Comment Text:
My family and I were affected by the financial crisis with loss of work, mortgage problems, savings and pension problems, financing education, and the rise of prices, especially food prices. 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. Their only care is to give more money to fat cat CEOs and top executives, and the fact that it's done at the expense of the average person means nothing to them.
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 have some understanding of 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. This is a major part of what caused the 2008 crash, so why in all good faith would anyone allow the big banks and financial institutes to do it to us all over again? When I say "us" I mean the average tax-paying American.
Of course Capitol Hill has put itself outside of the regulations and taxes that control the rest of us, so don't experience what we experience, the loss of jobs, homes, savings, pensions, cars and everything else. In which case Senate and Congress are hardly motivated to act on our behalf. But I strongly urge you to do that, if only this once, make it count for the little guy, the "average Joe and Jane" who have ended up paying a devastating price, some literally with their lives, for the irresponsibility of the CEOs and other executives who prove without fail that they cannot be trusted.
Regulate harder, regulations have proven the ONLY way to reign in corporate interests to ensure they don't trample all over everyone else. The statements that regulations prevent business are simply a myth put out by large corporations who don't want to face up to their appalling practices - whereas regulations in reality have only encouraged business. Don't listen to the myth, look at the facts and act for the people.
