Bernie redux

Banks have long been a focus for Sanders, who is hoping to use new tactics to take on old foes. He has been experimenting with the use of public pressure and journalism-like tactics — including the launch of a series of video testimonials about workplace conditions at companies like Disney and Amazon — to try to augment legislative efforts at reform.

Recent successes on that front have Sanders in a good mood. Just a month after being blasted by Amazon for “misleading accusations” and triggering a national controversy that saw much of the pundit class, along with Democrat-aligned think tanks, take Amazon’s side in the labor debate, he watched as the retailer this week appeared to capitulate, announcing a $15 minimum wage across U.S. operations.

“Look, at the end of the day, you rally public opinion, you force people to have to do the right thing,” says Sanders, who has spoken openly in the past about his frustration with the slow pace of change on the Hill.

[...]

Beginning decades ago, the administrations of both Republican and Democratic presidents embarked on a series of policies intentionally designed to consolidate financial power.

The first major move on this front was the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. This law torpedoed restrictions on opening bank branches across state lines. These rules dated back to the McFadden Act of 1927, passed specifically with the idea of preventing financial concentration.

Signed into law by Bill Clinton, Riegle-Neal helped usher in the era of giant national banks. By 2016, Americans had 57 percent fewer FDIC-insured banks than they had in 1994. Sanders cast the only “no” vote against Riegle-Neal on the House Financial Services Committee.

  Matt Taibbi

Continue reading. This is a - good and interesting - history lesson. And the history isn't all that old.

Even former TARP administrator (and Goldman banker) Neel Kashkari estimated as recently as this summer that the likelihood of a future bailout was 67 percent, absent some kind of effort to address Too Big To Fail.

[...]

Brown, Sanders and California’s Sherman over the years kept at it, introducing different proposals to target Too Big To Fail banks. A consistent problem with these efforts has been a lack of support within the Democratic Party, whose economic policies have been dominated by the same Rubin-Geithner-Lawrence Summers Wall Street-friendly ideology (what one financial analyst friend of mine deems the “Rubino crime family”) for two-and-a-half decades now. It will require massive voter repudiation of these ties on the Democrat side to even begin to take real action on these ideas.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.