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Our Issues

Wall Street Reform

Our nation needs reforms to prevent future financial crises

Wall Street corruption and irresponsibility led to the greatest economic collapse in almost a century — costing millions of Americans their jobs, homes, and retirement security. Now more than ever, our nation needs reforms to prevent that from ever happening again — and real accountability for those who commit financial crimes.

We’ve partnered with Senator Elizabeth Warren and others to push for a new Glass-Steagall Act. The old Glass-Steagall Act stopped investment banks from gambling away people’s life savings for more than half a century. It was working — until Wall Street successfully lobbied the regulators to chip away at the rules in the 1980s and Congress to repeal it entirely in 1999.

A new Glass-Steagall would separate high-risk investment banks from more traditional banking. It would allow Wall Street to take risks, but not by dipping into the life savings and retirement accounts of regular people. And by making banks smaller, a new Glass-Steagall could also help put an end to banks that are “too big to fail” — further avoiding costly taxpayer bailouts.

We also supported the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and fight to protect its power from Republican attacks.

And we’ve pushed Democrats to adopt the position that Wall Street bankers who break the law should go to jail. As Hillary Clinton has said, “No bank is too big to fail, no executive too powerful to jail.” We agree with that statement, and so do the majority of Americans. Our polling from 2014 shows that over 80% of Americans — even in so-called red states like Kentucky and Texas — agree that Wall Street bankers should face criminal prosecution if they broke the law.

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