By: Jack Waymire | January 27, 2010 | The Politicians, Wall Street Ethics
The politicians are incensed about the economic damage that was caused by Wall Street greed and stupidity. As ususal politicians are telling an outraged public what it wants to hear: “We will enact new regulations that will prevent this type of economic meltdown in the future.” The finance, insurance, and real estate industries contributed $85 million to federal lawmakers in the 2010 election cycle, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. According to Consumer Watchdog, the 23 members of the Senate Banking Committee received $42 million in campaign contributions between 2005 and 2009.
Politicians accepted millions of dollars from the biggest special interest group in the U.S. to do what? There are three answers. First, kill any legislation that impacts the revenues and profits of the financial services companies. Second, if they can’t kill the legislation, water it down, so it sounds like real change, but has no significant impact on company revenues or profits. Third, delay any decisions on new regulations until it is no longer an important issue for most consumers.
Wall Street and the politicians know Americans have short memories. Our primary concerns are more personal than the regulations that govern Wall Street. However, in the absence of meaningful, new regulations, the trillions of dollars of losses that we experienced twice in the past decade (2000-2003 and 2007-2008) will happen again. Just wait a few years.
One Response to “The Phony War on Wall Street”
Find a Financial Advisor or Planner!
Search Function
Search by Key Word, Category or Author Name
Discussion Topics
- Annuities
- Bad Financial Advice
- Bad Products & Services
- Ponzi Schemes
- Financial Advisors
- Financial Planners
- Investor Information
- Illegal Schemes & Scams
- Investment Performance
- Report Fraud
- The Politicians
- The Regulators
- Wall Street Ethics
- Who Can I Trust?
- Conflicts of Interest
- Advisor Monitoring
- Deceptive Sales Practices
- Full Transparency
- How to Select Advisors
- Insurance Companies
- Investor Watchdog
- Performance Reporting
- Sales Representatives
- Wall Street Business Practices
- Wall Street Executives
- Wall Street Scams
- Watchdog Benchmarks
- full disclosure
- investment risk
- track records
- transparency
Recent Posts
Other Notable Blog Sites
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
Sponsors
Popular Searches
Matthew Arndt, CFA, CPA, CFP
January 28th, 2010 at 6:18 am
The funneling of millions upon millions of dollars in campaign contributions to our elected officials causes a very serious conflict of interest for voters to say the least. Why would any politicians ever write sensible legislation to limit banks risk-taking to help protect investors, depositors and the taxpayers when they are receiving tens sometimes hundreds of millions from the special interests that represent the large financial institutions? The incumbents know that all they have to do is get a majority of the votes to win their respective elections, and this is not hard to do when they already have name recognition and advertising help from large corporate donors. It appears to me that the majority of politicians take their constituents along with their votes for granted for this very reason.