Around this time 17 years ago, the Great Recession was wreaking havoc on the nation and the world. Bear Stearns had collapsed, the stock market had lost roughly half its value and the economy shed 750,000 jobs in November 2008 alone.
It wasn’t easy, but after Barack Obama and congressional Democrats took a variety of steps, including approving the Recovery Act and rescuing the American automotive industry, the crisis ended and the nation got back on its feet.
And at that point, policymakers got to work on trying to prevent the next crash.
In 2010, Democrats approved the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, better known as the Dodd-Frank Act, which was designed to impose safeguards on the financial industry to prevent systemic risks.
Fifteen years later, the White House wants to roll back the clock and bring back the rules that existed before the 2008 crash.
On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump said he wanted to relieve Wall Street of “burdensome regulations.” A year later, the president’s treasury secretary is thinking along the same lines.
Secretary Scott Bessent complained to Fox Business this week that the safeguards created after the Great Recession are holding back the finance industry. “We have to take the financial system out of this straitjacket,” he said.
So, a few things. First, 15 years after Dodd-Frank became law, Wall Street appears to be doing just fine, making it tough to justify such a sweeping deregulation effort. Second, if you’re thinking this was part of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint, you’re right. And third, for all the talk about Trump being a “populist,” his administration is once again looking out for the powerful elite, even if that means creating a set of financial rules that resemble the regulatory system that led to the Great Recession in the first place.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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