The Glade 4.0

Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus, the incoming chairman of the House banking committee, suggested Congress and federal regulators should play a subservient role with banks.

"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks," Bachus told The Birmingham News in an interview.

The Republican leadership last week designated Bachus the next chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which is tasked with overseeing banks, financial markets, housing and consumer credit.

Democrats characterized the remark as a Freudian slip, nicknaming the Alabaman "Big Bank Bachus" and claiming the new Republican-controlled House will put the interests of financial institutions ahead of the American public.

"Congressman Spencer 'Big Bank' Bachus has given Americans a startlingly honest answer about the House Republican agenda – do whatever is good for the big banks and Wall Street special interests, rather than what’s good for hardworking Americans,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.


Bachus later told the Birmingham News he merely meant Congress shouldn't micromanage banks.

The congressman from Alabama's 6th district has throughout his 18-year House career raised millions from financial interests, including over $1 million from commercial banks alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

He has received over $800,000 from the real estate industry, $700,000 from securities and investment firms, and $415,000 from credit companies -- all of which he will have extraordinary influence over as banking committee chair.

Bachus was an important negotiator for the $700,000 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008 -- often derided as the "bank bailout" -- which angered the public but also prevented a widespread collapse of the financial system. It passed with wide bipartisan support.

The outgoing chairman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), played an instrumental role in developing sweeping financial regulatory reforms enacted by President Barack Obama in July.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

That's going to be disastrous.

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The federal government really irritates me.

Wow...

Who is the "Republican leadership" that's putting him in this position? Friggin Boehner?

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The Dude abides.

This is another reason why I don't vote. I want nothing to do with this failure of a system that puts people like him in charge.



Wow, strong bias here. Our economy could be in even better shape without the bailout.

I see the REpublicans giving back their gains and then some in 2012. Just like the Democrats in 2008, they think they now have the freedom to ram their pet agendas while paying lip service to the issues and people that got them elected.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill