June 24, 2010
The New York Times reported on efforts by New York state legislators and a bloc of representatives who it describes as “centrists” to remove or weaken a provision of the financial reform bill that would require the large banks to spin off their derivative trading operations into separate divisions which would not be protected by federal deposit insurance.
It is not clear why these representatives should be characterized as “centrist.” There is no obvious political philosophy that corresponds to the view that the government should subsidize these banks by providing free insurance for its derivative trading operations. What unites these representatives as a group is their ties to the financial industry. It would be more accurate to describe them by their support from the financial industry than an imagined political philosophy.
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