Holding Wall Street Accountable.  Opposing the Big Bank Bailouts.

After all that Wall Street has done to create the economic mess, prey on the middle-class, and make our situation worse – it is outrageous that no one has gone to jail.  I opposed the Wall Street bailouts from the start, and I oppose them today because the taxpayers’ money should not go to bail out firms that created the mess in the first place.  Furthermore, the Wall Street bailout did not have adequate oversight to ensure that taxpayer money was used wisely and to ensure that the money was used efficiently.  Even after all of the billions of dollars that went to Wall Street and the big banks, money is still not making its way to the middle-class and small businesses in the form of loans and investment needed to turn our economy around.  

There is no question that Wall Street recklessness was a contributing factor to this recession that we are still working to get out of.  It is particularly egregious that so many of those firms have gone on to use those same dollars to reward executives with out-sized bonuses.  We need to make sure that, in the future, big banks and other financial conglomerates know they will gain no rewards from engaging in excessively risky financial schemes with other people’s money.