Today Hillary Clinton unveiled proposals to tackle excessive risk-taking and enhance accountability both on Wall Street and throughout the financial sector.
To confront the phenomenon of “Too Big to Fail,” her plan would impose a risk fee on the largest banks and financial institutions and require firms that are too large and too risky to manage to reorganize, downsize or break apart. Additionally, her plan would take new steps to hold individuals as well as corporations accountable by prosecuting and punishing wrongdoing and financial crimes wherever they occur.
“To prevent irresponsible behavior on Wall Street from ever again devastating Main Street, we need more accountability, tougher rules, and stronger enforcement. I have a plan to build on the progress we’ve made under President Obama and do just that,” Clinton said. “We can’t go back to the days when Wall Street could write its own rules.”
Her agenda also calls for a high-frequency trading tax to confront abusive trading strategies that make our markets less stable and less fair. Components of her plan would also strengthen oversight of the so-called “shadow banking” system, which makes up as much as a quarter of the global financial system but remain unregulated or under-regulated to a troubling degree, and strengthen the Volcker Rule to better prevent banks from making risky bets with taxpayer-backed money. She also vowed to defend the Dodd-Frank financial reform law against Republican efforts to weaken, undermine or repeal it.
“Hillary Clinton has been a strong defender of the 2010 financial reform bill, and her thoughtful, comprehensive proposal for strengthening it deserves support,” said former Congressman Barney Frank, who authored the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. “It builds on the work we did, taking the experience of the past five years into account. In some cases, it calls for steps that I would have included in our legislation if we had the votes to do so. With the Republican presidential candidates competing for the title of ‘Most Nostalgic for Unregulated Derivatives,’ she has set the stage for an important national debate next year on this subject.”
For Clinton’s full suite of proposals to tackle risk within our financial system and abuses on Wall Street, click here.
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AFP
