Blasting #BankLobbyistAct, Warren Unveils "The Ending Too Big to Jail Act" to Fight Wall Street Greed

With the Senate voting on a Wall Street deregulation bill as early as Wednesday evening, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) marked today’s 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis by unveiling new legislation that—in contrast to the “Bank Lobbyist Act”—aims to curb the fraud and greed of large financial institutions.

“The fraud on Wall Street won’t stop until executives know they will be hauled out in handcuffs for cheating their customers and clients.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren”When Wall Street CEOs break the law, they should go to jail like anyone else. The fraud on Wall Street won’t stop until executives know they will be hauled out in handcuffs for cheating their customers and clients,” Warren declared in a statement.

Entitled “The Ending Too Big to Jail Act,” the legislation (pdf) calls for three major changes to address the problem of financial executives not being held criminally responsible for the 2008 crisis. A fact-sheet laying out the proposals explains how they would:

• Make the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) the Special Inspector General for Financial Institution Crime (SIGFIC), recognizing SIGTARP’s “specialized skills and expertise”;
• Require accountability from executives at institutions of $10 billion more in assets by having them certify annually that they have conducted due diligence and found no criminal conduct or civil fraud within their institution;
• Require judicial oversight of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) between financial institutions and the Justice Department.

Instead of passing the Bank Lobbyist Act, formally known as S. 2155, Warren said that “Congress should be marking the tenth anniversary of the financial crisis by strengthening rules on banks and bankers so Wall Street can never again get away with cheating Americans and crashing the economy.”