Trump’s banksters and the rollback of Dodd-Frank

Donald Trump has ordered a rollback of regulations over Wall Street, including the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010 to prevent another too-big-to-fail banking crisis.

Perhaps Trump thinks that we’ve forgotten what happened when Wall Street turned the economy into a giant casino, and then—when its bets went sour in 2008—needed a giant taxpayer funded bailout.

Maybe Trump thinks Americans forget losing their jobs, homes, and savings in the fallout.

Many people who voted for Trump got shafted. I hope they haven’t forgotten that while they suffered, not a single bank executive went to jail.

Trump supporters need to join with Democrats and progressives in stopping this rollback, and holding Trump accountable.

The biggest banks are far bigger today than they were in 2008. Then, the five largest had 25 percent of U.S. banking assets. Today they have 44 percent.

If they were too big to fail then, they’re too big period now.

Getting rid of Dodd-Frank triples the odds of another financial crisis.

Meanwhile, Trump has brought more banksters into his administration than any in any previous administration—mostly, from Goldman Sachs.

The head of Trump’s economic council is Gary Cohn who was president of Goldman Sachs. Other Goldman alumni include Trump’s right hand man, Steve Bannon, Trump’s pick for Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s pick for the securities and exchange commission, Jay Clayton and another White House advisor, Dina Powell.

Now remember, a decade ago, Goldman Sachs defrauded investors and ripped off its customers and it’s paid nearly $9 billion in government fines.

Many of Trump’s banksters were there at that time.

Don’t let Trump and the Republicans endanger our economy again. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.

This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Robert B. Reich is the chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and former secretary of labor under the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His film, Inequality for All, was released in 2013. Follow him on Twitter: @RBReich.