Wall Street Reform: FDR vs Obama

[eniwetok]

When FDR came into office in March 1933 he and the Democrats faced head on the dangerous aspects of an unregulated economy and passed structural reforms within 3 months with the 1933 Banking Act. It was that Act that included Glass Steagall.

When faced with another collapsed economy in 2008 we might expect the braindead ideologues in the GOP to refuse to reflect on how their ideas on deregulation caused the collapse and how dangerous it was NOT to make major reforms. But Obama should have known better. Yet he and key Dems refused to do what FDR did: quickly introduce and pass key reforms. In March 2009 Obama told the Wall Street perps that he stood between them and the people with the pitchforks.

Reform was stretched out and Dodd Frank wasn't passed until July 2010... 18 MONTHS after Obama took office.

Given the scope of the problem Dodd Frank was a pathetically weak bill and it would take additional years to be implemented. As of early 2015 the SEC was still writing rules to implement DF https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/dodd-frank/derivatives.shtml In the mean time the too big to fail banks were now bigger and time bombs in the economy were still ticking. And ultimately the Obama administration refused to prosecute any of these Wall Street thieves and sociopaths. They got away with paying large fines... other people's money.

So here we all, 8 years after the crash. The government is now trillions more in debt, the FED has exhausted it's main arsenal... interest rates, and the world economy is looking unstable again.

Should there be another crash... will history look back and curse the GOP and Obama for refusing to fix the core defects in the economy?

I suspect so. We desperately needed another FDR and instead we got a corporate Dem as president.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. The laws to prosecute

You wrote -

And ultimately the Obama administration refused to prosecute any of these Wall Street thieves and sociopaths. They got away with passing large fines... other people's money.


Which law(s) specifically were they supposed to be prosecuted under?

[eniwetok]

4. oh you're right!

There were no laws the big banks broke... and they paid $251 billion in fines for nothing

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/08/29/too-big-to-fail-banks-have-paid-251-billion-in-fines-for-sins-committed-since-2008/

[rurallib]

2. I guess Obama will take the hit, but it seems to me that most of his failings

are caused by Republican obstruction and deceit with just enough help from conservative Democrats to make it stick.

True Obama came in somewhat naive and idealistic thinking that Republicans would put the good of the country ahead of partisan politics and paying off their donors. Republicans sure exploited this.

Plus, IIRC FDR had something like a 67% majority in both houses of congress. Had Obama had anything like that things would have been much different I am sure. Obama had the new 60% supermajority in the senate for only a brief window of a month or so as Ted Kennedy was battling cancer. Among that 60% majority was Joe Lieberman who was to say the least pretty much a turncoat.

[eniwetok]

3. sure...

Sure, the GOP must have been in a panic that Obama would undo all the damage their ideas did to the nation... and the GOP has NEVER taken any responsibility for imploding the economy. As True Believers... they seem to believe that their ideas are just too perfect to fail... and therefore they had to double down on their ideological purity even if everyone else saw them driving their crazy train off the cliff.

But refusing to prosecute any of the Wall Street thieves and sociopaths was a deliberate decision... in large part based on Holder's own views... and if you've never read the Holder memo...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/eric-holder-1999-memo_n_3384980.html

Holder admitted in testimony that he thought banks were too big to prosecute

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/eric-holder-banks-too-big_n_2821741.html

But ultimately Obama's was president... and he's a smart guy. He should have known better than to let Wall Street reforms and prosecutions to drag out... and as far as I know we still don't know why he didn't go the FDR route... except that he's obviously a corporate Dem.