"Trump bailed out Wall Street, but not Main Street."
Financial reform enacted through the Dodd-Frank Act has made a lot of necessary progress since the crisis. U.S. banks have more substantial loss-absorbing capital cushions, increasingly rely on stable sources of funding, undergo rigorous stress testing, and plan for their orderly failure. President Trump’s intent to dismantle these reforms only helps Wall Street’s bottom line—ignoring the memory of every family who lost their home, every worker who lost his or her job, and every consumer who was peddled a toxic financial product.15 [...] The fact that President Donald Trump and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling are well on their way to choosing Wall Street over Main Street and letting Wall Street choose its own rules is not surprising, but the lack of subtlety is striking. The provisions in the Financial CHOICE Act show a malicious disregard for the lessons learned in the financial crisis. Erasing the progress made on financial stability, consumer protection, and the concentration of economic power on Wall Street would make the real economy far more vulnerable to the daily ravages of the worst financial practices, as well as to another serious financial crisis and ensuing recession. Lack of accountability would grow worse, not better, devastating the societal fabric of trust that deeply needs to be rebuilt. Too many workers lost their jobs, too many families lost their homes and wealth, and too many consumers were wronged for the United States to go back to those precrisis ways.