Washington, D.C. — Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington) today voted in favor of H.R. 4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which passed the House by a vote of 237-192.
The legislation will implement tough Wall Street reforms to put Main Street first and protect consumers. This is the most significant reform for our financial system since the country’s response to the Great Depression.
“Wall Street fat cats gambled with our future and ran our economy into a ditch while asking tax payers to foot the bill,” Etheridge said. “This important legislation will end ‘too big to fail’ and end tax-payer funded bailouts to keep our economy on track and protect economic growth on Main Street and our communities.”
H.R. 4173 will promote job creation and grow the economy, and will ensure that our financial system can never again cause the type of damage that it did to our economy in 2008. The financial collapse had ripple effects in cities and small towns across the nation as small businesses, cut off from lending and investment capital, shed workers, decreased production, and many were forced to close their doors.
For years, Etheridge has called for an end to the wild west of speculation in derivatives markets. H.R. 4173 includes his proposal to rein in excessive speculation. For the first time ever, over-the-counter derivatives market for transactions between dealers and major swap participants will be required to be reported. This transparency means that regulators can monitor this trillion dollar market, and make sure that companies like AIG only make trades when they have enough capital to back them up. Unregulated speculation may well be responsible for wide swings and increases in the price of energy for consumers and feed for farms. H.R. 4173 will help prevent entities from manufacturing risk in the larger economy and driving up the cost of commodities and products.
The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts for ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions and injects transparency and new accountability into the financial system. For eight years, Wall Street and the big banks exploited loopholes, gambled with customer’s money, rewarded their own failure and recklessness and brought on the Great Recession from which the economy is still recovering.
The Wall Street Reform bill will:
Earlier in the day Etheridge spoke on the House floor to call on the body to pass reform that puts Main Street first, because many North Carolina families have paid the price while abuses ran rampant and Wall Street’s protectors looked the other way.
Video of Etheridge’s floor speech on Wall Street Reform is available here.