The Little Guy Screwed - You Can BANK ON IT!

The U.S. Senate just used a sixty-day review period for a new regulation from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - set up to prevent the banks from wielding too much power over its customers - to kill the regulation.  Had it ever gone into effect, this new rule would have made it easier for customers to sue banks for damages done to them; now, they can only go through arbitration, where banks have the upper hand, and there's no way that the rule can be reinstated in the future - ever.  Republicans in favor of the repeal said it protects smaller banks from frivolous lawsuits, but as Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC said, even the smallest bank is more powerful than the customers it's screwing.  Vice President Mike Pence (above) cast the tie-breaking vote against the rule.  Well, you can't blame Trump for this, though you can blame the Republicans and also the banking lobbyists.

But you can also blame the Democrats in part for how we got here.  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was set up to reign in banks after the 2008 financial crisis - which I call 9/15, as it occurred when the stock market tanked on September 15 - and that bureau was necessary due to the lack of a law regulating bank operations. There had been a law like that once . . . but the Glass-Steagall Act, which required the separation of commercial banking and investment banking, was repealed in 1999.  It was signed into law by Bill Clinton, a Democratic President.  After the CFPB was set up, the Obama Administration presided over a number of prosecutions of bankers for destroying people's lives.  That number, alas, was zero.   

And in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary/caucus campaign, only one of the top three contenders for the party's nomination opposed restoring the Glass-Steagall Act.

And here is that candidate.

Who were you expecting, Martin O'Malley?

In fact, here's what O'Malley said about 9/15:

Oh yeah, Hillary just turned seventy the other day, and having made it to three score and ten, she should just fade away (and so should Donald Trump, 71 - so let's get that straight).  But she's still out there, "helping" the Democratic Party while trying to make sure it stays on its current neoliberal, pro-business course, nearly a year after she - like the Democratic Party long before - became politically irrelevant.  :-( 

And now that this consumer-protection rule has been repealed before it even took effect, the news media can resume talking about the Kardashians or whatever. >:-(