Former proponents of Glass-Steagall among Democratic congressmen and senators seem to have decided that discretion is the better part of reelection. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held hearings this week, chaired by Sherrod Brown (D-OH), where the chief executives of the country’s top six banks were questioned. It was all rather milquetoast. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, about overdraft fees the bank charged its customers during the pandemic, which she estimated at nearly $1.5 billion. NPR reported that Senator Brown stressed that he and fellow Democrats “want to push the country’s largest financial institutions to be agents of social change. And they have specific goals, like expanding access to loans and impose fewer fees for average Americans, or more outreach to unbanked and underserved communities.”
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), laughably, tried to impress NPR with how tough she is: “I think that many of them [top bankers] have come to understand that I can be dealt with, but I cannot be tricked. I cannot be fooled. And I don’t accept being undermined.”