The St. Petersburg Times ran this insightful editorial about the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009. Here’s an excerpt:
It is hard to imagine the disconnect among some in Washington and on Wall Street. Last Friday, House Republicans voted in lockstep against a package of reforms designed to prevent another financial crisis and protect consumers from predatory lending. The nation’s financial firms, saved from themselves by billions in taxpayer largesse, are back to business as usual, doling out annual bonuses worth more than most Americans make in a lifetime.
But on Main Street, average Americans are angry, still coping with the double-digit unemployment and record home foreclosures brought on, in part, by the financial system’s follies.
President Barack Obama pledged Sunday that he “did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” But it will take all his savvy and the strength of the congressional Democratic majority to right this situation. The financial industry has forked over $344 million this year to lobby Congress to prevent the passage of tougher rules that would potentially cost them profits, apparently to some effect. The bill passed the House on Friday, 223-202 without a single Republican vote.