The Whistleblowers’ Plan Offers Hillary the Perfect Opportunity
William K. Black
February 10, 2016 Bloomington, MN
I am writing as one of the four founding members of Bank Whistleblowers United. We came together recently to create a detailed plan that could restore the rule of law to Wall Street and dramatically reduce the risk and damage of future financial crises. We crafted it so that it could be implemented without any new legislation or regulation. We offered our aid in the implementation process to any candidate who wins the election – and pointed out that President Obama could implement it immediately. Our plan and approach virtually defines the word “pragmatic.” It would also transform finance and begin to end its corrupt culture.
In response to Bernie’s big election win in New Hampshire, a political scientist rushed out a piece in the New York Times advising Hillary how to do a PR makeover. His advice was “peddling pragmatism,” by which he meant the opposite – an effort to rebrand Hillary through slogans. The political scientist does, however, understand Hillary’s key liability – the one that Krugman was foolish enough to think was an asset – “she often sounds as if she were acquiescing to a status quo that Democrats find objectionable.” Actually, she is acquiescing to a status quo that is objectively far beyond “objectionable.” It isn’t simply Democrats that find it unacceptable for a pervasively corrupt Wall Street to maintain its destructive power over our economy and our democracy, that view is shared by the vast majority of Republicans and independents.
Hillary does not “sound as if” she is “acquiescing” to Wall Street’s stranglehold. Hillary’s most prominent economics supporter, Krugman, urged us to vote for her because Hillary will not seek to break Wall Street’s corrupt power. Paul Krugman, in an article meant to attack Bernie Sanders, accidentally misfired and shot Hillary Clinton when he admitted that Dodd-Frank did not even try “breaking [Wall Street’s] power” over our economy and democracy – and praised that failure. Hillary’s fundamental problem is that after an adult lifetime in which she and Bill formed a mutual support society with Wall Street few find her claims to a Road to Damascus conversion credible. In the last debate, when trying to demonstrate how tough she was on Wall Street the best she could muster was to call the elite bankers’ frauds that caused the Great Recession “shenanigans” – childish pranks.
Endorsing our plan to restore the rule of law to Wall Street is the perfect opportunity for Hillary to embrace pragmatism and credibly demonstrate that she refuses to “acquiesce” to Wall Street’s continued corrupt power over our economy and our democracy. She simply has to pledge to implement our plan to demonstrate that she has embraced pragmatic, vital change that will break Wall Street’s dangerous power over our economy and democracy.
Similarly, Hillary is faced with a simple choice, but also an enormous opportunity, by our proposed campaign pledge. She could announce that she had reconsidered her fundraising in light of our plan and decided that it was wrong to take campaign contributions and fees from financial felons. She is locked into a harmful dynamic now in which she tries to defend taking large amounts of money from banks. She could escape that trap by agreeing not to take contributions from banks that the U.S. and its agencies, after investigation, have charged with committing felonies. The issue would no longer be her refusal to admit that campaign contributions affect politics and instead became one of integrity and ethics. She would be on the right side of that issue if she made our campaign pledge. We ask all the candidates to stop taking contributions from the financial felons.
Bank Whistleblowers United will identify publicly which candidates pledge to implement our plan in whole or in specified part. There is no excuse for violating this pledge, for it can be implemented without any reliance on new legislation or regulation. Any candidate who takes the pledge and fails to implement will be exposed as a liar. That is why we have some degree of confidence that candidates that take the pledge will actually implement the plan. Please ask the candidate you are considering supporting to go on record as to whether they support or oppose the pragmatic plan of the Bank Whistleblowers United.
in full: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/whistleblowers-plan-offers-hillary-perfect-opportunity.html
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