Labor & Employment Law

Sandbags, Oil Spills and Wall Street

By Mike Hall

Denise Bowyer draws an interesting parallel between the nation’s financial collapse and BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Bowyer is vice president the American Income Life Insurance Co. (AIL) and secretary of the company’s labor advisory board.

The recent oil spill and the past financial collapse both show why protective barriers are important.

Sandbags in hand, thousands of members of the National Guard have been activated to buttress our coastline against the dark plume caused by Big Oil BP.

Sandbags in hand, a small group of House and Senate conferees reconciling House and Senate versions of Wall Street reform legislation are charged with buttressing the American consumer and taxpayer against another dark financial plume caused by Big Banks and Wall Street.

Sandbags in hand, the American taxpayer via our government are forced to respond to preventable disasters?remember the $700 billion-plus bail out?caused by BIG corporations who have been reckless in producing a product that simply failed.

Fortifying America through prevention is a far more rational and less costly approach than throwing  hundreds of billions of dollars to profit-making companies.

In the next few weeks we will see the well-paid financial lobbyists hurl handfuls of sand to slow down the gears of financial reform. They will do the bidding for the Big Banks and the Wall Street giants who abdicate their liabilities onto the back of the American taxpayers.

The Big Banks and Wall Street, just like BP, will shirk away from their responsibilities to offer safe and sound products and beg for limited liability. The cost has already been borne by a battered citizenry.

Our defense must be sandbags filled with accountability, transparency, consumer protections, foreclosure prevention, resolution authority, investor protection and systemic risk regulation.

Over the next few weeks, the conferees will do the heavy loading and lifting on financial reform.

Let’s lighten their load.  Let’s take each and every fat cat banker, well-paid lobbyist and moneyed obstructionist and ship them to the Gulf Coast to back up our National Guard. Let’s finally give them a chance to throw sand where it will do some real good.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).