Wall Street is simply the common nickname for one of several stock markets in which public shares of incorporated companies are traded. How is the president going to single-handedly prevent corporations from offering shares of stock to raise capital?
If you are going to wander into Great Debates with baseless ideas, it would be in your best interests to actually discover something about the topics on which you choose to Just Ask Questions.
And so the dance begins. Shift the subject to yet another baseless claim.
Hint: The economy was not “destroyed” in 2007, and even though we had a Great Recession, it can hardly be blamed on one person, let alone one president.
Good point. We should avoid a repeat of that by electing a President who favors regulating the financial industry so that it doesn’t operate recklessly.
Note: some executives and companies committing fraud is not the same thing as the business model of Wall Street being fraud, any more than some Muslims shooting up a center proves that the model of Islam is terrorism.
If one believes that Wall Street is predicated upon fraud as the business model what the hell are any of us doing having any portions of our kids college funds and our retirement portfolios and pension plans invested there? How stupid are we to accept the premise and then given these goniffs our cash?
No, a President Sanders, even with a new Democratic majority, would not be able to destroy Wall Street by executive order or by laws. But a President who explicitly preaches that one cannot trust and should not trust the markets, who fosters a lack of confidence in investment … can still have impact.
Cool. A demonstrable claim. Name the policies that destroyed the economy. Explain how the President personally executed those policies. A list of all Executive Orders issued by Bush starts on this page. Give us the numbers for the Orders that help destroy the economy and their role in doing so.
Bonus points if you do so without asking your “friends”.
That is nice, no one thinks that what you said was realistic.
What I usually go on is the assumption that virtually no one (including me) can claim original ideas, we are a product of our culture and sources of information, specially when we are getting our views of political candidates, so off with your source; I want to know to who I should aim the loaded cannon.
I have found your main idea in the OP already from a few right wing commentators, so it is not original to begin with.
I think it’s time to quote him in full, as 1 sentence soundbites are dubious. [INDENT]Wall Street is an entity of unbelievable economic and political power. That’s fact. I want to say something and it may sound harsh, not to you, but to the American people. In my view, the business model of Wall Street is fraud. It’s fraud. I believe that corruption is rampant and the fact that major bank after major bank has reached multi-billion dollar settlements with the United States government, when we have a weak regulatory system tells me that not only did we have to bail them out once, if we don’t start breaking them up, we’ll have to bail them out again. I do not want to see that happen. [/INDENT] Not sure this conflicts with your POV, but we’re here to fight ignorance.
I interpret the remarks as campaign hyperbole for “Fraudulent activity is rampant among the big banks and a core part of their business,” which is I’d agree with. The problem is that shadow banking, leverage and Liar Loans don’t have anything to do with scale. Which was partly addressed by Dodd-Frank anyway. “Break up the banks”, would require an enormous amount of political capital for something that doesn’t really address the core problems.
Of course the idea that trust busting is anything like abolishing Wall St is silly.
I heard him interviewed on the radio today and asked to clarify if he really meant it, specifically stating the concerns that I put into my post, why, if that is the case, should anyone trust having their pension fund money and retirement funds in a fundamentally fraudulent market? Given the opportunity to clarify that it was hyperbole he doubled down. He said he meant it, repeated it, and then quoted individual examples of fraud as evidence that the whole enterprise is based on fraud.
That was what actually got me putting out my post because it was of the exact same form as Trump’s Mexican rapists and Muslim terrorists rhetoric, and that we have suffered through before with Blacks as criminals and ironically enough for Bernie, Jews are, well almost anything, just with a different “other” as the target: group X is teh evil and as proof here are a few who are.
I do not cut Trump the “campaign hyperbole” slack, and I see no cause to grant it to Bernie just because the target is more popular to vilify among those in my circle.
To the issue of the op my point remains: a President can do much harm and sometimes good to the markets both domestically and internationally without new laws passed or executive orders decreed … just by the impact of how they use the bully pulpit. Abolish? No. Meaningfully regulate? Needs some cooperation from Congress. Harm, significantly, yes, just with words alone.
The problem is that Sanders’ accusation has far better factual grounding. I’m thinking of 13 Bankers written by former Chief Economist of the IMF Simon Johnson and law Professor James Kwak. Excerpt. There was malfeasance at basically all large financial institutions and the it went to the very top. No top officials were convicted or even criminally indicted to my knowledge, IIRC. Now the actual criminal activity was most probably limited by the laws of the time. But I think it’s fair to characterize derivative contracts of the day as both highly deceptive and virtually universal. Fraud in the colloquial sense though not in the legal sense. And yes, these sleaze innovations of the 2000s were universally adopted by all of the major banks while Bush Co were asleep at the switch.
In addition there were also pretty widespread breaches in disclosure though they probably weren’t as universal nor absolutely necessary conditions for the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
