Warren slams Congress on banks, touts Glass-Steagall

Five years since the financial crisis hit, the Massachusetts senator assails Congress members on "too-big-to-fail"

Published September 12, 2013 3:25PM (EDT)

  (AP/Cliff Owen)
(AP/Cliff Owen)

Elizabeth Warren took the opportunity of the five-year-anniversary of the financial crisis striking to assail her fellow Congress members of enabling a system of banks "too-big-to-fail" to continue.

In a speech Wednesday, Warren stated her support for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act -- a favorite among policy-focused Occupy Wall Street participants -- which would force a separation between commercial and investment banking. Warren also criticized government regulatory agencies for failing to ensure banking institutions follow through with the rules required by the Dodd-Frank Act, initially passed in 2010 to strengthen financial sector regulations. Warren said she failed to understand the "logic" of policymakers in this regard, according to her prepared remarks:

Since when does Congress set deadlines, watch regulators miss most of them, and then take that failure as a reason not to act? I thought that if the regulators failed, it was time for Congress to step in. That's what oversight means. And that's certainly a principle that would have served our country well prior to the crisis... So what I want to know is this: how much longer should Congress wait for regulators to fix this problem? Another three months? Another three years? Until the next big bank comes crashing down?


By Natasha Lennard

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.

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