Two days before President Barack Obama called on Wall Street titans to ask their lobbyists to stand down in the fight over financial regulation reforms, JP Morgan mobilized its entire New York workforce to join the battle.
On Tuesday, it dispatched an e-mail on the reform package the Senate is considering to 30,000 employees, noting sections it liked and those it didn’t, including a tough proposal to overhaul the way banks handle derivatives.
More than 530,000 New Yorkers who work in the financial services industry could be adversely affected by the provision, the e-mail warned, according to a person familiar with it. JPMorgan workers were asked to e-mail to Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand urging her to stand up for them.
But it’s unlikely that rallying cry will spark much of a popular uprising against the financial regulation reform legislation. If anything, it underscores the inability of the Big Banks and their allies to latch onto a phrase or argument that could resonate with the public and provide the industry’s Republican defenders with the leverage to reverse the momentum in the regulation fight.
During the health care debate, GOP opponents withstood accusations of becoming the ‘Party of No’ and charges that they were denying coverage to children because they could see palpable support for their position in the screaming protesters at town hall meetings and the tanking poll numbers of Obama and health-care supporters.
Now, the shouting is on the Democrats’ side. Labor leaders next week are organizing marches on Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is expected to lead about 10,000 workers in a march down Wall Street in support of the reforms.
Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said it is “pretty outrageous” for the big banks to draw their workers into the fight. “They’re making their staff lobby against consumer protections,” she said.
“These are the same people who they forced to push bad products that put workers into debt. And now they’re using them to stop Wall Street reform,” she added.
Muscling amendments past labor’s supporters in the Senate might be an achievable goal if polls didn’t provide ample evidence that it’s not just union members who are still outraged at the financial industry.
A recent Pew study found that 61 percent of Americans say it is “a good idea for the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business.” Even the tea party activists can’t provide much cover. The Wall Street bailouts of 2008 were one of the galvanizing causes of the movement.
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