President Donald Trump will begin dismantling the financial regulations enacted after the 2008 economic crisis https://t.co/Ptvdn2hWFi pic.twitter.com/XKo0LK5rXS
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 3, 2017
The President-Asterisk may have a long history of cheating the people who work for him, but he’s not gonna stiff the people he works for…
This is almost certainly not true. Dodd-Frank doesn't stop banks from lending to strong businesses. https://t.co/pnnW5FdqP0 pic.twitter.com/byBsxxuxeP
— David Enrich (@davidenrich) February 3, 2017
@dandrezner I think you meant it could just be the usual, which is he doesn't have any friends.
— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy) February 3, 2017
Via Joy-Ann Reid, from the Daily Beast, “Trump Just Declared Open Season on Suckers“:
If the 2016 election was a national litmus test to see just how many suckers live in this country, the next round of President Trump’s executive orders are going to make sure those millions of suckers are taken for every last penny…
One of Trump’s two executive orders today calls for a review of Dodd-Frank Law, a rule that was put in place in the thick of the recession of the aughts. It was supposed to be the law that represented the lessons we’d learned from the 2008-2009 financial crash. Lessons, one would hope, that would have lasted more than the average run of a successful sitcom.
At Dodd-Frank’s inception, this country was experiencing the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression. Overzealous financial institutions had created and traded billions in securities made of underlying assets-—mortgages and credit-related products—that were valued based on wildly quixotic assessments of consumer creditworthiness. It wasn’t until these credit-backed products had become major components of massive portfolios, like pensions and hedge funds, that anybody realized that they were essentially valueless. The markets took a nosedive, Bear Stearns went ass-up, Lehman was shuttered, Merrill was sold. The American taxpayer subsidized all of it…
Trump’s other Executive Order is more insidious, somehow, than “doing a number” (his words) on Dodd-Frank. The President is planning on ordering the Labor Department to roll back the Obama administration’s “fiduciary rule,” which was supposed to take effect this April.
The rule would have required brokers and agents who manage retirement accounts to provide advice to their clients based on what would be best for the clients, rather than what’s suitable. This means that if a broker is considering two suitable investment vehicles for clients, but one makes him a fat commission and the other doesn’t but has slightly better prospects for the consumer, there’s nothing stopping him from pushing the client in the direction of the one that earns the commission. As long as they’re both “suitable.” …
With the number of people reaching retirement age growing by the year, these two moves by Team Trump are troubling signs of what might be to come. Thanks to the fact that many Americans who are now approaching retirement age entered adulthood when it was possible for young people to buy homes, many of them have spent decades passively amassing wealth as the value of their homes swelled. Their retirement accounts have more than recovered from the market troughs of 2008 and 2009. They’ve got more money than they’ve ever had, which means they’re more vulnerable to be fleeced than they’ve ever been….
I tweeted a story that Goldman exec hired by Trump is getting a $100 million exit. My apologies. Is actually $285M. https://t.co/WwCwJ43bEr
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) January 27, 2017
Trying to imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton saying something like this. https://t.co/ni1kRFcrlw
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) February 3, 2017
Open Thread: Trump Prepares to Pay Off His DonorsPost + Comments (206)