United States: Sanders calls for Wall Street reforms


Bernie Sanders.

Self-described democratic socialist and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders used a January 5 speech to call for structural reforms to the US financial system, calling Wall Street's business model as fraudulent, TeleSUR English said on January 5.

“[Fraud] is not the exception to the rule, it is the rule,” Sanders said. “The likelihood is that Wall Street gets away with a lot more illegal behaviour than we know of.”

Sanders criticised federal regulators for failing to introduce and impose stronger regulations on powerful financial institutions. Sanders called for the breaking up of too-big-to-fail banks and reinstating a version of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment banking activities.

“A handful of huge financial institutions simply have too much economic and political power over this country,” the Vermont senator said. A recent poll by Lake Research found nearly 80% of likely voters favoured greater regulation of financial markets.

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