The fault lines

Kevin Drum takes a look at the state of play for financial reform and is left feeling more than simple "resigned cynicism."

The whole subject has left me with considerably more than that. Brutal partisan brawling over things like healthcare reform and climate change legislation was (and is) entirely unsurprising. It was the same old fights as always, and it never really left me with a feeling that politics had broken down in any real way. Financial reform is different. Politically, the obvious play for both parties is to outbid each other in efforts to rein in Wall Street, which practically everyone in America hates. But even though this would be an enormous vote getter, neither party is doing it. Democrats are offering up some mild reforms that would modify the playing a field a bit but not really fundamentally change anything. Republicans won't even go that far. Apparently motivated by industry fealty and a desire to simply oppose anything Democrats offer up, they're unwilling to support even modest reforms.

It's hard to know what to think about this. If your city were nearly destroyed by a huge earthquake, proposing better building standards would be an obvious response. It wouldn't be a left vs. right thing, it would be a property developers vs. everyone else thing. The financial meltdown of 2008 was like that. It exposed such massive fault lines in our banking system that outrage really shouldn't be a left vs. right thing. It should be a big banks vs. everyone else thing. But the intellectual and monetary hold of Wall Street on our political class is so overwhelming that it was able to turn the whole affair into just another excuse for the usual partisan bickering. The winners, of course, will be the big banks.

As weak a tea as Democrats propose brewing, the level of dishonesty the cynicism that Republicans are showing -- that voters won't bother to question McConnell's and Boehner's claim that legislation means permanent bail-outs by taxpayers. In fact, not doing anything means permanent bail-outs, and rather than those bail-outs being paid by the financial institutions, much the way the FDIC works, they'll continue to be paid by you and I. Whooppee.