Senate Passes Wall Street Permanent Bailout Bill, It’s a Job Killer!

The Senate passes the Wall Street Reform Bill (S. 3217) by a 59-39 vote, if it passes the House it will kill jobs by making it difficult for small businesses to succeed and it will give permanent and unlimited bailout authority for the big banks on Wall Street. It would also do nothing to solve problems in the financial system and won’t prevent the next financial crisis.

Republican Senator David Vitter: “Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration want to create a permanent bailout mechanism all while spouting their rhetoric of getting tough on Wall Street, but if you look at who is already lining up to support their ‘reform’ measure it’s a who’s who of the big banks that have already received the taxpayer bailout the first time.” Democrat Congressman Brad Sherman: “There are serious problems with the Dodd bill. The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That’s something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn’t dare ask for.”

This bill would also break the back of small business by having them register with the SEC to only wait 120 days for the SEC to review their filing. A second provision in the bill raises the wealth requirements for venture capitalists that want to invest in startups – if the bill passes, investors would need assets of more than $2.3 million (up from $1 million) or income of more than $450,000 (up from $250,000). The third restriction removes the federal pre-emption allowing angel and venture financing in the United States to follow federal regulations, rather than face different rules between states.” There’s no doubt about it that the provisions in the bill would absolutely chill investing and small business which is the backbone of our economy. [Source]

The bill doesn’t include the Volcker Rule (it wasn’t even debated), doesn’t break up or even substantially rein in the too big to fails, and doesn’t force transparency in the derivatives market.

Senator Feingold said:

The bill does not eliminate the risk to our economy posed by “too big to fail” financial firms, nor does it restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression, which separated Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms and are essential to preventing another economic meltdown. The recent financial crisis triggered the nation’s worst recession since the Great Depression. The bill should have included reforms to prevent another such crisis. Regrettably, it did not.

Senator Cantwell agreed, saying:

While this bill takes much needed steps to help prevent a crisis of this magnitude from ever happening again, it fails to close the very same loopholes in derivatives trading that led to the biggest economic implosion since the Great Depression…. Throughout this debate I have fought hard against efforts to weaken this legislation as well as to pass language to strengthen it further. But the fact of the matter is, without key reforms in derivatives trading, this bill does not safeguard America’s economy from a repeat of this crisis.

It sets up a process for responding the next time we have a financial crisis, but it doesn’t prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again. We have to stop these kinds of dangerous activities. We need stronger bans on banks gambling with depositors’ money. We need bright lines – like Glass-Steagall – that separate risky activities from the traditional banking system. We need to refocus our financial system away from synthetic bets and get more capital into the hands of job creators and Main Street businesses. There are good, strong provisions in this bill, and I’m proud of the work we did to get them in there, but I fear that without closing the loopholes primarily responsible for this economic meltdown, we are missing the entire heart of the matter.