Bankers

We should all celebrate the great victory in the US Senate today. Recall that the senate has been trying to change the financial rules to prevent another meltdown. The Republicans have been using the filibuster to try and get more teeth into the bill but today the Democrats were able to get the 60 votes they need to stop the filibuster.

The two main problems were first to get rid of the too big to fail type banks and second to bring transparency to derivative trading. Well guess what? Neither of these things are in the bill. Instead there was a bunch of small changes regarding credit cards and retailers selling products on credit such as a car dealer financing your car loan. Not only did we not get rid of the too big to fail the situation is now even worse than it was before because over the past few years the big have gotten much bigger. The big six banks 15 years ago controlled 17% of the GDP and today they control 65%. Derivative trading will still be carried out in secret.

The bottom line is that big banks can gamble with our money and if they guess right they keep the profits and if they guess wrong we cover their losses.

When this bill passes which will be in a few weeks the politicians will come out and say they have passed new laws which will help us and behind the scenes the big bankers will be smiling.

Jack/John