|
Help us keep the calls coming! Thousands of you gave $5 last week to fund our toll-free hotline. If you didn’t yet give, you can donate $5 now so we can keep the calls coming from Americans fed-up with special Wall Street deals! |
The stock market is stronger and some companies say they may start hiring again. We all want to be hopeful, but we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
That’s because the problems with our financial system — risky mortgages packaged into riskier investments and big bonuses for big gambling — have not been fixed since Wall Street crashed our economy 18 months ago!
This week the Senate is finally addressing Wall Street reform. They’ve heard for months from slick lobbyists about why the rules shouldn’t change, how they should keep hiding their secret deals, and why they deserve special loopholes. We need you to call your Senators right now and say you’re sick of waiting for the other shoe to drop! Tell your Senators to pass tough rules so we won’t have to endure another economic meltdown!
Thousands of you last week gave $5 or more to fund this toll-free phone line so real people could get their voices heard in Washington. Now let’s flood the Senate offices with voices of Americans fed-up with the special deals for Wall Street! It’s time we return common-sense to our economy and financial system.
Click on the links for more talking points, or just tell your Senators’ staff you want them to pass a strong Wall Street reform bill that will:
- Protect consumers from schemes and tricks. An independent watchdog must be created so when financial red flags are spotted they can act quickly to prevent them, rather than deal with the bureaucratic maze regulators do now.
- End taxpayer bailouts. If a financial institution causes their own mess, they should clean it up. Banks and financial companies should pay into a fund to cover any rescue, not taxpayers. No one should be ‘too big to fail.’
- Stop the hidden gambling. Eliminate the loopholes that let Wall Street and banks hide the massive, risky side-bets that tanked our economy.
- Let states protect us. States should have the right to do more than what the Fed says to protect residents from emerging financial schemes.
- Bring unfair credit card rate hikes back down. Millions of Americans were hit with rate hikes last year before the new credit card law went into effect. A solution should be added to the reform bill that gives consumers a legitimate process to review and rollback unfair rate hikes.
After you call, please forward this to others you know who want our economy to move forward – not back again – so they can lend their voice, too.
Sincerely,
Gail Hillebrand
DefendYourDollar.org, a project of Consumers Union
1535 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103