Americans for financial reform call home now

Re-reported, excerpted, compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

Greed and recklessness on Wall Street caused a

global financial crisis and recession

putting millions out of their jobs and homes.

It is time to hold

banks and financial corporations

accountable.

Public Citizen fighting for

strict new safeguards to

protect consumers, investors, and workers.

Wall Street has spent tens of millions of dollars to kill reform. Wall Street likes the status quo. Thousands of bankers and lobbyists are roaming the Capitol’s halls, trying to convince your senators that reform is bad for America.

Public Citizen, the Americans for Financial Reform coalition, and thousands of concerned Americans are flooding the Senate with calls. Call your senators toll-free at (866) 544-7573. Tell them your story and make sure they pass real financial reform!

Senators need to hear the real American story ─ from YOU now! Tell your senators to vote to hold Wall Street accountable!

• Tell members of all parties you support the American Financial Stability Act of 2010. Stop blocking the bill! End back-room deals.

• Urge them to pass the American Financial Stability Act of 2010 with strengthening amendments and vote ‘No!’ on any anti-consumer (big bank-loophole) amendments.

• Break up the banks

Banks too big to fail are too big to exist.

Together with preserving preventative measures already in the bill that limit the giant financial firms’ risk, the bill should be amended also to limit financial firms’ size.

• Defend the consumer protection agency in the bill

Make it stronger and independent to protect consumers by policing credit card companies, mortgage companies and predatory lenders’ unfair and deceptive practices.

• The Federal Reserve has failed consumers repeatedly

It is the wrong place to house an effective watchdog with teeth.

• Executive pay and bonuses must be reined in to end the perverse incentive to gamble with investor and taxpayer dollars.

Amend the bill so that corporate officers are paid for long-term performance ─ not short-term illusions.

• Clamp down on the trade in exotic financial instruments such as derivatives, the instruments that threw AIG into crisis and required $180 billion in taxpayer bailout funds.

At a minimum, all such instruments must be traded openly on exchanges, backed by sufficient collateral.

Giant financial institutions should never again come to the government to make good on debts these institutions cannot pay.

Compelling evidence in the news
New evidence emerges that U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs’ senior executives made money by betting against risky mortgages as the U.S. housing market collapsed. Emails released by a U.S. senate subcommittee on Saturday reveal executives boasting about the money the firm was making as the market collapsed in 2007.

As the housing bubble burst, Goldman Sachs and a few powerful hedge funds took short positions on the market, which are bets that the market will go down.

Many of those bets required other investors to bet the market would rise, and when the market went bust, people with short positions, like Goldman Sachs, made money on their bets.

One of those bets is at the heart of civil fraud charges the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed against Goldman this month. The SEC alleges Goldman misled two investors who bought a complex mortgage-related product crafted in part by Paulson and Co, a New York hedge fund led by billionaire John Paulson [“Goldman ‘boasted as market crashed,’” http://english.aljazeera.net/business/2010/04/2010424214714529166.html].

A February 28, 2010, Sunday Times profile said John Paulson made a “big initial score betting against American mortgages” then “widened his net, betting against big banks and other financial institutions. His fund made $1 billion (£656m) by shorting UK banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and HBOS, all of which had high exposure to the mortgage market.” [“John Paulson: The man who made $4bn from the sub-prime bubble,” http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article7043775.ece

World stock markets fall sharply after rating agency Standard and Poor’s downgrades Greece’s credit rating to junk status. Portugal’s debt was also downgraded [http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/04/2010427184857184164.html].

Call your senators toll-free

(866) 544-7573

National Call-In for Real Financial Reform

http://www.citizen.org/call-for-financial-reform