Bernie And The Banks
If people really wanted to break up large banks or shrink them, they could. Don't use them. Its the customer base that built those large banks.
Use credit unions and the smaller savings and loan associations.
Much of the money leveraged into their business lines is depositor money.
Don't deposit your money in them, don't get your mortgages from them, don't get your loans and your credit cards from them.
Supporting the breakup of big banks while lining up to get their latest and greatest credit card offers or using their checking accounts so you have access to a large home bank no-fee ATM network or convenient branches seems inconsistent.
My main issue is misleading all these idealistic young people. I know that in my flowerchild youth, I'd have been on the Bernie train. What becomes of these disillusioned kids who are getting their first taste of politics. Live and learn, I guess.
The Savings and Loans that failed were not large. But there were a lot of them and a lot had to be bailed out And it cost a lot of money. So it really does not matter if financial institutions are big and few or small and many. There will be crises.
bramzzoinks said:
The Savings and Loans that failed were not large. But there were a lot of them and a lot had to be bailed out And it cost a lot of money. So it really does not matter if financial institutions are big and few or small and many. There will be crises.
But if JP Morgan were to fail, it could tank the entire economy. It also insulates those entities from criminal prosecution, which encourages them to engage in, at best, questionable behavior in the search for profits.
LOST said:
He will break up the banks and he will get Mexico to pay for it.
Ha!
Bernie doesn't need have to have specific details on how to break up the banks, those details will fall to legions of lawyers and regulators. He just needs the political will, banks can be broken up as easily as it was to break up the phone company or any other modern monopoly. The first order of business would be to reinstate the wall between commercial and investment banking.
Enforcing anti-trust legislation and actually indicting some senior managers would immediately put a stop on much of the wall street shenanigans.
It took years to try to break up those companies and in many cases (Microsoft) the government failed. And where it did not fail (ATT) the company gave up and settled because the technological and business landscape was changing anyway.
LOST said:
He will break up the banks and he will get Mexico to pay for it.
Priceless.
hoops said:
The first order of business would be to reinstate the wall between commercial and investment banking.
See? A wall is involved!
bramzzoinks said:
It took years to try to break up those companies and in many cases (Microsoft) the government failed. And where it did not fail (ATT) the company gave up and settled because the technological and business landscape was changing anyway.
I see, so your idea is to do nothing. great.
I'll take someone who wants to do something, and I wouldnt be surprised if when he is elected he enlists very smart people like this to help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=squ2SAhziPo
In reading the first few posts my takeaway is that we shouldn't talk about what should be done if it is likely to be too hard to accomplish in your term in office. Damn Kennedy, talking about going to the moon even though he couldn't get it done!
jeffhandy said:
LOST said:
hoops said:
The first order of business would be to reinstate the wall between commercial and investment banking.
See? A wall is involved!
And we'll get the bankers to pay for it.
One would wish but I don't think so.
The personal assets of bankers can't be touched unless there are personal criminal convictions with fines and forfeitures.
If the banks are broken up and there is a cost that banks have to pay, it will come out of the bank corporation's coffers and ultimately the shareholders will pay.
If Sanders is elected it may be smart for individual investors and pensions to divest themselves of equities from the financial industry.
hoops said:
Bernie doesn't need have to have specific details on how to break up the banks, those details will fall to legions of lawyers and regulators. He just needs the political will, banks can be broken up as easily as it was to break up the phone company or any other modern monopoly. The first order of business would be to reinstate the wall between commercial and investment banking.
That wall should never have been breached.
But it won't be up to Bernie. It will be up to congress.
I'm sure Bernie explained that well. 
Anyway, good luck getting congress to agree.
Chris Cilliza just wrote a story on Sander's brilliant interview with the Daily News on his clever plan to break up the banks.
This New York Daily News interview was pretty close to a disaster for Bernie Sanders
the Daily News pressing Sanders for specifics and asking him to evaluate the consequences of his proposals, and Sanders, largely, dodging as he sought to scramble back to his talking points.
A large part of Sanders’s appeal to the throngs who back him is his insistence that we are in need of a political revolution. And, for those people, the Daily News interview will be much ado about nothing. But what the interview exposes is that once the revolution happens there will be lots of loose ends to tie up. Loose ends that Sanders either hasn’t grappled with — or doesn’t want to.
The Daily News interview amounts to a moment of reckoning for Sanders. Okay, let’s say you get elected — now what? And have you thought through what it might mean to the American worker and the American economy if all of the things you insist have to happen actually did happen? Judging by Sanders’s responses, he hasn’t.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/05/this-new-york-daily-news-interview-was-pretty-close-to-a-disaster-for-bernie-sanders
Maybe all the inconsistencies, the hype from the Sanders campaign, the unrealistic economic promises are not due to brilliance. Maybe he's just a doddering old fool.
Here's another one
9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview
My former colleagues on the New York Daily News editorial board sat down with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on April 1 for an illuminating interview. The more I read the transcript, the more it became clear that the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination doesn’t know much beyond his standard stump speech about breaking up the banks and how he had the good judgment to vote against the Iraq War in 2002.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/05/9-things-bernie-sanders-shouldve-known-about-but-didnt-in-that-daily-news-interview/
In debates you can usually get away with dribbling nonsense.
Interviews with newspaper editors are harder. It might be best if Sander's quit giving those interviews.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
Bernie..............too big a man to be in anybodies pocket. Hillary.................well my mother once told me that if you can not say something good about a person , say nothing at all
Nothing at all
I figured Sanders didn't know much about foreign policy, and wasn't really too interested in learning, but to not know the mechanics of how to reach one of the three things you've been preaching for years?!? Even if you hate Hillary, you have to admit she would've given you detailed answers as to exactly what needed to be done, step by step. He sounded like a kid trying to fake his way into an class way beyond his skill level, except this is the PRESIDENCY, ffs! I am pretty shocked. The subway question was a trifle stupid, tho. Not sure what point they were trying to make with that one!
Bernie is not the only one saying we need to break up the banks. Doesn't anyone remember Neel Kashkari, President of Federal Reserve in Minneapolis, back in February?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neel-kashkari-bernie-sanders-banks_us_56c345b5e4b08ffac126812c
And then the banks themselves are thinking. It has been said that Citigroup would be 50% more valuable if they broke up.
http://www.americanbanker.com/news/national-regional/citi-breakup-chatter-what-you-need-to-know-1080027-1.html
This thread's assumption is that Sanders made a gaff in his response to the Daily News, but it turns out he is probably on target with his answers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/upshot/yes-bernie-sanders-knows-something-about-breaking-up-banks.html
OK, now returning you to the Clinton "No We Can't" crew.....
Bernie will achieve precisely none of his dosmestic goals without a supportive Congress.
tjohn said:
Bernie will achieve precisely none of his dosmestic goals without a supportive Congress.
And neither will Clinton.
tjohn said:
Bernie will achieve precisely none of his dosmestic goals without a supportive Congress.
thats true, and its also true of every president.
Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing it?
Mr. Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of Treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.
seems like he knows exactly what he's talking about to me.
Heres another take-down of the NYDN interview.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-daily-news_us_5704779ce4b0a506064d8df5
hoops said:
Heres another take-down of the NYDN interview.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-daily-news_us_5704779ce4b0a506064d8df5
"In the past, Sanders has said that he would require the Treasury
Department to draw up a list “too-Big-To-Fail” financial firms, and then
use the Section 121 of the Dodd-Frank law to break them up.
The problem is the Dodd-Frank law doesn’t actually give the Treasury
Department the authority to do that, as Bernie says. Section 121 of the
Dodd-Frank law does allow federal regulators to break up the banks if
they are found to pose “a grave threat to the financial stability of the
United States.
In the past, Sanders has said that he would require the Treasury
Department to draw up a list “too-Big-To-Fail” financial firms, and then
use the Section 121 of the Dodd-Frank law to break them up.
The problem is the Dodd-Frank law doesn’t actually give the Treasury
Department the authority to do that, as Bernie says. Section 121 of the
Dodd-Frank law does allow federal regulators to break up the banks if
they are found to pose “a grave threat to the financial stability of the
United States.”
But the Treasury Department isn’t able to make that determination on
its own. In fact, ordering a bank to sell off assets and slim down,
requires a majority vote of Fed Governors as well as a two-thirds vote
of the members of the 10-member Financial Stability Oversight Council
(FSOC), of which the Treasury Secretary is only one of 10 voting
members. And whether or not Bernie Sanders can marshal the support of
the other regulators that sit on this board is another matter.
Even if he is able to install regulators sympathetic to his belief
that large U.S. banks should be made smaller—which would require Senate
approval—he will be unable to change the overall makeup of the Federal
Reserve until 2022 at the earliest. That’s because Fed board members
serve staggered, 14-year terms. There are currently two vacancies, which
Sanders could fill with Senate approval, but he would still need two
more sympathetic votes that he’d be unable to garner until at least
2022.
The Daily News also asked what the recent news of a federal court’s decision
to overturn insurer Metlife’s designation as a systemically important
financial institution “presages for your program.” Sanders response?
“It’s something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of
that.”
http://fortune.com/2016/04/05/bernie-sanders-big-banks/
Using Dodd-Frank to break-up financial institutions would be almost impossible (btw, Hillary has also said that she would use Dodd-Frank.) It would have to be done through legislation.
Economist, Dean Baker, tweeted, "Reporters Who Haven't Noticed That Paul Ryan Has Called for Eliminating Most of Federal Government Go Nuts Over Bernie Sanders' Lack of Specifics"
He explains in detail here:
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/reporters-who-haven-t-noticed-that-paul-ryan-has-called-for-eliminating-most-of-federal-government-go-nuts-over-bernie-sanders-lack-of-specifics
Highlights: ". . .Having read the transcript of the interview I would say that I certainly would have liked to see more specificity in Sanders' answers, but I'm an economist. And some of the complaints are just silly.
When asked how he would break up the big banks Sanders said he would leave that up to the banks. That's exactly the right answer. The government doesn't know the most efficient way to break up JP Morgan, JP Morgan does. If the point is to downsize the banks, the way to do it is to give them a size cap and let them figure out the best way to reconfigure themselves to get under it.
The same applies to Sanders not knowing the specific statute for prosecuting banks for their actions in the housing bubble. Knowingly passing off fraudulent mortgages in a mortgage backed security is fraud. Could the Justice Department prove this case against high level bank executives? Who knows, but they obviously didn't try.
And the fact that Sanders didn't know the specific statute, who cares? How many people know the specific statute for someone who puts a bullet in someone's head? That's murder, and if a candidate for office doesn't know the exact title and specific's of her state murder statute, it hardly seems like a big issue. . ."
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C'mon Bernie, you have no idea how to break 'em up. We all love the idea, but we're not all misleading the kids into thinking we can do it as president.
Sanders: How you go about doing it [breaking up banks] is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.
Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?
Sanders: Well, I don't know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.
Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, "Now you must do X, Y and Z?"
Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.
Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?
Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.
Daily News: So if you look forward, a year, maybe two years, right now you have...JPMorgan has 241,000 employees. About 20,000 of them in New York. 92 billion in net assets. What happens? What do you foresee? What is JPMorgan in year two of...
Sanders: What I foresee is a stronger national economy. And, in fact, a stronger economy in New York State, as well. What I foresee is a financial system which actually makes affordable loans to small and medium-size businesses. Does not live as an island onto themselves concerned about their own profits. And, in fact, creating incredibly complicated financial tools, which have led us into the worst economic recession in the modern history of the United States.
continues at...
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/transcript-bernie-sanders-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2588306