Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Banks spend record $ amounts on lobbying

Wall Street has already spent $100 million this year lobbying Congress, mostly related to the Dodd-Franke financial reform bill.

Meanwhile, most Americans are worried about other things. Some of those distractions are understandable: persistent unemployment, crushing debt, poor health, etc. But some of those distractions are manufactured, such as Solyndra: a "scandal" over a loan for $528 million which is driving the right wing nuts; meanwhile, the $16 trillion TBTF bank bailouts -- including banks in Europe -- get ignored by the right and the mainstream media.

"But the Solyndra loan was about corruption!" you might say. Well, maybe so. Congressional hearings and courts will sort that out. But if so, then the Wall Street bailouts were no less corrupt: Wall Street is consistently one of the biggest political donors; and it receives the biggest political $ benefits in return. Isn't that corrupt? And, to put things in perspective, the Solyndra loan, which just drives the Right rabid, was 0.000033 percent of the big bank bailouts.

The deck is stacked and the TBTF banks will win again, as always, until we get our heads out of our a**es and fundamentally change our pay-to-play political system.


November 21, 2011 | Huffington Post

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