Sanders to Wall St: "If you do not end your greed, we will end it for you"
NEW YORKBernie Sanders doled out some of his harshest criticism yet for chief rival Hillary Clinton and delivered a warning to Wall Street Tuesday: "If you do not end your greed, we will end it for you."
In a speech at midtown Manhattan's Town Hall Theatre, Sanders argued to approximately 1800 supporters Clinton is "wrong" on Wall Street reform and that "establishment" politicians like her should "cut it out."
"Secretary Clinton says we just need to impose a few more fees and regulations on the financial industry," he said. "I disagree."
Clinton has proposed a substantial annual "risk fee" that would be levied on too-big-to-fail institutions -- companies with over $50 billion in assets, and a tax on high-frequency trading. She would also give more power to regulators to break up big non-bank financial institutions if necessary. But she does not call outright for the breakup of such companies.
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Sanders based his criticism of Clinton on her view of Glass-Steagall, a 1933 measure that walled off commercial banking from investment banking. Bill Clinton signed its repeal in 1999.
"My opponent, Secretary Clinton, says that Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the financial crisis because shadow banks like AIG and Lehman Brothers, not big commercial banks, were the real culprits," Sanders said. "Secretary Clinton is wrong."
A staple of Sanders' campaign platform is combating shadow banks and similar institutions. The senator proposed that within 100 days of becoming president, he would require his secretary of the Treasury to establish a "Too-Big-to-Fail" list of commercial banks, shadow banks, and insurance companies "whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the United States economy without a taxpayer bailout."
"If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," he said. "When it comes to Wall Street reform that must be our bottom line."
A day before Tuesday's speech, Clinton's campaign took a preemptive strike against Sanders' proposals. Hillary For America Chief Financial Officer, Gary Gensler, issued a statement calling for Sanders to offer more comprehensive plans and to in fact "endorse" Clinton's, which he said will "rein in risky behavior within the shadow banking sector."
"Unfortunately, Senator Sanders has so far taken a hands-off approach to some of the riskiest institutions and activities in our economy, which were among the biggest culprits during the 2008 crisis," Gensler said.
Sanders' communications director Michael Briggs responded Monday in kind to the Clinton campaign's "pre-buttal."
"Sen. Sanders won't be taking advice on how to regulate Wall Street from a former Goldman Sachs partner and a former Treasury Department official who helped Wall Street rig the system," Briggs said, referring to Gensler, who also served as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
In addition to aggressive regulation, Sanders promised to punish big bankers linked to the financial crisis.
"Under my administration, Wall Street CEOs will no longer receive a get-out-of jail free card," he said. "Big banks will not be too big to fail. Big bankers will not be too big to jail."
Sanders' others proposals include taxing Wall Street speculators, reforming credit rating agencies, capping credit card interest rates and ATM fees, and allowing post offices to offer banking services.