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If you or someone you know thinks the economy sucks, doesn’t work for you, or is rigged, this newsletter is for you!  

The 2008 financial crash may seem like ancient history, but it’s why the economy sucks for tens of millions of Americans today. Well, that, and an economy rigged by Wall Street to enrich them at your expense, which is what caused the 2008 crash in the first place.  

15 years ago, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, less than two years after the financial crash began. Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, and virtually all of Wall Street’s biggest financial institutions were failing. While those megabanks received trillions of dollars in bailouts, the crash they caused threw 27 million Americans our of work, caused 16 million foreclosures, put 40% of homes under water, and spread economic wreckage across the country. Those Americans were the innocent victims of Wall Street’s high risk, socially useless activities that boosted their bonuses but impoverished everyone else.  

The damage to Main Street was so bad and so widespread that by the end of 2016, just eight years after the crash, an astonishing 90% of the American people were poorer in 2016 than they were in 2007 by 17% to 35%! An entire generation of Americans was economically crushed by that crash. It’s no coincidence that Trump was elected for the first time that year. Things didn’t get much better after that. By July 2024, 39% of Americans were worried they couldn’t pay their bills and the bottom 50% of Americans owned less than 3% of the wealth of the country, meaning they were living on the edge, paycheck to paycheck, and had nothing to fall back on. That resulted in deep, gnawing economic insecurity, anxiety, frustration, and anger – no surprise Trump was elected again in 2024. (Yes, elections turn on lots of issues and economics isn’t everything, but there is no doubt that economics influenced the votes of tens of millions of Americans.) 

Those are the facts that I talked about in my testimony on July 15th at a House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services hearing entitled “Dodd-Frank Turns 15: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead.” While most of the Members of Congress and the other witnesses didn’t mention those facts, I discussed the horrific damage to the hardworking Americans on Main Street and the decades of deregulation before the 2008 financial crash that actually caused the crash. I also reviewed many of the lessons not learned in the last 15 years and the mindless, dangerous deregulation happening today. You can read my short opening statement here, my full testimony here, short clips of my answers to the Members’ questions here, and, coming shortly, a report based on my testimony.   

Everyone must remember that the deep and lasting damage on Main Street that continues to this day happened because Wall Street’s special interests used their economic power to buy political power to rig the economy and deregulate finance to benefit themselves. As Americans have suffered year-after-year since the 2008 crash, Wall Street, the financial industry, and the top 10% have got richer and richer (as detailed here). Too many of Washington’s elected officials, policymakers, and regulators fail to protect Main Street Americans and instead deregulate the financial industry, boosting their profits and bonuses. 

Unfortunately, policymakers continue to be influenced by the campaign cash of special interests instead of the public interest. The latest example is the laughably misnamed GENIUS Act, which was passed and signed into law this month. This law injects so-called stablecoins (which we call “unstablecoins”) into our banking system, increasing our financial system’s susceptibility to runs, bankruptcies, and taxpayer-funded bailouts. Meanwhile, consumers remain unprotected from the abuses of crypto companies and Big Tech. 

Because crypto remains widely unpopular among Americans, the crypto industry buys polling that falsely claims American voters want more crypto. But the facts prove that very few Americans own or use crypto and the vast majority have grave doubts about the industry, presumably because they read the near-daily headlines of rip offs, ransomware, and widespread predatory and criminal conduct involving crypto. Americans want policymakers to protect their money, their financial security, and to fight for them and their communities, not falling for crypto’s propaganda and prioritizing crypto’s profits. 

At Better Markets, we will continue to be the voice of Main Street Americans, standing against powerful Wall Street insiders, and rejecting efforts by lawmakers and regulators to put special interests ahead of the public good. We cannot do this without you. We are a nonprofit organization that exists solely due to public contributions – please consider supporting us and our work here.  Thank you. 

Dennis Kelleher  

Dennis

Dennis Kelleher
Co-Founder, President, & CEO

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