The Nation: Sanders Should Adopt, Go Further, Than Clinton’s Wall Street Plan
January 30, 2016
By Mike Konczal
I have a new Score column at The Nation: Bernie Sanders should just adopt Hillary Clinton’s plan, and go further than it. Making these priorities doesn’t distract from his core message on focusing on the largest players. If anything, it completes the left agenda on finance, as any such agenda needs to look at the activities of finance itself, as opposed to just the institutions, as well as the effects of finance on who the corporation works for. Record stockholder payouts while investment funding starves are just as much of the problem of finance as Too Big To Fail. Clinton makes a good first step; Sanders could take the important second and third steps if he wanted.
Intro: “In advance of the Iowa primary, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have duked it out over who would tackle Wall Street best. Clinton’s reform package aims wide, extending scrutiny from the banks to smaller players who played an outsized role in the financial crisis. Sanders—who, unlike Clinton, has rejected Wall Street money—actually takes a narrower approach that favors a popular but insufficient strategy to “break up the banks.” If Sanders wants to challenge modern finance, he should incorporate and surpass Clinton’s plan.”
Authors
Mike Konczal
Former Director, Macroeconomic AnalysisAs former director of Roosevelt’s macroeconomic analysis team, Mike Konczal led research focused on achieving full employment, building an economy that truly works for everybody, and developing the next generation of economic ideas.