They may not agree on much. But both Democrats and Republicans included reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act – separating traditional commercial banking from Wall Street financial speculation – in their official party platforms.
“Too big to fail” banks are a threat to our economy. But they’re also a threat to our democracy – and not only to our democracy, but to other people’s democracies.
For twenty years I’ve supported efforts to reform U.S. foreign policy at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – in particular, to stop IMF “bailouts” that transfer bad bets from big banks onto public balance sheets, planning to pay for these bailouts with democracy-smashing “austerity” policies.
It’s painfully obvious – after the “Asian financial crisis” in the 1990s, after Argentina, after Greece, after Puerto Rico – that we’re never going to have a decent chance to meaningfully reform IMF policies until we break the political power of the big banks. And one of the best ways to start doing that is to break them up.
A yuge coalition of groups, including the AFL-CIO and Daily Kos, is working to do just that. Join us by signing our joint petition.