I have been reading about these rehashed diaries on how Hillary is so evil that she’s ‘in bed with Wall Street and Corporate America.’ I decided to compile snippets and reasons why Hillary has been tough on Wall Street — not because news articles and opinions told me she is. I decided to look for information from my own research.
I want to create a series on how she has been tough on Wall Street, and how she has been proposing solutions that go beyond “Cut it Out.”
People have been quoting a particular snippet from this speech, claiming that Hillary is so in bed with bankers, that they did not hear these parts:
===================================
Nasdaq Speech, December 5, 2007
Our economy has been at risk by investment schemes aimed at making — not just a few — but many extra dollars, and we need to start insisting on the right rules and transparency so this doesn’t happen again. So I’m here today to call on Wall Street to do its part, to help end the foreclosure crisis that is devastating middle class families and threatening the health of our economy. Wall Street needs to be a part of a comprehensive solution that brings to the table all those responsible and calls on them to do their part. Wall Street helped create the foreclosure crisis and Wall Street needs to help us solve it.
…Over the past seven years, as incomes fell and wages stagnated, many families were lured to risky mortgages with rates that jumped beyond what they can afford. We can debate what was technically illegal, we can debate what should be defined as predatory… but there is no debate that what happened did not reflect the best of our financial system. It did not reflect prudence, transparency, or even an understanding that behind large bundles of securitized mortgages, are real families who were led into bad situations by people who should have and even did know better…
...Now, who's exactly to blame for the housing crisis? Well, that's always a question that the press and people ask and I think there's plenty of blame to go around.
Responsibility belongs to mortgage lenders and brokers, who irresponsibly lowered underwriting standards, pushed risky mortgages, and hid the details in the fine print. Responsibility belongs to the Administration and to regulators, who failed to provide adequate oversight, and who failed to respond to the chorus of reports that millions of families were being taken advantage of. Responsibility belongs to the rating agencies, who woefully underestimated the risks involved in mortgage securities.
And certainly borrowers share responsibility as well. Homebuyers who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known they were getting in over their heads. Speculators who were busy buying two, three, four houses to sell for a quick buck don't deserve our sympathy.
But finally, responsibility also belongs to Wall Street, which not only enabled but often encouraged reckless mortgage lending. Mortgage lenders didn't have balance sheets big enough to write millions of loans on their own. So Wall Street originated and packaged the loans that common sense warned might very well have ended in collapse and foreclosure. Some people might say Wall Street only helped to distribute risk. I believe Wall Street shifted risk away from people who knew what was going on onto the people who did not.
Wall Street may not have created the foreclosure crisis, but Wall Street certainly had a hand in making it worse.
===================================
So it’s easy to demonize Hillary by saying that she advocated for shared responsibilities, but her speech was not meant to be a stump speech that catered to a particular base — her speech included specifics on what should have been done and what she intends to do in order to address the foreclosure crisis.
Reading the comments section made me wince a little — not only did people NOT listen to the speech, they intentionally ignored everything she said. She has been proposing responsible solutions, as well as detailing specific activities that have led people to foreclosure.
Nowhere in this speech did she absolve Wall Street bankers. She indicated that while most of what have been done were legal, she noted that the financial system is overwhelmingly flawed and should be addressed through tougher regulations. She noted that either Wall Street practices self-regulation or she would initiate legislation that would make these recommendations policies that would force Wall Street to comply.
Hillary Clinton is not only tough on Wall Street. She possesses the fundamental understanding as to how Wall Street works and how each component can be addressed through self-regulation and legislation.
I recommend that you listen to the full speech and listen hard. Don’t select components that basically prove your worst assumptions about her. Everything she says should be taken in context, and demonizing her does not give full justice to what she intends to do and accomplish.