Wall Street Gets $2.6 Trillion Windfall, Main Street Gets a Bill
The Financial Times, ever vigilant for the interests of capital, notes that bank deregulation is set to 'unlock' a cool $2.6 trillion in Wall Street lending capacity. That's a lot of 'unlocking' for an industry that repeatedly 'locks' taxpayers into covering their speculative losses. This isn't just 'lending capacity'; it's leverage capacity, the very same magic that conjured the 2008 financial
meltdown. While you struggled to pay for gas, banks like JPMorgan Chase (whose CEO Jamie Dimon vocally opposes stricter regulations) were lobbying hard, ensuring the public would once again be on the hook when their high-risk bets inevitably go south. (Remember the Dodd-Frank Act? Apparently, Wall Street doesn't.) It appears the lesson learned from 'too big to fail' was simply to get bigger. How
many trillions does it take to realize that unfettered financial speculation doesn't 'unlock' prosperity for the common person, but rather, 'unshackles' risk onto their retirement funds? One might wonder how much of this newfound 'capacity' will translate into affordable housing or small business loans, versus, say, another round of derivatives that would make a subprime mortgage blush. This
'deregulation' isn't about stimulating the economy; it’s about privatizing profit and socializing debt, a fiscal policy as old as greed itself.