The financial services industry is spending millions and millions on lobbying to defeat the financial reform bill, which will be debated soon in the Senate. Last month, Americans for Financial Reform estimated the industry was spending $1.4 million every day on lobbyists and political contributions. Last week, the leaders of that industry, who were saved by U.S. taxpayers, had a meeting with top Obama officials. The Obama team wants them to stop fighting reform. Bloomberg got the scoop on the "private" meeting:
Top White House officials last week pressed the chief executive officers of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to stop lobbying against a financial-regulatory bill advancing in Congress, according to people who attended the meeting.Did anyone think asking the financial guys to stop lobbying would work? I mean, it's not like they've been such responsible citizens for the past couple decades, especially of late. They destroyed our economy and have no compunctions about it.
President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers met with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and about 12 other executives at an April 6 event in Washington hosted by the Financial Services Forum, said the people, who declined to be identified because the meeting was private.
Today's Wall Street Journal reports that some of the big bankers who were at the White House kept lobbying. So far, to no avail on the issue of derivatives:
Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley had been pressing hard in recent days to dilute provisions of the bill that would change the rules for derivatives trading. But the Obama administration, which has made this one of its priorities for the financial-regulatory bill, has pushed back hard and appears to be succeeding.Keep pushing back because those bankers are going to keep spending millions on lobbyists. The White House and the Senate can't back down on this one.
