By Thomas Grillo / Boston Herald
The financial sector spent $5.1 billion in political influence-peddling over the past decade as lobbyists won deregulation that led to the nation's financial collapse, according to a new study.
The report released yesterday, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," found that for the past decade, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance firms made $1.7 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists to undercut federal regulation.
The study was done by Essential Information, a citizen activist group founded by Ralph Nader, and the Consumer Education Foundation, a nonprofit run by California lawyer Harvey Rosenfield.
Nearly 3,000 registered federal lobbyists worked for the financial industry in 2007 alone, the study noted, and firms drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 top financial firms, "Sold Out" found 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998 to 2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the executive branch or Congress.
Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, received nearly $100,000 in campaign contributions from Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche from 2006 to 2008, the study said.
The report documents a dozen deregulatory moves "that, together, led to the financial meltdown." These include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and federal refusal to act in order to stop predatory subprime lending.
"Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price - trillions of dollars - for that betrayal," Rosenfield said.
4 comments:
Wise investment as only billions were used to get a turn of Trillions. Just think the plan worked very well as it was the blueprint was layed out 2000. Once the Election was stolen it was clear sailing to the US Treasury. Law Makers were paid off, appointees were paid to turn a blind eye and Media were paid to report the lies. When a person got to close to the scam like former Gov. Spitzer well the Religous attackers came out by the Republican Party. And we know Americans believe in God so the Satan worshippers knew how to trick the people. It worked very well. As Americans were praying to God for help, the Satan worshippers in the White House were robbing the taxpayers as fast as they could.
Duh.
Of course, now that Spitzer is giving them the I told you so, there are wild stories coming out about Spitzer. He and Kinky Friedman need to change first names.
Mr. Kitty who is Kinky Friedman? If you get a chance let me know thanks.
Kinky Friedman ran for governor in Texas with the slogans, "Why the hell not?" and "How Hard Can It Be?" He's a Jewish cowboy who sings, and tells politically incorrect jokes.
Here are some quotes.
Hi might run again for governor in 2010--it would be funny. He makes Jesse Ventura look mainstream, but either one of them would be better than Baloneybitch, and Baloneybitch got elected twice!!!
Speaking of Baloneybitch, his new law team tried to get Fitz kicked off as prosecutor, citing bias for Fitz's press conference, but they got smacked down for that. That'll earn Baloneybitch some bad karma.
Ha ha.
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