RNC Chair Calls for Less Regulation of Wall Street After $2 Billion JPMorgan Loss
As Steve Benen noted, on the heels of the $2 billion loss by JPMorgan Chase, here was the RNC Chairman Reince Priebus' reaction on Meet the Press this Sunday -- RNC Chief: Leave Wall Street alone:
JPMorgan's reckless, $2 billion fiasco appears to have a silver lining of sorts: the bank's bad bets help demonstrate the need for safeguards in the system. In his new column, Paul Krugman thanks JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for offering "an object demonstration of why Wall Street does, in fact, need to be regulated."
And yet, somehow, some still don't see it that way. On NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus, common sense be damned, argued that the JPMorgan mess changes nothing.
Host David Gregory asked a straightforward question: "In light of the losses on Wall Street this week, you think we need less financial regulation rather than more?" In Preibus' mind, it's not even a close call: "I think we need less." The RNC chief added that Democrats have "made things worse" by approving new safeguards and adding new layers of accountability to the financial system.
It reminded me of an Upton Sinclair line: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
This really isn't that complicated. In 2008, Wall Street, left to its own devises, nearly collapsed the global financial system. Four years later, institutions like JPMorgan are still taking enormous risks in reckless schemes. It's hard to even conceive of a straight-face argument against sensible regulations in light of recent developments, but the chairman of the Republican National Committee was on national television anyway, arguing that policymakers should be doing less. Read on...
As Steve pointed out, this is Mitt Romney's position as well and they're counting on the public hating regulation as much or more than they hate Wall Street. That's the talking point they've been hammering home regardless of how reckless Wall Street and the bankers have been in the aftermath of the crash and ever since President Obama took office, so I don't expect them to change now. Forget about the fact that Wall Street took our economy down, regulations are terrible. I suspect our media doing a terrible job of explaining why their views are wrong and why we ought to keep the gambling separate from the banking industry has a lot to do with why Republicans have not suffered more greatly when it comes to public opinion on the matter. Interviews like this one with David Gregory sure aren't helping any.
Transcript below the fold.
