Sanders on breaking up banks "I have not studied... the legal implications of that"

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The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
The whole forum is sick to the gills of Sanders/Hillary stuff, I know, sorry. I think this is important

I've made some questionable threads on this topic in the past. I own up to that. Set all of that aside please.

(via: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/...-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2588306)

Daily News: And then, you further said that you expect to break them up within the first year of your administration. What authority do you have to do that? And how would that work? How would you break up JPMorgan Chase?

Sanders: Well, by the way, the idea of breaking up these banks is not an original idea. It's an idea that some conservatives have also agreed to.

You've got head of, I think it's, the Kansas City Fed, some pretty conservative guys, who understands. Let's talk about the merit of the issue, and then talk about how we get there.

Right now, what you have are two factors. We bailed out Wall Street because the banks are too big to fail, correct? It turns out, that three out of the four largest banks are bigger today than they were when we bailed them out, when they were too-big-to-fail. That's number one.

Number two, if you look at the six largest financial institutions of this country, their assets somewhere around $10 trillion. That is equivalent to 58% of the GDP of America. They issue two-thirds of the credit cards in this country, and about one-third of the mortgages. That is a lot of power.

And I think that if somebody, like if Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would look at that. Forgetting even the risk element, the bailout element, and just look at the kind of financial power that these guys have, would say that is too much power.

Daily News: Okay. Well, let's assume that you're correct on that point. How do you go about doing it?

Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.

Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?

Sanders: Well, I don't know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.

Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, "Now you must do X, Y and Z?"

Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.

Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?

Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.

Daily News: So if you look forward, a year, maybe two years, right now you have...JPMorgan has 241,000 employees. About 20,000 of them in New York. $192 billion in net assets. What happens? What do you foresee? What is JPMorgan in year two of...

Sanders: What I foresee is a stronger national economy. And, in fact, a stronger economy in New York State, as well. What I foresee is a financial system which actually makes affordable loans to small and medium-size businesses. Does not live as an island onto themselves concerned about their own profits. And, in fact, creating incredibly complicated financial tools, which have led us into the worst economic recession in the modern history of the United States.

Daily News: I get that point. I'm just looking at the method because, actions have reactions, right? There are pluses and minuses. So, if you push here, you may get an unintended consequence that you don't understand. So, what I'm asking is, how can we understand? If you look at JPMorgan just as an example, or you can do Citibank, or Bank of America. What would it be? What would that institution be? Would there be a consumer bank? Where would the investing go?

Sanders: I'm not running JPMorgan Chase or Citibank.


Daily News: No. But you'd be breaking it up.

Sanders: That's right. And that is their decision as to what they want to do and how they want to reconfigure themselves. That's not my decision. All I am saying is that I do not want to see this country be in a position where it was in 2008, where we have to bail them out. And, in addition, I oppose that kind of concentration of ownership entirely.

You're asking a question, which is a fair question. But let me just take your question and take it to another issue. Alright? It would be fair for you to say, "Well, Bernie, you got on there that you are strongly concerned about climate change and that we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel. What happens to the people in the fossil fuel industry?"

That's a fair question. But the other part of that is if we do not address that issue the planet we’re gonna leave your kids and your grandchildren may not be a particularly healthy or habitable one. So I can't say, if you're saying that we’re going to break up the banks, will it have a negative consequence on some people? I suspect that it will. Will it have a positive impact on the economy in general? Yes, I think it will.


Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I'm a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order...

Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator.

Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I'm not quite...

Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.


Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

Daily News: Okay. Staying with Wall Street, you've pointed out, that "not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy." Why was that? Why did that happen? Why was there no prosecution?

Sanders: I would suspect that the answer that some would give you is that while what they did was horrific, and greedy and had a huge impact on our economy, that some suggest that...that those activities were not illegal. I disagree. And I think an aggressive attorney general would have found illegal activity.

Daily News: So do you think that President Obama's Justice Department essentially was either in the tank or not as...

Sanders: No, I wouldn’t say they were in the tank. I'm saying, a Sanders administration would have a much more aggressive attorney general looking at all of the legal implications. All I can tell you is that if you have Goldman Sachs paying a settlement fee of $5 billion, other banks paying a larger fee, I think most Americans think, "Well, why do they pay $5 billion?" Not because they're heck of a nice guys who want to pay $5 billion. Something was wrong there. And if something was wrong, I think they were illegal activities.

Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments?

Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes.

Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?

Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don't. But if I would...yeah, that's what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that's illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives.


Daily News: I'm only pressing because you've made it such a central part of your campaign. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it.

Sanders: Let me be very clear about this. Alright? Let me repeat what I have said. Maybe you've got a quote there. I do believe that, to a significant degree, the business model of Wall Street is fraud.

And you asked me, you started this discussion off appropriately enough about when I talk about morality. When I talk about it, that's what I think. I think when you have the most powerful financial institutions in this country, whose assets are equivalent to 58% of the GDP of this country, who day after day engage in fraudulent activity, that sets a tone.

That sets a tone for some 10-year-old kid in this country who says, "Look, these people are getting away from it. They're lying. They're cheating. Why can't I do that?"

Daily News: What kind of fraudulent activity are you referring to when you say that?

Sanders: What kind of fraudulent activity? Fraudulent activity that brought this country into the worst economic decline in its history by selling packages of fraudulent, fraudulent, worthless subprime mortgages. How's that for a start?

Selling products to people who you knew could not repay them. Lying to people without allowing them to know that in a year, their interest rates would be off the charts. They would not repay that. Bundling these things. Putting them into packages with good mortgages. That's fraudulent activity.
 
Bernie Sanders cannot come up with specifics for the only issue that he consistently stumps for.

Let that sink in
 
Bernie Sanders cannot come up with specifics for the only issue that he consistently stumps for.

Let that sink in
1. not the only issue he stumps for
2. no one should trust anyone who claims to have all the answers?

It's ok to say "this is where we need to go" while also saying "it's going to take more than me to get us there"
 
Normally I'd make a derogatory comment about Sanders and move on, but I think it's best to refrain. It really is important for his supporters to realise that no matter how appealing you might find his message, this man is not qualified to be President
 
Bernie Sanders cannot come up with specifics for the only issue that he consistently stumps for.

Let that sink in

Um did you even read?

Sanders: Let me be very clear about this. Alright? Let me repeat what I have said.

All the answers right there. He was clear and he repeated himself. Sign me up for that. We'll figure out legal and economic ramifications as we go! It'll be a political revolution.
 
Sanders: I'm not running JPMorgan Chase or Citibank.

Daily News: No. But you'd be breaking it up.

Sanders: That's right. And that is their decision as to what they want to do and how they want to reconfigure themselves. That's not my decision. All I am saying is that I do not want to see this country be in a position where it was in 2008, where we have to bail them out. And, in addition, I oppose that kind of concentration of ownership entirely.

You're asking a question, which is a fair question. But let me just take your question and take it to another issue. Alright? It would be fair for you to say, "Well, Bernie, you got on there that you are strongly concerned about climate change and that we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel. What happens to the people in the fossil fuel industry?"

That's a fair question. But the other part of that is if we do not address that issue the planet we’re gonna leave your kids and your grandchildren may not be a particularly healthy or habitable one. So I can't say, if you're saying that we’re going to break up the banks, will it have a negative consequence on some people? I suspect that it will. Will it have a positive impact on the economy in general? Yes, I think it will.
I am not a fan of Sanders but I think this should have been highlighted in the OP.
 
2. no one should trust anyone who claims to have all the answers?

He's been stumping on this issue for how goddamn long and he still doesn't have any specifics? Any example of an actual law, or section of a law, he could possibly point to that gives the executive branch any administrative power to do anything mentioned above?

I could see this being a justification if he'd mentioned a section of Dodd-Frank or some other existing statute and later had to correct himself.

But this?

This is a big, fat mess.
 
Bernie Sanders cannot come up with specifics for the only issue that he consistently stumps for.

Let that sink in

That's a bald-faced lie. You should be ashamed of yourself for mischaracterizing a candidate so poorly. Breaking up the banks is a small aspect of financial reform, which is itself a pretty small part of the Sanders platform.
 
I am not a fan of Sanders but I think this should have been highlighted in the OP.

Good point, just did. My problem here isn't really with that specific sentiment (which I agree with, to an extent) but rather the lack of specific vision he has for what "breaking up the banks" and his Wall Street reform in general actually looks like
 
1. not the only issue he stumps for
2. no one should trust anyone who claims to have all the answers?

It's ok to say "this is where we need to go" while also saying "it's going to take more than me to get us there"

He's been talking about that issue for his entire career. The whole time he's been in Congress has been him railing against the banks and Wall Street. Twenty years! How could you not learn about an issue you were so passionate about well enough to talk about it off-the-cuff in twenty years?
 
That's a bald-faced lie. You should be ashamed of yourself for mischaracterizing a candidate so poorly. Breaking up the banks is a small aspect of financial reform, which is itself a pretty small part of the Sanders platform.

If it's so small why can't he explain it?
 
1. not the only issue he stumps for
2. no one should trust anyone who claims to have all the answers?

It's ok to say "this is where we need to go" while also saying "it's going to take more than me to get us there"

Yeah, breaking up too big to fail banks isn't the only thing on his agenda. And every president has advisors to help them execute their agendas. A president isn't doing his job alone, but he or she's elected for what they want to do and how they plan to run the country.

Also I fucking hate the Ayn Rand shit of 'unintended consequences' that the interviewer is trying to bring up. Yeah of course there's probably unintended consequences of every action, but some people seem to think the government's unintended consequences trump and major harm intended or unintended by other non-government entities. There's no silver bullet in any situation that fixes all things.
 
There a lot more. From a completely incorent answer on Israel and Gaza, he non-answer on drones and his believe everybody who doesn't share his view is probably a shill or something.
 
I mean... I don't specifically know how to fix a leaky roof, but I will hire someone who can. I might not be the best guy to fix your roof (I'm just gonna subcontract it) but do you want me or the guy who is gonna lie to you and pretend your roof aint that leaky?

It turns out that only blowhards and assholes would seek public office and we're just choosing the least shitty one.
 
Bernie, like most politicians, lacks specifics on his agenda. It is unfortunate that some of his vagueness seems to indicate a lack of in-depth understanding of the issues as oppose to staying vague for political convenience.

I don't think its unfair to say Bernie is driven by ideas and beliefs more so than complex policies. His heart isn't in the details, it's in the revolution.
 
I think aspects of Sander's policies are going to become core to the Democratic platform for the next generation, but I think that an actual Sanders presidency right now would accomplish so little of his current goals that it would disillusion a lot of the progressive base and make the Democratic Party weaker in the long run. It's a bummer.
 
Damn Sanders. Get someone to research your shit for you if you're too busy to do it yourself.

Anyway... what's the flipside? Continue supporting the banks corruption and all?

Oh they're technically not corrupt? They were just a party to and continue to lobby for the kind of things that will allow them to crash the global economy again? Well I guess that's better.

At the end of the day, if you want financial reform, you're going to have to have consequences for fucking things up. Shrugging your shoulders at that problem while criticizing attempts to actualize consequences is basically a signal that you're A-OK with been run roughshod over.
 
Yeah, this is really surprisingly boneheaded. I think I'm comfortable moving into the position of liking Bernie but thinking that he, himself, is not really suited for the job.

Well, I'll still vote for him in the NJ primary since he won't win it anyway, and it was always more of a protest vote for me since he was already a compromise candidate coming from my political perspective. General election I'll just vote third party like I usually do unless the GOP candidate is somehow within close range of winning it (which won't happen).
 
Bernie admits when he doesn't know something and gets all this flack meanwhile Trump just bullshits things as he goes along and is praised
 
I mean... I don't specifically know how to fix a leaky roof, but I will hire someone who can. I might not be the best guy to fix your roof (I'm just gonna subcontract it) but do you want me or the guy who is gonna lie to you and pretend your roof aint that leaky?

But if you're coming over to be interviewed to get hired to fix my roof, I expect a little more from you than "the business model of roofs is leaks." How can I expect you to hire a good contractor otherwise?
 
He's been talking about that issue for his entire career. The whole time he's been in Congress has been him railing against the banks and Wall Street. Twenty years! How could you not learn about an issue you were so passionate about well enough to talk about it off-the-cuff in twenty years?
Not knowing specific statues disqualifies all knowledge?

I value judgement a hell of a lot more than trivia.
 
I mean... I don't specifically know how to fix a leaky roof, but I will hire someone who can. I might not be the best guy to fix your roof (I'm just gonna subcontract it) but do you want me or the guy who is gonna lie to you and pretend your roof aint that leaky?

You now you can legally fix your roof and you know what the immediate consequences are of fixing your roof. It's a clear cause-effect relationship. Implying such a clear-cut cause/effect relationship exists with the government restructuring financial institutions like banks is absurd.
 
Normally I'd make a derogatory comment about Sanders and move on, but I think it's best to refrain. It really is important for his supporters to realise that no matter how appealing you might find his message, this man is not qualified to be President

You could get a similar answer from literally (LITERALLY!) every candidate right now in major parts of their policies. Some candidates are better at answering things like this less 'honestly' and giving the run around and making themselves sound better. Some of them also would just give the same answer as this and it would roll right off them.
 
I mean... I don't specifically know how to fix a leaky roof, but I will hire someone who can. I might not be the best guy to fix your roof (I'm just gonna subcontract it) but do you want me or the guy who is gonna lie to you and pretend your roof aint that leaky?

It turns out that only blowhards and assholes would seek public office and we're just choosing the least shitty one.

He doesn't know if something he has actively campaigned on is legal
 
If it's so small why can't he explain it?

We're living in an era of unprecedented financial accumulation.

big-bank-theory-chart-large.jpg


Sanders couldn't offer a good answer on how reverting to 20th century finance would affect our finance sector, because it's never been tried. However, the existence of huge, powerful banks has clear negative implications on our economy and well-being: risks taken are now felt much more severely by customers, and these banks have a serious political pull that was previously not present.
 
Congressmen don't write their own legislation. They have aides they stick into a room and tell them to write up the bill. There is no way Dodd and Frank wrote all the legislation regulating the banks. They simply don't have the legalese or knowledge of how modern banks works to write legislation on their own.
 
But if you're coming over to be interviewed to get hired to fix my roof, I expect a little more from you than "the business model of roofs is leaks." How can I expect you to hire a good contractor otherwise?

I totally agree. It sucks man. Luckily I'm the best game in town. Maybe you should move.
 
Not knowing specific statues disqualifies all knowledge?

I value judgement a hell of a lot more than trivia.

Did you really just explain away knowledge of your most passionate subject matter as trivia? Really?


Wow

Congressmen don't write their own legislation. They have aides they stick into a room and tell them to write up the bill. There is no way Dodd and Frank wrote all the legislation regulating the banks. They simply don't have the legalese or knowledge of how modern banks works to write legislation on their own.

Yeah, but they have a good idea of the framework. In the 'breaking the banks up' he can't even figure out where to start.
 
Damn Sanders. Get someone to research your shit for you if you're too busy to do it yourself.

Anyway... what's the flipside? Continue supporting the banks corruption and all?

Oh they're technically not corrupt? They were just a party to and continue to lobby for the kind of things that will allow them to crash the global economy again? Well I guess that's better.

At the end of the day, if you want financial reform, you're going to have to have consequences for fucking things up
. Shrugging your shoulders at that problem while criticizing attempts to actualize consequences is basically a signal that you're A-OK with been run roughshod over.

Again: How do you punish the banks for something they did that wasn't illegal.

I STILL haven't gotten a concrete answer for that.
 
Its become more and more obvious that everyone was so caught up in the Bernie hype that no one actually vetted this man who wants to be president.

I think we can all agree that Bernie sanders is probably a good guy that wants the best for his country. But this man shouldn't be within 500 ft of the presidency. He's just not qualified.
 
Bernie admits when he doesn't know something and gets all this flack meanwhile Trump just bullshits things as he goes along and is praised

And Hillary actually knows what she's talking about the vast majority of the time.
 
That's a bald-faced lie. You should be ashamed of yourself for mischaracterizing a candidate so poorly. Breaking up the banks is a small aspect of financial reform, which is itself a pretty small part of the Sanders platform.
"Pretty small" means "no matter what question he's asked he redirects it back to financial reform"... right?
 
I mean... I don't specifically know how to fix a leaky roof, but I will hire someone who can. I might not be the best guy to fix your roof (I'm just gonna subcontract it) but do you want me or the guy who is gonna lie to you and pretend your roof aint that leaky?

It turns out that only blowhards and assholes would seek public office and we're just choosing the least shitty one.

Fair enough, but you haven't railed against leaky roofs for the past 20 years or actively campaigned on an anti leak platform

The defining aspect of Sander's campaign has been financial reform, and it's mad that he can barely talk on specifics. I can forgive him if he was stumped on a question on the nuances of fiduciary liability or something, but this is the thing he's meant to be passionate about!

If he's this uninformed about a passion of his, how frighteningly ignorant must he be on things that don't interest him?
 
Also I fucking hate the Ayn Rand shit of 'unintended consequences' that the interviewer is trying to bring up. Yeah of course there's probably unintended consequences of every action, but some people seem to think the government's unintended consequences trump and major harm intended or unintended by other non-government entities. There's no silver bullet in any situation that fixes all things.

The interviewers question was not complete bullshit. The only bullshit I see here is this paragraph. Ayn Rand? lol. Everything has unintended consequences. I sure as hell hope that our next president thinks about what those are and comes up with possible ways to mitigate those effects if they plan on going through with significant changes.

A New York newspaper asking a presidential candidate about what he sees as the specific consequences for the financial industry and all of those jobs, an insanely important issue for New York City, is a perfectly legitimate question.

Hell, the dude didnt really even take a position on it. He just wanted to know what Bernie's take was and if he had any plans to mitigate the damage of those possible consequences to NYC's economy and Bernie did not have an answer.
 
You could get a similar answer from literally (LITERALLY!) every candidate right now in major parts of their policies. Some candidates are better at answering things like this less 'honestly' and giving the run around and making themselves sound better. Some of them also would just give the same answer as this and it would roll right off them.

Actually, no. Hillary would have an awesome answer on this, but it's be too nuanced for most people. It would be complete bullshit, but Rubio would have an answer on this backed up with 20 different Heritage Foundation papers. It'd be crazy, but Ron Paul would have an answer on this. I'd hate it, but Ted Cruz would have an answer on this.

Also, none of the other candidates has made "Wall Street is the worst" the central plank of their campaign.

Congressmen don't write their own legislation. They have aides they stick into a room and tell them to write up the bill. There is no way Dodd and Frank wrote all the legislation regulating the banks. They simply don't have the legalese or knowledge of how modern banks works to write legislation on their own.

Frank may have not written every word of the legislation, but I guarantee you he could give you a 10 minute explanation of it off the top of his head if you ran into him in Boston tomorrow.
 
Not knowing specific statues disqualifies all knowledge?

I value judgement a hell of a lot more than trivia.

This has been his issue for two decades! He's said he's going to break up the banks in his first year and he has no idea if he even has that power! This is one of the issues he cares the most about and he never bothered to learn if he can actually do the things he thinks might help! If he couldn't be bothered to learn about this, what hope do we have that he will learn about issues that he isn't as passionate about?
 
I was wondering why Warren didn't seem bullish on Bernie, and why Barney also seemed to be annoyed with Bernie picking up this mantel.

This interview goes a long way to explaining those positions.

Politics is the art of the possible, and you at least need a plan for what's possible. There be no unicorns here.
 
When the entire basis of your policy position requires specific statutes to exist, and you can't even hint toward the existence of one given 26 years of preparation, then yes, it does disqualify all knowledge.
Those are some impressive standards. I hope you hold Hillary to them!
This has been his issue for two decades! He's said he's going to break up the banks in his first year and he has no idea if he even has that power! This is one of the issues he cares the most about and he never bothered to learn if he can actually do the things he thinks might help! If he couldn't be bothered to learn about this, what hope do we have that he will learn about issues that he isn't as passionate about?
He does have an idea, he doesn't know the statutes off the top of his head.

"never bothered to learn" is a remarkable reading of the quote, I don't think you and I are in the same reality on this.
 
Did anyone read the OP?

The thread title isn't exactly accurate.

Here is the quote:

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.
 
He doesn't know if something he has actively campaigned on is legal

I'm no lawyer, but weirdly, I suspect that the only way to figure out if it was or wasn't definitively would be to try it and see what the courts say after the fact. I'm not saying it's not fucking embarrassing he didn't have a good answer, but I'm also not sure any truly sincere person could know for sure right now. At least no one running for president. I dunno. I guess I just have less faith in these characters than most. This is some pretty specific shit.
 
We're living in an era of unprecedented financial accumulation.

Sanders couldn't offer a good answer on how reverting to 20th century finance would affect our finance sector, because it's never been tried. However, the existence of huge, powerful banks has clear negative implications on our economy and well-being: risks taken are now felt much more severely by customers, and these banks have a serious political pull that was previously not present.

So then it's not little.

Look, I'm not expecting every candidate to be able to explain in minute detail every aspect of their platform off-the-cuff in an interview. But this is Bernie's CORE issue. Breaking up the banks is the centerpiece of everything he talks about, of everything he says he wants to accomplish. He has been working for years in the senate toward that end. It is a huge warning sign to me that he cannot explain in even general terms how he would go about accomplishing that. ESPECIALLY considering that the biggest critique of his candidacy thus far, besides being a "one issue candidate", is that he comes across as all ideas, no substance, no plan. This really doesn't help that perception; it reinforces it. You would think he'd have been ready.
 
1. not the only issue he stumps for
2. no one should trust anyone who claims to have all the answers?

It's ok to say "this is where we need to go" while also saying "it's going to take more than me to get us there"

It's a completely radical idea that I think maybe he should have an idea how it would actually work.
 
Breaking up firms and companies isn't an unheard of idea. Though in this case the basis would be on what grounds legally. The US Government used antitrust laws to breakup Standard Oil into 34 separate companies.
 
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