Last week Congress approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill that included a number of provisions totally unrelated to spending.
One of those provisions weakened a part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law designed to prevent risky behavior by federally-insured banks– especially “too big to fail” banks like CitiGroup.
Speaking Friday on the floor of the Senate, Senator Elizabeth Warren singled out CitiGroup in a blistering speech which reminded me once again of why she is my favorite member of Congress.
There’s a lot of talk coming from Citigroup about how the Dodd-Frank Act isn’t perfect.
So let me say this to anyone who is listening at Citi: I agree with you. Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect.
It should have broken you into pieces.
Somewhere, I believe, the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt was cheering.
Without mentioning President Obama, Warren left no doubt of how she views his administration’s ties to Big Finance.
Specifically Warren was denouncing a measure inserted into the spending bill to roll back a part of the Dodd-Frank banking regulation law that prevents federally-insured banks from trading in certain risky derivatives– like the ones that helped trigger the 2008 financial near-calamity.
Although Obama and other Democrats said they opposed the measure, they weren’t prepared to force a government shutdown over the issue. However it would be more interesting to know which members of Congress would have been willing to force a shutdown in order to preserve the rollback for the big banks.
What’s truly strange is that while this rollback was clearly the work of CitiGroup lobbyists, the actual member or members of Congress who did the bank’s bidding have yet to be identified. All the accounts I’ve read say the rollback “was inserted” but the specific inserter or inserters are never identified. Surely if they believe they were acting in the public interest, they would be pleased to be publicly known– wouldn’t they?
Update: I’m pleased to note that the excellent 2010 documentary “Inside Job” is now viewable online: