Is Wall Street beginning to “feel the Bern” yet?
Delivering a major speech on Tuesday, 2016 presidential candidate and self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders promised to cap ATM fees at $2 and promised to have zero Goldman Sachs employees in his administration.
These remarks are ostensibly a direct attack against Hillary Clinton as she has had a cozy relationship with Wall Street (SEE: 11 facts showing Hillary Clinton will not ‘topple’ 1% or support average Americans). Also, one of her advisors is 18-year Goldman veteran Gary Gensler, while her husband had many Goldman alums in his eight-year administration.
Sanders told a crowd that Wall Street’s major banks are destroying the very fabric of our nation, adding that “greed, fraud, dishonesty and arrogance” are words to describe the reality of Wall Street in the modern world.
When it comes to ATM fees, Sanders thinks it’s unacceptable for Americans to pay $4 or $5 just to access their own money. Clinton has just said that these fees are too high and “usury.”
“In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM.
“It is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent.
“The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for those who charged people usurious interest rates.
“Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitch forks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.”
One way to address these issues is to break up some of the “too big to fail” banks, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.
“If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. When it comes to Wall Street reform that must be our bottom line. This is true not just from a risk perspective and the fear of another bailout. It is also true from the reality that a handful of huge financial institutions simply have too much economic and political power over this country.”
If Sanders’s biggest concern right now is about ATM fees then he could offer this advice: do not use an independently owned ATM and stick to your bank’s. Or, if you don’t like those fees, then choose another financial institution or credit union.
So far, Sanders is trailing nationally against Clinton. The former Secretary of State and president-in-waiting is ahead of the Vermont senator by at least 20 points. However, Sanders is leading Clinton in the state of New Hampshire by five points, but is down by 12 points in Iowa.
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