Jim Hightower

Boy, Obama and the Democratic senate really socked it to Wall Street with their financial reform bill, didn't they? The American people demanded reform, said the senate banking chairman, and "this [bill] is their victory."

Hey, those banksters who wrecked our economy deserve to be hit hard. But... wait. If the bill is so tough, why are all the big bankers smiling? Because, despite Washington's populist rhetoric, they know that the White House and Congress are letting them escape with a mere increase in regulations, keeping their destructive power, overwhelming size, and monopolistic market control intact. They wriggled out of the real populist proposals to break up all "too-big-to-fail" banks and to decentralize Wall Street power. "If you talk to anyone privately," says one investment banker, "there's a sigh of relief."

How did the banksters so deftly dodge the public's demand for real change? Money. In the past year, while Congress's banking committees have been writing the reform bill, Wall Street executive and lobbyists have held 845 fundraising events for the members of those committees, putting millions of dollars into their re-election campaigns.

Lest you think bankers will now meekly accept the regulations in the bill, note that a top hatchetman for the Chamber of Commerce has said, "This is not the end of the process." Even before the House-Senate Conference committee was appointed to finalize the bill, lobbyists were swarming its likely members, demanding that various regulations be weakened or killed. They're also looking for loopholes in the bill's language, and their lawyers are already preparing court challenges.

This is Jim Hightower saying... Regulations are a rabbit's warren of escapes. The only reforms that'll actually stop Wall Street's destructive gambling with our economy are those structural reforms that outlaw, downsize and decentralize the gamblers.