Six Demands to Make of Wall Street - Bernie Sanders

The financial crisis and the jobs crisis have demonstrated to the American people that we now have a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz eloquently articulated.  We now have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major, advanced country on earth.  The top one percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent and the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.   

Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spot light against Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?

1) If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

2) Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury.

3) The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks.

4) Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices.

5) Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives.

6) Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures.

Reform will not be easy.  After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill.  From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street.  More recently, they spent hundreds of millions more to make the Dodd-Frank bill as weak as possible, and after its passage, hundreds of millions more to roll back or diluter the stronger provisions in that legislation.  

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