Sanders vowing to break up banks during first year in office

When the tug of war between the two Democratic presidential hopefuls is indeed so focused on Wall Street reforms, one can expect both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to lay out detailed plans on how they intend to counter what Sanders sees as grave financial excesses by “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions in the coming days. Gary Gensler, chief financial officer for the Clinton campaign and former top regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, panned Sanders’ “hands-off” stance on regulating hedge funds and investment banks. Gensler said Sanders should “go beyond his existing plans for reforming Wall Street and endorse Hillary Clinton’s tough, comprehensive proposals to rein in risky behavior within the shadow banking sector”.

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While avoiding direct attacks on Clinton, Sanders has stressed that he would be much more aggressive in his approach to the financial sector, thus far without the same level of detail in his proposals that Clinton has offered. Financial regulation has been a critical Democratic primary issue and a common sparring topic for Clinton and Sanders. “What we are proposing is a tax on Wall Street speculation”, Sanders said. “Secretary Clinton, in a recent debate, when asked about does she want corporate America to like her and she said yes she does, I myself can live without the love of Wall Street”.

At a town hall in Keene, New Hampshire, on Sunday, a voter told Clinton he was supporting Sanders because of the senator’s stance on lifting up the middle class and combating Wall Street.

In his speech Tuesday, Sanders will call for “a banking system that is part of the productive economy, making loans at affordable rates to small- and medium-sized businesses so that we create decent-paying jobs”.

“Greed is not good”, Sanders plans to say, according to excerpts of his remarks. If a bank is just too huge to fail, it’s too huge to exist.

Sanders aides said that they are looking at holding campaign events in those communities in coming weeks in an attempt to bolster the senator’s support among those likely to participate. “Over her political career, why has Wall Street been a major, the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton?” “I don’t think a lot of seniors know that, and in the next month, we’re going to do our best to get that word out”. He’s set to speak Tuesday in NY. Obama raised some $750 million in 2008 and a staggering .1 billion in the 2012 election cycle with an average contribution of $66.