tape
January 5, 2016 — 5:22 PM EST
In reiterating Tuesday that dismantling big banks would be his key policy goal for the financial industry, U.S. presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders neither surprised nor brought an end to the bickering between him and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton over who has a better plan for addressing the dangers posed by Wall Street.
Sanders promised that his White House would quickly build a hit list of too-big-to-fail financial firms and, within a year, “break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy.” His blunt-instrument proposal takes a harder line than Clinton and prompted her campaign to accuse the U.S. senator from Vermont of aiming in the wrong direction even before he could deliver his speech.
While Sanders’ campaign is considered a long shot, his anti-banking rhetoric offers enough of a challenge to Clinton’s more moderate and technical plan that her campaign’s chief financial guru, former regulator Gary Gensler, came out punching. He said Sanders’ focus on giant lenders ignores the riskiest institutions that Clinton’s campaign prefers to talk about -- high-frequency traders and so-called shadow banks such as hedge funds.
For his part, Sanders went after Clinton’s ideas, too, saying all she wants to do is impose a few more fees and regulations, which he said “would only invite more dilution and finagle.”
So, how do their approaches compare? Here’s an overview:
How to Deal With Big Banks
Sanders couldn’t be clearer on this topic. Banks the size of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. have no place in the financial system. Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, blames Wall Street for the 2008 financial crisis, for taking taxpayer money and for dodging criminal penalties.
MORE...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-05/sanders-counters-clinton-with-bank-haymaker-tale-of-the-tape