by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Following the financial crisis of 2007 to 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law on July 21, 2010. At the time, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and could have put teeth into the law, had they chosen to do so. The Act did not reform Wall Street nor did it protect American consumers from the looting practices of the Wall Street banks.
Dodd-Frank allowed Wall Street’s private justice system to continue, where both customers and employees must waive their rights to bring claims in a court of law; it allowed Wall Street banks to continue using depositors’ money to make wild gambles in derivatives; it permitted Wall Street banks to continue buying triple-A credit ratings from the ratings agencies for dodgy securitized products; it allowed the very same banks that blew themselves up during the crisis to continue to operate their own Dark Pools and trade the shares of their own banks in darkness, as well as trade the stocks on which they had just issued “buy” ratings to the public. We could go on and on, but you get the point: Dodd-Frank was a grand show that accomplished next to nothing in the way of meaningful structural reform of Wall Street.