Senator Calls For Aggressive Financial Reform (Break-up Banks) Deplores Current 'Incremental' Steps

[kpete]

Source: Huffington Post

A senator is calling for the break-up of megabanks and a firmer separation between Main Street banking and Wall Street trading, joining the ranks of leading economists and business titans demanding aggressive financial reform far beyond what the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are pushing.

In a Thursday morning speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) blasted the "incrementalism" approach to fixing the nation's broken financial system, laid bare by a financial crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth and sent the economy into a tailspin not seen since the Great Depression.

Rather than nibbling around the edges, Kaufman wants to impose strict limits on financial firms' activities; significantly cut them down in size; and wants Congress to act more forcefully because federal banking and securities regulators failed to protect the public from an increasingly dangerous financial industry.

The fact is, he intoned, "the government's response to the financial meltdown has only made the industry bigger, more concentrated and more complex."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/senator-calls-for-aggress_n_494699.html

[Steerpike]

1. Watch your head!

You know what happens to voices crying out in the wilderness...

[Donnachaidh]

2. now let's see which way Dodd will go with this.

He'll do end runs to stop any form of breakups. He's got his future lobbyist's position to think about.

[LakeSamish706]

3. The big problem with Congress acting more forcefully is that many have their

hands in the till. Pretty strange to have the fox guarding the hen house.

[Divine Discontent]

4. good for him! never really heard much from him being reported. excellent.

[pleah]

5. I'm all for breaking up the banks and have called for it many, many

times, but we shall see how far this actually gets to becoming reality.

[seabeckind]

6. Gotta be real careful here

Better see what the white house has to say... <crickets>

Couple days Timmy or Ben will tell us how fragile our banks are. Don't want to anything that might hurt our recovery.

The recovery they're talking about isn't the same one we think of, though. They're talking about recovering a few more of them taxpayer dollars.

[girl gone mad]

7. Looks like Tim is too busy threatening to start a trade war..

over Europe's recent ban of WS firms.

Priorities, priorities. :eyes:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

8. Do it!

No whining. Do it.

[Telly Savalas]

9. What incrementalism?

Incrementalism suggests some sort of action, albeit very modest, is being taken. We're not even getting that despite the fact the world financial system was supposedly on the brink of collapse a little over a year ago.