‘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.”

Read More

Trump becoming IS’s best recruiter: Hillary

Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton on Sunday slammed Donald Trump’s recent comments about banning Muslim immigrants, saying the Republican front- runner was “becoming ISIS’s best recruiter”.

“He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists,” she said.

She said that “it was not in America’s interest to react with this kind of fear and respond to this sort of bigotry.”

Mr. Trump, 69, was among the top issue being debated at the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire. Other Republican candidates hardly figured in the debate, thus reflecting that all of them consider him as their main rival.

“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here in the US and literally around the world that there is a ‘clash of civilizations,’ that there is some kind of Western plot or even ‘war against Islam,’ which then I believe fans the flames of radicalization,” she alleged.

Slamming Mr. Trump for his anti-Muslim rhetoric including his call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the US, 68-year-old Ms. Clinton said the first line of defense against radicalization is in Musli-—American community.

“Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people and to make think there are easy answers to very complex questions,” she said.

“We need to be united against the threats that we face.

We need to have everybody in our country focused on watching what happens and reporting it if it’s suspicious, reporting what you hear. Making sure that Muslim Americans don’t feel left out or marginalized at the very moment when we need their help,” she said.

Ms. Clinton asserted that the Muslim community needs to be befriended not demonized.

“We must work more closely with Muslim-American communities. I met with a group of Muslim-Americans this past week to hear from them about what they’re doing to try to stop radicalization. They will be our early warning signal. That’s why we need to work with them, not demonize them, as the Republicans have been doing,” Ms. Clinton said.

Martin O’Malley, another Democratic presidential candidate, alleged that Mr. Trump is incompetent.

“We need to speak to what unites us as a people; freedom of worship, freedom of religion, freedom of expression. And we should never be convinced to give up those freedoms in exchange for a promise of greater security; especially from someone as untried and as incompetent as Trump,” he said.

“I believe we stand together to address the real issues facing this country, not allow them to divide us by race or where we come from. Let’s create an America that works for all of us, not the handful on top,” said Bernie Sanders, who is seeking Democratic presidential nominee.

During the debate, Ms. Clinton even praised former president George W Bush, saying he reached out to Muslim Americans and told them that ‘you are our partner’.

Read More