Vampire banks rise again

Wall Street will never be fair while industry lobbyists wander the halls of Congress, sucking the life out of financial reform

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 November 2009 19.00

There are more than 15 million people unemployed and almost 2 million people set to lose their homes to foreclosure this year. But there is good news: the Wall Street banks are as profitable as ever and set to give out record bonuses this year. The taxpayer bailouts worked.

Congress is now debating a financial reform bill that is supposed to prevent this sort of disaster from ever happening again. Leaders in Congress are promising us tough measures that will put an end to "too big to fail" institutions and the other implicit and explicit subsidies that allow the Wall Street crew to get incredibly wealthy at our expense.