The New York Daily News reports: “Trump, Senate roll back on W.H. promise for financial safeguards.” The Washington Post reports: “The banking bill cleared a Senate procedural vote last week and is expected to pass as early as this week.”

NICK JACOBS, njacobs at bettermarkets.com, @bettermarkets
Jacobs is communications director of Better Markets and recently wrote the piece “Another Big Bank Bailout: Why Deregulate Big Banks Worth $50-$250 Billion?” He writes: “Wall Street’s allies in Washington, D.C. are looking to once again hand out a massive bailout to some of the biggest banks in the country. They want to loosen regulations, which by definition, will impact our current financial stability. While it won’t be trillions of dollars of taxpayer money (though it will wind up costing taxpayers trillions when we have to bail out the banks when another crisis occurs), it will be through a coordinated effort to deregulate some of the largest financial institutions in the country. Loosening these rules only helps Wall Street executives get bigger bonuses while at the same time puts Main Street consumers in harm’s way.”In the 10 years since the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, two big things have occurred:

1. “Big banks have continued to break the law:

“Even after the financial sector got bailed out by Main Street, these financial institutions nevertheless continued to break the law. And they did so in some of the most egregious ways, like market manipulation, mortgage abuses and selling toxic securities abuses. In fact, in just 10 years these 26 banks racked up 193 violations. This doesn’t even account for the hundreds, if not thousands, of violations for the very largest banks on Wall Street.

“And while some believe big banks receive their ‘just’ punishment with ‘huge fines’ … not a single individual has been held accountable — meaning they are in a position to repeat their illegal behavior — and the fines these institutions pay are just fractions of what the bank makes that year in net income. In fact, for those 26 banks the fines totaled just 20 percent of their net income over the past year. This means it makes business sense to break the law, thus the continued harming of Main Street consumers and that is just wrong.

2. “Bank Profits and Revenue Continually Hit Record Highs:

“Big banks love to claim that Dodd-Frank has been hurting their bottom line, but after its implementation their incomes continue to reach record high after record high. Profits and revenue have soared and that has been fueled by an increase in lending (shifting away from their risky trading behavior tendency).

“Now, Wall Street’s allies in D.C. want to get rid of even more rules, which serve a vital role in protecting Main Street consumers and investors. Ask yourself, if banks are making record profits and aren’t being deterred from breaking the law, does it really make sense to loosen regulations further? It doesn’t.”