Tell your senators to support the Brown-Kaufman SAFE Banking Act to cap size, leverage of big banks

[flpoljunkie]

The Brown-Kaufman SAFE banking act would greatly strengthen the Dodd bill by capping the size and leverage of our biggest banks. Tell your senators this amendment deserves and “up or down vote” in the Senate.

The Brown-Kaufman act is our best near-term chance to reduce the size of Wall Street megabanks that are too big to fail and that threaten our economy.

http://baselinescenario.com/2010/04/22/make-the-call-or-get-out-of-the-booth-after-the-president’s-wall-street-speech/#more-7270

Contact info: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

S.3241

Title: A bill to provide for a safe, accountable, fair, and efficient banking system, and for other purposes.

Sponsor: Sen Brown, Sherrod (introduced 4/21/2010) Cosponsors (5)

Latest Major Action: 4/21/2010 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
COSPONSORS(5), ALPHABETICAL : (Sort: by date)

Sen Casey, Robert P., Jr. - 4/21/2010
Sen Harkin, Tom - 4/21/2010
Sen Kaufman, Edward E. - 4/21/2010
Sen Merkley, Jeff - 4/21/2010
Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon - 4/21/2010

http://thomas.loc.gov

[rurallib]

1. Hmmm - if Harkin is co-sponsoring, I'll concentrate on Grassley.

[flpoljunkie]

2. I think Grassley may well get gettable.

[rurallib]

3. I think Grassley is very gettable. I think he is hearing footsteps

ready to trample him in November. Part of me wants him on board, part of me wants him to follow his instinct and give us an issue.
But I think for Grassley this whole thing is a lose - lose. He lose R votes if he vote with the Dems, he loses D and I votes if he votes with repugs.
And, believe me, there have been plenty of Ds who have voted for the Chuckster.

[cilla4progress]

4. Done!

Per Simon Johnson article on Huffpost.

[flpoljunkie]

6. Great! Huffpo is linking directly to his blog, baseline scenario.

[flpoljunkie]

5. Senator Kaufman is speaking on MSNBC right now.

[IndianaGreen]

7. How about nationalizing the big banks, and throwing their top officers in jail

followed by freezing foreclosures, restructuring mortgages so that owners can make the payments, and substantially reducing credit card rates? That's what a working class political party would have done. That's what a socialist government would have accomplished!

[flpoljunkie]

8. Can't disagree with most of your suggestions, IndianaGreen.

Sadly, we have to work with the Democratic party we have, not the one we'd like. It's very discouraging much of the time. Wall Street banks really do 'own the place.'

We could counteract that if we spoke out in big enough numbers, but we rarely do. Shame on us!

[IndianaGreen]

9. Remember what Jesus said about serving two masters?

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other."

A political party can either serve the corporations and the elites, or the working class, not both!

[flpoljunkie]

10. Capitalism can work if it is regulated. We not only failed to regulate, we opened the flood gates

when we repealed Glass-Steagall. A tragic and foreseeable disaster!

[IndianaGreen]

11. Capitalism doesn't work and it never has worked, except for the few at the very top

Infusing enough socialism into capitalism in order to prevent or delay a social explosion has been the treatment. It no longer works!

[flpoljunkie]

13. It has certainly worked better than it does now.

[jillan]

12. I really wish Kaufman would run. He's been doing an impressive job taking over for Biden.

[flpoljunkie]

14. His work on financial reform has been extraordinary. The Senate will be worse for his leaving.

[flpoljunkie]

15. Must Read Kaufman ABC News exclusive interview. Wants Glass-Steagall back.

As the years passed, though, Kaufman saw the government slowly start to move away from such Wall Street restrictions. In 1999, during the Clinton administration, Glass-Steagall was repealed. Now Kaufman wants it back.

"Investment banks and commercial banks shouldn't be under the same roof," he said. "I'm going to keep saying it and saying it and saying it. This is a very important part if we don't want to go down this road again."

Another factor that sent the country spiraling into recession was weak oversight by federal regulators charged with keeping an eye on the financial system during the Bush administration. That, too, he said, needs to change.

"We had a group that came in and said, 'We don't need regulators. Let's just throw the referees off the football field and see what football's like without any referees.' And we found out: It's pretty ugly. We went down a path that turned out to be a dead end, and it almost destroyed the country," Kaufman said. "We need to get back to a time where we have referees on the field watching what goes on."

more...

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Business/sen-ted-kaufman-important-person-heard-washingtons-push/story?id=10425615&page=2

[Arkana]

16. Phew. I thought it was SCOTT Brown cosponsoring, not Sherrod Brown.

[LiberalAndProud]

17. Common sense. Finally.

[flpoljunkie]

18. Sherrod Brown on ABC News This Week. He's great! We need more Sherrod Browns in Senate!