You can't be a successful lawyer and not work for banks, Hillary Clinton once said in defense of her shenanigans as a Little Rock lawyer on behalf of the Madison Savings and Loan. Or a senator from New York, or a president of the United States, her husband might have added.
Last Friday, the White House photo op offered a broadly smiling President Clinton surrounded by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and other financial movers and shakers as Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act into law. With that flourish of his pen, Clinton gave the fat cats of Wall Street everything they've long wanted, sweeping away consumer safeguards enacted at the time of the Great Depression, suddenly making it legal for banks, insurance companies and stockbrokers to affiliate as one company.
Clinton also granted these new conglomerates the power to collectively exploit the information their varied affiliates have collected on their customers--health records, stock transactions and credit histories, for example--shredding the basic American right to privacy.
"The White House really pulled the rug out from under consumers by agreeing to weak privacy provisions in the banking bill," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). He, along with conservative Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), unsuccessfully tried to amend the financial bill by requiring consumer approval before private information was bandied about.
Clinton uttered some vague promises about backing stronger privacy protection in the future, but the broad smile on his face as he signed this giveaway to Wall Street made his priorities all too clear. The financial interests that dumped more than $300 million into the passage of this bill--the most expensive lobbying effort in history--are essential to Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate campaign. No one gets elected from New York who doesn't play ball with Wall Street interests. That is why New York Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a big Hillary backer, so strenuously lobbied Clinton to sign this law.
Also, the president has got to repay the loyalty of Robert Rubin, his former Treasury secretary, who stood by Clinton during his time of personal troubles. Rubin has become co-chairman of Citigroup, a conglomeration between Citibank and Travelers Insurance that immediately benefits from this new legislation, which was strongly backed by Rubin and his Treasury Department and for which he lobbied in the months following his resignation.
