Big Bank Takeover
How Too-Big-To-Fail’s Army of Lobbyists Has Captured Washington
By Kevin Connor
Institute for America's Future
May 11th, 2010
Throughout the financial reform debate, the finance industry has waged an unprecedented assault on the democratic process, spending an estimated $1.4 million per day to influence Congress and hiring 70 members of Congress and 940 former federal employees to lobby on their behalf.
The six biggest banks—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo—account for a disproportionate share of this activity. In the two years since the first federal bailout of a big bank (Bear Stearns), these banks and their principal trade associations have hired over 240 former government insiders as lobbyists and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an influence game designed to thwart reform, shape bailout programs and maintain their status as “too-big-to-fail” institutions.
The big banks have employed an unrivaled network of in-house lobbying teams, hired guns, industry associations, front groups and behind-the-scenes influence peddlers with deep connections to Congress and the Obama administration, including the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, the Treasury Department, and key regulatory agencies.
The lobbying spree is taxpayer-funded—it follows $160 billion in bailouts from Congress and trillions in cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. And as their influence has come to be viewed as increasingly toxic in Washington, the banks have shifted segments of their political activity to a “shadow lobby” that includes such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
(More here.)
By Kevin Connor
Institute for America's Future
May 11th, 2010
Throughout the financial reform debate, the finance industry has waged an unprecedented assault on the democratic process, spending an estimated $1.4 million per day to influence Congress and hiring 70 members of Congress and 940 former federal employees to lobby on their behalf.
The six biggest banks—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo—account for a disproportionate share of this activity. In the two years since the first federal bailout of a big bank (Bear Stearns), these banks and their principal trade associations have hired over 240 former government insiders as lobbyists and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an influence game designed to thwart reform, shape bailout programs and maintain their status as “too-big-to-fail” institutions.
The big banks have employed an unrivaled network of in-house lobbying teams, hired guns, industry associations, front groups and behind-the-scenes influence peddlers with deep connections to Congress and the Obama administration, including the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, the Treasury Department, and key regulatory agencies.
The lobbying spree is taxpayer-funded—it follows $160 billion in bailouts from Congress and trillions in cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. And as their influence has come to be viewed as increasingly toxic in Washington, the banks have shifted segments of their political activity to a “shadow lobby” that includes such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
(More here.)
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