ANOTHER clue as to the shape of a post-Brexit deal with the US was revealed yesterday. The US House of Representatives passed a bill to exempt the vast majority of financial firms from the Dodd-Frank bank regulations passed after the 2008 Wall Street crash. This coincided with press reports that the Federal Reserve Board and other bank regulators will announce as soon as next week proposals to gut the provision of Dodd-Frank most hated by Wall Street, the so-called “Volcker Rule.”
The accelerating offensive against even the most minimal restrictions on financial speculation takes place in the context of surging bank profits and CEO pay.
As the tenth anniversary of the September 2008 Wall Street crash approaches, the token restrictions on the banks that were passed during the Obama administration are being dismantled.
These minimal measures, including increased capital reserve requirements, annual “stress tests” and limited restrictions on risky derivative trading, were mainly enacted to provide political cover for the administration’s multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the financial institutions responsible for the wholesale destruction of jobs, millions of home foreclosures and the wiping out of retirement savings.
This is all happening in the context of America’s largest corporations continuing their unprecedented stock buyback scheme the wake of President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut.
All of this dramatically increases the risk of another crash.
The banking industry’s record-shattering profits fit with a pattern. The most profitable corporations are posting obscene profits and using that cash to reward wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks while investing nothing in their workers.
This is how the Trump side-show works. While people are distracted by inconsequential events such as the bogus Russia investigation, or alleged pay-offs to adult movie actresses, the US Government gets on with gutting rights and rewarding the plutocracts.
This is the shape of things to come if a “Hard Brexit” becomes a reality.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee
GREAT to see that Jim Murphy and Alistair Darling are still alive and gearing themselves up for the fray (Better Together figures party like it’s 2014 at big pro-Union conference, May 22).
I wonder what lies, disingenuity and corkscrew spin they’re working on this time? They’ll have to go some to top the last ones. Let’s just hope they’ve exhausted all their luck and that folk open their eyes and minds this time!
Jim Finnie
Pitlochry
I READ with interest the report concerning Ruth Davidson’s recent speech about the negative effects of centralisation. Words come cheap, and actions are important.
When given the chance to speak up for Scotland and vote against the EU Withdrawal Bill at Holyrood last week, she and her Tory colleagues notably declined, following instead the Westminster party line.
As the great Groucho Marx once said: “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have others.”
Iain Lappin
Perthshire
THE likes of Ruth Davidson and Michael Gove are fortunate to be living in the 21st century. In earlier times they could have found themselves on trial for treason.
The way they pretend to have Scotland’s best interests at heart whilst all the time their actions and words are aimed at maintaining this country’s position as a very junior partner in a discredited Union is little short of treason.
One day their treachery will be brought to an end, not on the scaffold but when the Scottish people finally see through their self-serving pretence and vote for Scotland to “be a nation again” and look after all of its own affairs.
Peter Swain
Dunbar
THE creepy Empire fantasists in the Cabinet, baying for raw Brexit and banging on about how Britain was a great trading nation and will be again if it can just be free of the pesky EU, think we will rule the waves again with our trading panache.
These are the same ones who think that despite the Windrush scandal and Britain’s new profile as a bunch of xenophobic, jingoistic crazies, the old Commonwealth are going to welcome us with open arms.
The “Empire.2” headbangers are not just baying for raw Brexit, they are howling at the moon.
May I just say: BHS, Tata Steel, Bank of Scotland, Poundland, Carillion, Jaeger, Bench, Maplin, Toys r Us, Store 21, Virgin East Coast Trains, Marks and Spencer etc etc etc.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
THE initiative to try to halt Brexit throws up a problem of consistency in application of the democratic principle (Scots campaigners start new push to stop Brexit, May 23).
Does campaigning to stop Brexit because Scotland voted against it not mean dishonouring Scotland’s 2014 vote to reject independence from London?
That earlier vote cemented Scotland into the UK by the democratic vote of its people and we cannot, consistent with that, complain if we are outnumbered and carried along on a UK-based act of folly like Brexit.
Would it not be more rational and effective simply to confront ourselves with the monumental imbecility of our 2014 choice and focus our efforts solely and unremittingly on undoing it in a fresh indyref, the sooner the better?
Alan Crocket
via thenational.scot
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