Look Who it Was Random video

The U.S. Senate Has Left Us Vulnerable To The Big Bank Criminals

4,752 views · Published 1 December 2018 · 7:47 · Indexed 27 October 2026

Channel: The Ring of Fire · 2018 · News & Politics

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The Senate passed legislation that's gonna repeal protections that had been put in place with the Dodd Frank Act. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this issue.

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The Senate passed legislation this week that's gonna repeal protections that had been put in place with the Dodd Frank Act. This move is gonna leave us vulnerable, even more criminal activity's gonna take place with America's biggest bank. Now, Peter, this is right up your alley.

Right.

After the first, the theft by the big banks, they stole gazillions of dollars from the American public. You brought lawsuits against some of those thieves. 

Hundreds of them, right. 

You brought hundreds of lawsuits against those thieves. Shearson Lehman, they escaped totally, right? Shearson Lehman, you know, if you lost a hundred thousand dollars because of Shearson Lehman fraud, you maybe got back $15000.

Right. 

That was kind of the ratio. Then tax payers came in and they-

The big bailout. 

They gave relief, bailed out, in other words. So talk about this a little bit. We got Congress saying, you know, "We need to do this again." That's basically what this is inviting. Let's do this-

To really kind of frame this up, the Dodd Frank Act came out right after the huge market meltdown in 2007 and 2008. That market meltdown was built on Wall Street greed. Essentially taking risk that benefited CEOs, senior management, but that risk was shoved onto shareholders and ultimately American taxpayer. So right after that decline, Congress, the Obama Administration put in all kinds of safeguards that said, kind of too big to fail. There were all these tests, so let's choose one 'cause it's kind of an easy one. 

Stress tests. Stress tests are the banks run and they say, "I'll tell you what, we're going to run this stress. What happens if the economy collapses? What happens if inflation, the dollar..." It comes in and it tests, stresses the banks and says, "Where are your weak spots?" It's costly, it takes some time but it's very, very... it protects the American consumer and makes sure that the banks aren't taking too much risks. 

Well Wall Street's done a phenomenal job. The banks have done a great job, employed thousands of lobbyists, spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying. So Dodd Frank never really gets implemented, just small bits and pieces of it. Now fast forward all the way to the new proposed bill-

Back up just a second. People don't even realize, they think Dodd Frank is out there but no, Wall Street has stopped it at every turn.

Oh yeah. 

Every turn. We don't even have the full benefit of Dodd Frank.

No not even a fraction of it. There was hundreds and hundreds of proposals, a small, tiny amount of them were passed. Mostly because Wall Street beat them back through lobbying efforts. 

Okay so this is one proposal-

So the argument though, which always drives me nuts, the argument is, "All these are too costly. These are too expensive. They're too time consuming, it slows down growth. It impedes lending, it restricts capital" but at the same time, I mean, how many trillions of dollars were caused by Wall Street's greed in the 07 and 08 collapse? Now what they've done is that the Senator Mike, is it Crapo, Crapo?

Crapo. 

Crapo. I always forget how to pronounce his name. Maybe Crapo might be a little better.

Yeah, Crapo's pretty appropriate.

He's the chairman of the Senate Committee of Banking and they're pushing this back, and effectively. It looks like they got enough votes. They need 60 votes and they're pushing some of these back.

Well, what about this, Peter. What about this? Now look, the thing that you've talked about so much when you bring these lawsuits in your pleadings, you talk about wild risks.

Right. 

You talk about the idea that these banks understood the wild risk that was involved but the risk, taking those wild risks, puts so much money in their pocket and at the end of the day, after they lost all the money. Sheer incompetence and greed. There's no other reason. They were incompetent fools along with being greedy fools.

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