Scott Brown: Wall Street's Favorite

There was an absurdly apologetic pro-Scott Brown piece in the Boston Globe suggesting that Scott Brown isn't Wall Street's favorite Senator, so critics like Elizabeth Warren should just back off in criticizing him. Having watched Brown operate on the financial reform bill and on financial issues since, it is in fact clear that he is their number one go-to guy and their best buddy on Capitol Hill. Because of Scott Brown, the financial reform bill is far weaker in policing the big banks than it could have been.

Brown is now trying to convince the media and the public that this is not the case, using the argument that he has sometimes voted against them, such as on passage of the financial reform bill in 2010. In fact, Brown was looking over his shoulder at the possibility that fearless consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren might end up running against him. Politically, in order to have a chance against her, he had to vote for the financial reform bill, but before he did, he forced exemptions for the major banks in the incredibly important Volcker Rule that was intended to force big banks to spin off their speculative trading operations that helped bring down the economy in 2008. The loopholes Brown forced into the bill were the very things that weakened the financial reform package the most, and they are the key reasons the biggest banks can continue in their dangerous speculation just like they did before the financial panic. Brown's fighting so hard for the big banks on this issue makes a financial panic in the near future far more likely to happen. And how did Brown get rewarded for his hard work on weakening the Volcker Rule and other issues the Wall Street gang asked for his help on? His contributions from the financial industry "spiked sharply" during the critical three-week period he was carrying their water. No wonder: if all he did for the big banks was his work to weaken the Volcker Rule, that would be enough to make him their best friend forever.

But there are other reasons as well. Why else is Scott Brown Wall Street's BFF?

1. He fought too hard to keep the big banks from having a 19 billion tax imposed on them to pay for the financial reform bill. Nineteen billion dollars is pocket change compared to the trillions of dollars these banks destroyed through their financial shenanigans, or the trillion dollars in bailouts they got through TARP and the Federal Reserve. And they certainly had money to spare: the big banks were recording record profits -- and record bonuses -- last year while this tax was being considered.


2. While Warren was fighting like a tiger for the new Consumer Financial Reform Bureau, Brown was voting to weaken it through an amendment that would have significantly watered down its powers.


3. Brown also voted to simply end the CFPB after four years. Did he really think big banks and credit card companies were going to stop exploiting consumers after four years?


4. Brown voted in favor of an amendment that would have stripped the financial reform bill of measures to toughen regulation of the derivative market. Derivatives were those little things that took down the entire market in 2008, a financial instrument that Warren Buffett referred to as a "weapon of mass destruction." Brown apparently didn't think they needed any regulation at all, in spite of the massive damage they had just caused.


5. Brown voted to kill the proposal to end one of the single most destructive practices in the history of the financial industry, so-called "naked credit default swaps," which have been described as "selling insurance policies against bonds they (the sellers) never actually owned."

Now I will admit that Brown has some pretty tough competition as the best friend of Wall Street in Washington. Lots of Republican Senators and House members take their money and vote with them, and Tim Geithner certainly holds a special place in their hearts as the guy who helped bail them out while demanding no accountability in return. But the work Brown did on the Volcker helped them enormously -- it literally meant that they didn't have to fundamentally change the way they did much of their business.

And there is one other factor that makes him their most special friend of all time: he is the candidate against Elizabeth Warren, who they fear more than anyone. Warren has been as clear as a bell that she will stand up to them, she will fearlessly take them on in behalf of the middle class and the consumers. There is a reason Brown consistently rakes in so many millions of dollars from the financial industry, a reason Massachusetts voters will be seeing tens of millions of dollars in anonymous super-PAC money spent against her. If Warren makes it to the Senate, she will be the toughest cop on the Wall Street beat they have had to face in several decades, so they will be giving Scott Brown enormous love in the months it come -- he is truly their favorite of all time.

 

Follow Mike Lux on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ProgressiveLux

Comments

[Zip Zinzel]

12:37 AM on 10/10/2011

JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT HAS HIT THE BOTTOM
. . . and it can't possibly get any worse.

99ers - LEAVE WALL STREET;
Demonstrate against Congressional Republicans who are working non-stop to kill Wall Street Reform, as amply noted in this article
--------

TOP WALL STREET CON GAMES TO GUARANTEE RISKFREE PROFITS
. . . at everyone else’s expense.
=========================

FLASH-TRADING: using so-called super-lightning-fast computers, WallStreet Insiders are able to see ordinary investors transactions before they actually execute.
THEN, they jump into the queue, ahead of the ordinary investors; and by taking an opposite position, they guarantee themselves a riskfree profit.

LAYERING: WallStreeters process stock transaction “ORDERS”, which move the market price- then later, cancel the orders to guarantee a riskfree profit

REMOVAL OF THE UPTICK RULE ON SHORT SALES: disallowed short selling of securities except on an uptick, the short must be at a price above the last traded price of the security
AGAIN, THIS IS PRACTICALLY A GUARANTEED riskfree PROFIT.
In a REAL stock transaction, nobody would take the other side of this trade.

DARK POOLS: market transactions hidden from public visibility.
Buying or selling large blocks of securities without showing their hand to others and thus avoiding market impact.
Other market participants are disadvantaged as they cannot see the trades executed and prices agreed by participants in the dark pools, and so there is no longer a fair and transparent market.
IN ESSENCE, THIS IS A FORM OF INSIDER TRADING, for riskfree profits

[Joe Padilla]

06:11 PM on 10/11/2011

Exactly. Letting institutions trade for their own benefit virtually guarantees the customers get screwed because the banks have inside information on everything.

[Charles W Noble]

11:35 AM on 10/19/2011

Excellent article. Very enlightening.

[kamachanda]

06:48 AM on 10/07/2011

But at least he took his clothes off in college....

[BOBinPS]

07:32 PM on 10/06/2011

Who could provide a better contrast to Brown than Warren?

Let the voters decide where they want America to go. This is (finally!) the question Obama is asking (unless, of course he does an Obama and goes to meditate).

[The Corporate Champion]

05:01 PM on 10/06/2011

Scott Brown 2012.

[drwtsn]

10:41 PM on 10/06/2011

The Corporate Champion - Is that you, Scott?

[JimR]

02:13 PM on 10/06/2011

Absurd? It is factual.

You fail to mention Brown was number 10 on that Forbes list, not number one.

You also fail to mention 6  Democrats were ahead of him on that list.

And, you fail to mention that the Forbes article itself states that one can't say definitively that Scott Brown is beholden to Wall Street interests, citing his support for financial reform sponsored by Barney Frank.

Then you offer up this piece of nonsense:

In fact, Brown was looking over his shoulder at the possibility that fearless consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren might end up running against him.

And of course, you cite no facts to back this up, as no such facts exist.

In short, you are spreading the same lies and distortions being offered by the Warren campaign.

[dennidus1680]

04:22 PM on 10/06/2011

Whether or not Scott Brown is the worst banking lobby lackey in Congress, he's one of the group and Elizabeth Warren is not. Representing the banks against the populous is a by partisan norm. It will be refreshing to have a consumer advocate in the Senate as opposed to another "good old boy" lobbyist's tool. If Brown was not looking over his shoulder, then he's not as smart as I previously gave him credit for.

[phal4875]

09:01 PM on 10/06/2011

As a resident of Massachusetts, I feel great pain for poor Scott. All those big, bad people are picking on him. That Elizabeth Warren might start saying mean things about Heckuva Job Brownie at any minute.

[drwtsn]

10:47 PM on 10/06/2011

Yes, when Scott is retired by the voters next year, he probably won't even be able to afford gas for his truck. Poor, poor Scott.