The House of Representatives recently voted to roll back a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that, as reporter Ailsa Chang explained on All Things Considered (NPR, 11/11/13), “prevents banks from using your deposits to trade in derivatives — risky securities that many believe contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.”

“The purpose of this part of Dodd-Frank,” AFR Policy Director Marcus Stanley told Chang,  “was to basically say that Wall Street derivatives activities should be funded by private money and shouldn’t get a public subsidy, and this bill kind of reversed that,”

“It’s a little different when the American Cancer Society gives you some technical assistance on a cancer funding bill,” Stanley went on to say, “versus when one of the largest banks in the world, which was just recently bailed out by the public, writes you a bill that will give it access to public deposit insurance to fund its exotic financial activities.”