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Hillary Clinton has made it a point throughout her campaign to make it clear that she is the candidate that will hold Wall Street and the banking industry accountable, and continue to carry the torch of big government control over the market that was lit by the Dodd-Frank Act six years ago. Clinton even made it a point to have the Dodd-Frank poster child, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), appear with her repeatedly on the campaign trail.

However recently released e-mails from inside the Clinton campaign detail excerpts from her infamous paid speeches to Wall Street that show her so-called principled stance against Wall Street and support for Dodd-Frank was not so much principled as it was a complete and outright lie to the American people.

In a speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013, Clinton evidenced her true lack of support for the Dodd-Frank Act, alluding to the fact that Dodd-Frank and the over 20,000 pages of resulting regulations were not passed for the benefit of American consumers, but simply for political optics at the time. Clinton stated that: 

“There was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something because for political reasons, if you were an elected member of Congress and…everybody in the press is saying it’s all the fault of Wall Street, you can’t sit idly by and do nothing…and I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all.”

In similar remarks to Deutsche bank in 2014, Clinton made it clear that deep down she thought financial reform following the financial crisis should come from the financial industry, thus calling into question her praise of Dodd-Frank. Clinton remarked that:

“Teddy Roosevelt…took on what he saw as excesses in the economy, but he also stood against the excesses in politics. He didn’t want to unleash a lot of nationalist, populist reaction…Today there’s more that can and should be done that really has to come from the industry itself…and I really believe that our country and all of you are up to that job.”

Thus the questions that arise are if Dodd-Frank was passed solely for “political reasons” and not as a real and necessary response to the financial crisis as Americans were lead to believe, then why is Clinton still supporting Dodd-Frank and how many other lawmakers supported Dodd-Frank solely for political reasons?

If big government “excesses in politics” are not the answer but instead, as Clinton remarked, the industry and market itself should correct such issues, why does Clinton continue to advocate for anti-free market policy such as Dodd-Frank? 

Clearly Mrs. Clinton has no problem playing politics when it benefits her, and is all too willing to support legislation that throws the economy and American consumers under the Dodd-Frank bus solely for political reasons. 

Sadly, average Americans do not see the benefit of Clinton’s political reasoning, and are instead stuck with the Dodd-Frank behemoth that has led to increased financial costs, reduced access to capital, and a general sense of helplessness in the face of an out of control regulatory regime.

 

Photo credit: Brookings Institution