The bill, drafted almost entirely by
Citigroup, would allow banks to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed
money.
—By Erika Eichelberger
December 12, 2014:
On Thursday night,
the House passed the spending bill with the Citigroup-written
provision. The Senate is expected to approve the legislation.
A year ago, Mother Jones reported that a House bill that would allow banks like
Citigroup to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money was written
almost entirely by Citigroup lobbyists. The bill passed the House in October
2013, but the Senate never voted on it. For months, it was all but dead. Yet on Tuesday night, the Citi-written bill resurfaced. Lawmakers
snuck the measure into a massive 11th-hour government funding bill that congressional
leaders negotiated in the hopes of averting a government shutdown. President
Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation.
"This is
outrageous," says Marcus Stanley, the financial policy director at the
advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. "This is to benefit big
banks, bottom line."
As I reported last year, the bill eviscerates a section of the 2010
Dodd-Frank financial reform act called the "push-out rule":
Banks hate the push-out rule…because this provision will
forbid them from trading certain derivatives (which are complicated financial
instruments with values derived from underlying variables, such as crop prices
or interest rates). Under this rule, banks will have to move these risky trades
into separate non-bank affiliates that aren't insured by the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and are less likely to receive government
bailouts. The bill would smother the push-out rule in its crib by permitting
banks to use government-insured deposits to bet on a wider range of these risky
derivatives.
The Citi-drafted
legislation will benefit five of the largest banks in the country—Citigroup,
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. These
financial institutions control more than 90 percent of the $700 trillion
derivatives market. If this measure becomes law, these banks will be able to
use FDIC-insured money to bet on nearly anything they want. And if there's
another economic downturn, they can count on a taxpayer bailout of their
derivatives trading business.
In May 2013, the New York Times reported that Citigroup's proposed language was reflected in more than 70 lines of the House financial services committee's 85-line bill. Mother Jones was the first to publish the document showing that Citigroup lobbyists had drafted most of the legislation. Here is a key section of the House bill:
Citi Draft (CitiBank
Draft)
(d) ONLY BONA FIDE HEDGING AND TRADITIONAL BANK ACTIVITIES PERMITTED. –The prohibition
in subsection (a) shall apply to any covered depository institution unless the
covered depository institution limits its swap or security-based swap
activities to:
(1) Hedging and other similar risk mitigating activities directly related
to the covered depository institution’s activities.
(2) Acting as a swaps entity for swaps or security-based swaps other than a
structured finance swap, unless
(i) such structured finance swap
is undertaken for hedging or risk management purposes or
(ii) each asset-backed security
underlying such structured finance is of a credit quality and of a type or
category with respect to which the prudential regulators have jointly adapted
rules authorizing swap or security-based swap activity by covered depository institutions.
Final Bill
(d) ONLY BONA FIDE HEDGING AND TRADITIONAL BANK ACTIVITIES PERMITTED.-(1)
In general. –The prohibition in subsection (a) shall not apply to any covered
depository institution that limits its swap and security-based swap activities
to the following:
(A) Hedging and other similar risk mitigating activities. - Hedging and
other similar risk mitigating activities directly related to the covered
depository institution’s activities.
(B) Non-structured finance swap activities. -Acting as a swaps entity for
swaps or security-based swaps other than a structured finance swap.
(C) Certain structured finance swap activities. –Acting as a swaps entity
for swaps or security-based swaps that are structured finance swaps, if-
(i) such structured finance swaps
are undertaken for hedging or risk management purposes; or
(ii) each asset-backed security
underlying such structured finance swaps is of a credit quality and of a type
or category with respect to which the prudential regulators have jointly
adapted rules authorizing swap or security-based swap activity by covered
depository institutions.
The
bill—sponsored by two Dems and two Republicans—passed easily out of the House
financial services committee on a 53-6 vote. The six no votes came from Democrats. In October
2013, the measure passed the Republican-controlled House 292-122. Seventy Dems
voted in favor, but that was far fewer than expected, partly due to press coverage of
Citi's involvement in the bill's drafting.
Back then, the
bill's chances of becoming law seemed dim. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew voiced
his opposition to the measure, saying it would be "disruptive and harmful." Obama signaled to lawmakers that he opposed it. It never came up for
a vote in the Senate.
And the
legislation was left on the table for corporate-friendly lawmakers on both
sides of the aisle to now sneak into the pending spending bill. But Democratic
leadership is raising concerns about the Wall Street-friendly provision.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted out a statement Wednesday
morning slamming the provision for allowing "big banks to gamble with
money insured by the FDIC." And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is calling
on the House to strike the Citi-written language from the spending bill.
"I am
disgusted," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the
House financial services committee, said in a statement. "Congress is
risking our homes, jobs and retirement savings once again."
Rep. Alan Grayson
(D-Fla.) issued an even more dire warning, calling the bill "a good
example of capitalism's death wish."