Wall Street Not Welcome at 2016 Political Conventions

Were it not for Melania Trump’s plagiarism, Ted Cruz’s betrayal, Donald Trump’s doomsaying, hackers’ infiltration of the Democratic National Committee’s servers, the fall of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the revolt of Bernie Sanders’s supporters, and a half-dozen or so lesser scandals—gasp for breath!—the major story coming out of the Republican and Democratic conventions might well be the sudden and pronounced move by both parties against Wall Street.

It began on the first day of the Republican gathering in Cleveland. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, announced to reporters that the Republican Party platform would include a call to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banks. This was a shock. The restoration of Glass-Steagall was hardly a foreign idea in this year’s presidential race, but it had mainly been the province of liberals such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Manafort didn’t care. “We believe that the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the big banks, which is one of the reasons why you see all of the Wall Street money going to her.”