The American people are suckers, the media that pretends to guard the public interest is asleep at the switch, and electoral democracy is a farce. How else to explain the ease with which the big financial interests have had their way with Congress and the president to the detriment of consumers?
Do you know the privacy threat of Senate Bill 900, the "Financial Services Modernization Act," which the Republican leadership is pushing for quick congressional approval this week and which Bill Clinton is expected to sign into law? It effectively will end 65 years of regulation of banking, stock brokerages and insurance companies enacted to protect consumers in response to the debacle of the Great Depression.
The new law will allow financial institutions to merge into mammoth entities possessed of unprecedented economic and political power, permitting them to traffic in private information stored in files of their far-flung affiliates concerning the intimate details of your personal life.
The chicanery of those pushing this bill in the most heavily financed lobbying effort in U.S. history--over $300 million in lobbying costs and campaign contributions--observes no limits of political principle. Their greed is bipartisan, joining the GOP congressional leadership with the machinations of key players in the Clinton White House, all the while blurring the lines between lobbyists and government officials.
Only last week, as the bill was being pushed through a congressional conference committee, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers rushed back from a trip to China to huddle with lobbyists representing Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other financial giants. The meeting was closed to the media and public, but one participant told the New York Times that Summers lectured the lobbyists on how to spin this bill so it appears to be in the public interest. "He said it would be very unfortunate if any financial institution were to suggest that they do not see the broad public purpose of this legislation," the lobbyist reported.
Also last week, it was announced that Robert E. Rubin, the man who handpicked Summers to replace him as secretary of the Treasury, will take a position as co-chairman of Citigroup, which lobbied heavily for this legislation, as did Goldman Sachs, Rubin's company before joining the Clinton administration.
