Banks paid solons so they can gamble with our money

Public Action Committees (PACs) of America's big banks shelled out lucre to Congress members to be able to gamble on derivatives trading and have taxpayers pick up their losses. At midmonth, the House and Senate passed a trillion dollar federal budget. Secretly tucked into the bill was a provision written by lobbyists from Citigroup. It essentially repealed a provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that banned the big banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase — from gambling on derivatives through subsidiaries backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Many Congress members wanted to kill the entire bill to get this odious provision removed. In my opinion, if the big banks can do derivatives gambling knowing that if they lose, the government will bail them out (that's what's called "moral hazard"), another 2008/2009 financial crash is almost guaranteed. But the bill passed, and Wall Street is grinning.

According to MapLight, which traces gifts to politicians, San Diego County Representative Darrell Issa got $15,000 from the political action committees (PACs) of those big banks, and Representative Scott Peters got $11,500. Both voted to back the banks' gambling. Representative Juan Vargas of Chula Vista got $9,500 but voted against the bill.