2009-03-05 Wall Street's Best Investment

2009-03-05 Robert Weissman CounterPunch \financial deregulation\Wall Street\2009 financial bailouts\2008 financial meltdown\lobbying http://www.counterpunch.org/weissman03052009.html Wall Street's Best Investment Wall Street's Best Investment  Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown.

Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps.

But it couldn't have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade.

The money flows are laid out in gruesome detail in "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," a report that my colleague Jim Donahue and I wrote, along with a team of contributors from the Consumer Education Foundation and my organization, Essential Information.

The entire financial sector (finance, insurance, real estate) drowned political candidates in campaign contributions, spending more than $1.7 billion in federal elections from 1998-2008. Primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade, about 55 percent went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector's 2008 election cycle contributions.

The industry spent even more -- topping $3.4 billion -- on officially registered lobbyists during the same period. This total certainly underestimates by a considerable amount what the industry spent to influence policymaking. U.S. reporting rules require that lobby firms and individual lobbyists disclose how much they have been paid for lobbying activity, but lobbying activity is defined to include direct contacts with key government officials, or work in preparation for meeting with key government officials. Public relations efforts and various kinds of indirect lobbying are not covered by the reporting rules.

&ldquo;Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown. Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps. ut it couldn't have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade.&rdquo;   