Comment Text:
“I am Thomas Joy, and here is how my family and I were affected by the financial crisis.
I lost my job back in May 2008, because of the economy slowing down. After about a year of a slow down at my job, the company was forced to lay me off. I was on unemployment for 2 years and only had about 5 hits for job perpectives. A while after that I stopped looking all together after concluding that there was nothing out there for me. I had other difficulty in finding a job, which was my age and medical problems. My wife's company closed down after a while, but fortunately after a short time, she found work. I know that I was not the only American in this situation. I knew that it wasn't any working American's fault.
I just want to tell you that it was because of "GREED", dirty corporate greed that was responsible for the financial collapse. Just like the laws on the books, that are there to prevent normal everyday people from doing stupid things, WallStreet and big corporations need help in preventing them from doing stupid things. That is what these laws are about. Dodd-Frank is a step in the right direction, in preventing these corporations from doing very, stupid, things. It's not the cure all! We still have more work to do.. like breaking up the big banks that are too big to fail. Our country can't afford this.
Just to let you know, I never again want to be called on to bail out big corporations and Wall Street banks for irresponsible “heads I win, tails you lose” gambles.
Effective oversight of the $700 trillion global derivatives market is a key to meaningful reform. Because this market is inherently global, risks can be transferred around the world with the touch of a button. The proposed guidance you have issued on cross-border application of Dodd-Frank derivatives rules shows that you understand the importance of this issue. But the proposal contains multiple loopholes that could allow foreign affiliates of Wall Street banks to escape regulation. Big U.S. banks and other major U.S. derivatives users are global corporations with hundreds if not thousands of foreign affiliates. If we don’t regulate them everywhere, we can’t regulate them anywhere. Please make this guidance stronger to ensure that new Dodd-Frank derivatives protections will directly apply to the full global activities of all important participants in the U.S. derivatives markets.
As regulator's and American's yourself, I beg you... on our country's behalf, not to give in to the corporate whinning and do what's right for American's.
