Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Banks

The Nation: "Whatever her populist pitch may be in the 2016 campaign, in all these years Hillary Clinton has not publicly condemned Wall Street or any individual Wall Street leader ... Rest assured that she will not point fingers at her friends. She will not chastise the people that pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop to speak, or the ones that have long shared the social circles in which she and her husband move."

Then the article goes in to the history of her and her husband's relationships with the bankers, and how Bill deregulated the banks (among other things), and then continues...

"Deregulating the banking industry might have helped the titans of Wall Street but not people on Main Street. The Clinton era epitomized the vast difference between appearance and reality, spin and actuality ... When Clinton left office, the gap between rich and poor was greater than it had been in 1992, and yet the Democrats heralded him as some sort of prosperity hero."

"The power of the bankers increased dramatically in the wake of the repeal of Glass-Steagall. The Clinton administration had rendered twenty-first-century banking practices similar to those of the pre-1929 crash.

"Hillary's access to Bill's past banker alliances, amplified by the ones that she has formed herself, makes her more of a friend than an adversary to the banking industry. In her brief 2008 candidacy, all four of the New York-based Big Six banks ranked among her top 10 corporate donors. They have also contributed to the Clinton Foundation."

"Her path aligns with that of the country’s most powerful bankers. If she becomes president, that will remain the case."

The Nation: "Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to break up the big banks. The bill, titled the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act will also be introduced in the House by Representatives Brad Sherman and Alan Grayson."

"If passed, it would require regulators at the Financial Stability Oversight Council to come up with a list of too-big-to-fail institutions whose failure would threaten the economy. One year later, those banks would be broken up by the secretary of the Treasury. Sure to be included on that list, based on the standards outlined in the legislation, would be JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley." [All of Hillary's friends.]

"Much of the Draft Elizabeth Warren movement was launched by progressive activists focused on the Massachusetts senator’s advocacy for combating the financial sector’s power generally — and breaking up the big banks in particular — Clinton’s perceived weakness on that front.

Bernie Sanders: “I was one of the leading opponents of Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, who all told us how wonderful it would be if we deregulated Wall Street back in the 1990s”

The Independent Community Bankers of America, which represents 6,000 smaller banks, has endorsed the Sanders-Sherman legislation.

Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, the richest man in Congress, implied that those in poverty here are better off than the poor in other nations.