In need of a fix: with Trump in the White House, financial system reform is still possible.

AuthorPrins, Nomi

On January 20, 2017, after the most exhausting, tumultuous, and divisive presidential election in U.S. history, Donald Trump will take the oath of office. An inaugural ball of the mostly elite establishment co-victors will pay big money to celebrate history. That's how these things go.

But like any raucous party, there's the inevitable hangover that follows--and the clean-up that's needed. Democrats have a lot of work to do in that regard, especially now that they are shut out of the White House as well as Congress. They need to raise their voices and reach across the aisle to address the criminally flawed financial system that fosters inequality and benefits wealthy CEOs at the expense of everyone else. If they can do that, they might be able to channel the very anger and sense of powerlessness that propelled voters toward Trump, someone they believed was not "bought and paid for" by Wall Street.

Despite impassioned pleas from the likes of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the men who crashed the economy from atop their Wall Street thrones are richer than ever. The Democratic Party, which controlled the White House for the past eight years, needs to collectively reach an honest assessment of the hazard created by bailing out, not jailing, these people and enabling their firms to get bigger. They also must figure out why they thought running a candidate with such conflicted allegiances was a good idea, and then never do it again.

Ironically, it was the Republican Party that, at its convention in July, inserted clearer and more decisive language regarding breaking up the big banks. To quote their words: "We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment." They also called for more "sensible regulations" that "can prevent the strong from exploiting the weak."

This clause meant that comparatively reducing regulations for smaller banks trying to compete with larger ones was a good way to go, especially for rural America. There's nothing wrong with that, yet Democrats considered the notion 100 percent deregulatory rather than possibly progressive regarding the inequality that exists between the smaller versus the mega banks.

Meanwhile, there are massively important issues that must be addressed for the financial stability and economic security of all the American people. Here are some areas in which change is needed:

Banks Too Big to Fail

Too big to fail is...

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