Robert Reich's writes at robertreich.substack.com. His latest book is "THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It, How To Fix It." He is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written 17 other books, including the best sellers "Aftershock,""The Work of Nations," "Beyond Outrage," and "The Common Good." He is a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, founder of Inequality Media, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentaries "Inequality For All," streaming on YouTube, and "Saving Capitalism," now streaming on Netflix.
Who Rigged It, and How We Fix It
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Why we must restore the idea of the common good to the center of our economics and politics
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A cartoon guide to a political world gone mad and mean

For the Many, Not the Few
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The Next Economy and America's Future
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Beyond Outrage:
What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it
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The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
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Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
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A memoir of four years as Secretary of Labor
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Wonder what’s happening with bank reform? Watch your wallets.
Having created giant loopholes in the Dodd-Frank law recently passed by Congress (keeping “customized” derivatives underground, for example), fighting off attempts to cap the size of the biggest banks, and keeping capital requirements relatively modest, Wall Street is now busily whittling back the rest through regulations.
Squadrons of lawyers and lobbyists are now pressing the Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency, SEC, and the Fed to go even easier on the Street.
Their main argument is if regulations are too tight, the big banks will be less competitive internationally. Translated: They’ll move more of their business to London and Frankfurt, where regulations will be looser.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is warning Europeans that if their financial regulations are too tight, the big banks will move more of their business to the US, where regulations will be looser.
Two weeks ago, after the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (a global financial regulatory oversight body) came up with a new set of rules to toughen bank capital and liquidity requirements, European officials threatened to get even tougher. They approved a new system of European regulatory bodies with added powers to ban certain financial products or activities in times of market stress.
This prompted Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, to issue – in the words of the Financial Times – “a clear warning that the bank could shift its operations around the world if the regulatory crackdown becomes too tough.”
Blankfein told a European financial conference that while Europe remains of vital importance to Goldman (with less than half of the bank’s business now generated in the U.S.), the introduction of “mismatched regulation” across different regions would tempt banks to search out the cheapest and least intrusive jurisdiction in which to operate.
“Operations can be moved globally and capital can be accessed globally,” he said.
So the race to the bottom is now official. Wall Street will set up its casino wherever financial gambling is least regulated.