‘Wall Street’s greed is destroying U.S. fabric’

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in a fiery speech on Tuesday laid out his plan to break up “too big to fail” commercial banks and pointedly attacked Hillary Clinton for taking speaking fees from the financial industry and, in his view, not going far enough in her plan to regulate Wall Street. The criticism of Ms. Clinton was some of Mr. Sanders’ strongest to date, and came after he had frequently refrained from such direct attacks.

“My opponent says that as a senator, she told bankers to ‘cut it out’ and end their destructive behaviour,” Mr. Sanders said of Ms. Clinton. “But, in my view, establishment politicians are the ones who need to ‘cut it out’.

‘Patron of bankers’
“The reality is that Congress doesn’t regulate Wall Street. Wall Street and their lobbyists regulate Congress. We must change that reality, and as President, I will.”

Mr. Sanders said that Ms. Clinton was “wrong” to oppose his plan to reinstitute the Glass-Steagall Act, which would legally separate commercial banking, investment banking and insurances services. And the senator implicitly criticised Ms. Clinton for being a patron of bankers when he pointed to their huge campaign donations and noted that they “provide very generous speaking fees to those who go before them”.

Ms. Clinton has made hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking to banks and large corporations over the years.

Speaking at Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Sanders said that if elected President, he would enact much bigger and bolder plans than Ms. Clinton and transform the country’s financial system by enforcing stricter regulations on banks. He also offered some new consumer-friendly proposals such as capping automated teller machine fees at $2 a transaction and limiting credit card interest rates, which he called “usurious”.

“Greed is not good,” Mr. Sanders said, in a rebuttal to the famed character from the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko. “In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the very fabric of our nation.”

Mr. Sanders, an independent and self-described democratic socialist, often focuses on the financial industry and income inequality in his stump speeches and has released a long list of progressive plans, including expanding social security and making public universities tuition-free, as part of his campaign platform.

Mr. Sanders reiterated his focus on the working class on Tuesday, saying that poorer Americans needed more affordable banking options and that banks must stop taking advantage of vulnerable people.

To make such changes, he said, he would fight to allow post offices to “engage in basic banking services.” Wall Street, Mr. Sanders said, would be held accountable under his administration. “Not only will big banks not be too big to fail, but big-time bankers will not be too big to jail.”