Wall St. Policy Poses a Challenge for Presidential Candidates

By NATHANIEL POPPER, NYT
AUG. 30, 2015

Even seven years after the financial crisis, Wall Street has lost none of its ability to stir partisan rancor.

The Republican presidential candidates are almost entirely unified behind repealing the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul legislation approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress after the 2008 collapse, which was brought on by reckless mortgage lending. That rollback would undoubtedly allow for more unfettered trading and lending.

Pushing in the opposition direction, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s two challengers for the Democratic nomination have made it a priority to bring back a Depression-era law that would force the biggest banks to break up.

Mrs. Clinton has joined the chorus of Democrats demanding more oversight of Wall Street, recognizing that the issue has become a rallying cry among progressive activists and is bound up in the broader debate on income and wealth inequality.

But Mrs. Clinton, who has won strong financial support from Wall Street in the past, has been piecing together a more unexpected set of policy proposals — including a change in the way capital gains, or profits on investments, are taxed. Her proposals so far strike a more moderate note than those of her fellow Democrats, but they also have a more realistic chance of becoming law if she is elected president.

(More here.)