Financial Reform Bills Don't Do Enough To Prevent Another Financial Collapse, Says Grayson On 'Ratigan'

Huffington Post

Before the Senate passed it's version of the financial reform bill, Dylan Ratigan questioned whether the legislation addressed the causes of the financial crisis.

On "The Dylan Ratigan Show" Thursday, Ratigan recapped the causes of the global financial collapse, and then asked Reps. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Brad Miller (D-NC) if the bills would prevent Americans from another collapse.

Grayson weighed in, saying that the legislation doesn't go far enough:

Grayson: Well the answer to your question is there's not enough in the legislation. What the legislation does is simply not enough. What it does is it extends the existing authority to resolve banks, to wind up banks to other financial-type institutions like AIG. And the reason why they claimed that there was a need for a bailout in the first place is because they claim that the bank resolution authority did not extend to insurance companies like AIG. I never really bought that argument. But they're saying that this legislation will permit that. I think the problem goes far deeper than that. I think we have to get away from this idea that we react to crises like this and we have to try to prevent them. We're facing a crisis in our economy as deep as the crisis existed in the 1890's when the trusts were taking over the economy. And to respond to that, we passed the Sherman Antitrust Act and said there couldn't be a trust. I think we need to do exactly the same thing in this circumstance. 'Too big to fail' means too big to exist. We have to systematically dismantle the institutions that cause systemic risk to the economy and that for sure the Senate bill does not do.

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