Friday, December 12, 2014

Swapping us for the financiers

Dodd-Frank included a "Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailout of Swaps Entities". It was addressed to the problem with derivatives, a major cause of the Great Recession. The section requires that some of the riskiest derivative transactions be "pushed-out" from the big banks, so that taxpayers would not be on the hook via the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for bad "swaps" deals gone awry. But, the House has decided to get rid of the protection we have against bailing out banks for gambling; they would allow derivative failures to be paid for by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, namely us.

Senator Warren has a strong argument for the Senate not approving this removal of our protection.

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