MANCHESTER, N.H. — Hours after slamming Hillary Clinton for her Wall Street ties on the debate stage, Bernie Sanders detailed why his approach was better.
While the Vermont senator has made reigning in Wall Street banks a hallmark of his primary campaign, the former secretary of state claims that it is not necessary to reinstate the Glass-Steagall prohibition on investment banking by commercial banks, as all the government needs to do is further implement Dodd-Frank.
On Friday morning, Sanders said that a plan that only relied on Dodd-Frank would lead to “esoteric financial tools that nobody understands and are often fraudulent,” criticizing Clinton without mentioning her by name.
“One thing we have to overcome is looking at the status quo and thinking of it as normal, ” Sanders said at a “Politics ad Eggs” event in New Hampshire on Friday morning, as snow came down outside.
He argued that when Bill Clinton’s administration previously attempted to deregulate Wall Street in the 1990s, their efforts lead to “fraudulent activity” and “the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”
“All these guys on the Clinton administration were saying we are going to deregulate Wall Street, get off our backs let us go out an do these wonderful things. The creativity of Wall Street!” Sanders exclaimed sarcastically. “Well they were deregulated and they went out and they had the opportunity to do their thing and what a thing it was. That thing turned out to be largely fraudulent activity.”
He added, “Above and beyond the issue of my fear that well have to bail them out again is the impact of a few financial institutions on this country with so much wealth and so much power.”
With the New Hampshire primary just four days away, Sanders currently leads Clinton in the state by up to twenty points in some polls. Following last night’s debate, the Sanders campaign has said that they will call on Clinton to release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks.
