I’ll never forget the bailout of Wall Street in October 2008. US treasury secretary Hank Paulson told Congress members that if several hundred billion were not approved over a weekend, we wouldn’t have an economy the following week. Not something I’d like to see again. But here we go again.



They’re calling it the Financial Choice Act. But in fact, it is a wrong and dangerous choice that pretends as if there never was a financial crisis.

In 2008, the world economy crashed because a bunch of large financial institutions acted irresponsibly. These banks, investment firms, mortgage lenders and private equity fund suckered people into terrible loans and investments, and then engaged in reckless speculation – all to help their bottom line. The banks took the homes of millions of families; millions of hardworking people lost their jobs.

To protect American families from future crises, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010.



We rewrote the rules to protect consumers from abusive and deceptive practices. Dodd-Frank also empowered shareholders, financial regulators and investors to put a check on Wall Street. Because of Dodd-Frank, the financial markets have stabilized. In fact, they’ve done more than just stabilize: they have flourished and been more profitable than ever before.



Despite record profits, the financial services sector wants more – and Republicans are ready to help their friends by killing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and repealing Dodd-Frank.

If the Financial Choice Act passes, there won’t be an agency like the CFPB to take on banks such as Wells Fargo, which opened millions of fraudulent accounts and charged their customers unnecessary fees.

If you want to buy a house, it will let salespeople push you into high-interest, high-fee loans because it increases their referral fees. On top of that, it makes it easier for realtors and mortgage lenders to sell you into closing services that they actually control – essentially giving themselves a kickback.

If you’re planning for retirement, financial advisers will also be able to put their interests before yours. This means they will steer you toward high-cost retirement funds because it helps their bottom lines.

This is what the Financial Choice Act will bring: higher fees, hidden commissions and less oversight.

Republicans say that we have to gut regulations in the financial services sector to create jobs. That’s just flat-out absurd. Since Dodd-Frank’s passage, our economy has created 16m jobs, business lending has increased 75%, and banks of all sizes pulled in more than $171bn in profit last year.

Our economy does best when financial markets are well regulated and we focus on increasing innovation, investment and productivity. It’s a lie to say those two things are mutually exclusive. Prudent regulation enables prosperity; letting Wall Street rig the rules results in stagnation and inequality.

If we want to avoid reliving the despair and harm from the Great Recession, we must oppose any attempts to repeal market oversight and gut the CFPB. Doing so risks sending our world economy into another nosedive and hurting working families. At the end of the day, it’s these families who will end up paying the price.

There’s no other way to put it. The Financial Choice Act is the wrong choice.