John — since we sent the below email last week, more reporting has emerged that federal regulators knew that Silicon Valley Bank was heading toward a crisis for more than a year. And yesterday, Elizabeth Warren called for an independent investigation of "the Fed and the whole regulatory system."
Add your name if you agree: We need to strengthen federal regulations on banks and stop protecting the interests of bankers and tech billionaires over working people.
Add your name
— Team WFP
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Working Families Party
Date: March 15, 2023
Subject: Sign on: We need stronger regulations on banks
John —
Over the past few days, the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history have grabbed national headlines and injected new uncertainty into the lives of working people everywhere.
This was the predictable result of Donald Trump and Republicans — along with the support of way too many Democrats — rolling back regulations on banks in 2018. And it is going to happen again, unless we do something about it.
Yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation that would reverse a key piece of the 2018 bill, and reinstitute stronger regulations on banks with assets between $50 and $250 billion — banks just like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of NY, the two banks who were taken over by the FDIC last week.
Will you add your name in support of Elizabeth Warren’s bill to strengthen regulations on banks like the ones who failed over the past week? We need to stop protecting the interests of Big Banks and tech billionaires over working people.
Add your name
After the 2008 financial crisis, most in Congress knew they had to respond to public pressure demanding that big banks couldn't destroy the financial wellbeing of millions of people again.
So they did.
In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which included reforms that were supposed to prevent future crises — and ensure that if they did happen, the government wouldn't be on the hook.
Unsurprisingly, Wall Street and its executives and lawyers didn't like the law. They spent millions trying to defeat and weaken it. And eventually, they did.
In 2018, Congress — including many Democrats — voted for Trump’s rollback of some of the banking reforms enacted in Dodd-Frank.
Five years ago this week, 17 Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting for these rollbacks. They were joined by 33 House Democrats, including then-Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.
And Silicon Valley's Bank CEO Greg Becker, who made $9.9 million last year and who sold $3.6 million of company stock days before his bank failed last week, was one of the people who aggressively lobbied for this same bill in 2018.
The emergency measures taken by the federal government this week to prevent a full-blown financial crisis include what looks like a new guarantee of all banking deposits and a new lending program that offers generous terms to banks that took the same risks as SVB.
So while SVB’s executives and shareholders may not be getting a bailout, many other banks are getting a pretty sweet deal.
Our government has shown once again that it is in fact capable of taking quick action to address what it perceives to be an emergency. This is especially the case when an incredibly powerful industry like Silicon Valley tells the government that they’ll suffer irreparable damage if immediate action isn’t taken.
But the government isn't taking swift action when it's working people who are struggling.
We need accountability. We need public banking options. We need to stop protecting the interests of Big Banks and tech billionaires over working people. We need a government that has working people's backs.
If you agree, add your name to support Elizabeth Warren’s bill to reinstate the regulations on banks that Trump scrapped in 2018, and which could have prevented the failures we’ve seen this past week.
In solidarity,
Working Families Party
