$5 Billion in Political Contributions Bought Wall Street Freedom From Regulation,...

$5 Billion in Political Contributions Bought Wall Street Freedom From
Regulation, Report Finds

WASHINGTON, March 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The financial sector invested
more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the
past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulatory decisions
that led to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report
issued today by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation.

The report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," shows
that, from 1998-2008, the financial sector made $1.7 billion in political
contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists.

Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry
in 2007 alone. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, "Sold Out" finds 142 of
the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking
government officials.

The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, together, led
to the financial meltdown. These include prohibitions on regulating financial
derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and
investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and
federal refusal to act to stop predatory subprime lending.

"The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to
Wall Street," says Harvey Rosenfield, president of the Consumer Education
Foundation. "Depression-era programs that would have prevented the financial
meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who
foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money. Americans were
betrayed, and we are paying a high price -- trillions of dollars -- for that
betrayal."

"Congress and the Executive Branch," says Robert Weissman of Essential
Information and the lead author of the report, "responded to the legal bribes
from the financial sector, rolling back common-sense standards, barring honest
regulators from issuing rules to address emerging problems and trashing
enforcement efforts. The progressive erosion of regulatory restraining walls
led to a flood of bad loans, and a tsunami of bad bets based on those bad
loans. Now, there is wreckage across the financial landscape."

The report and excerpts are available at: "Sold Out: How Wall Street and
Washington Betrayed America" at: www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm.

Essential Information is a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that seeks to curb
excessive corporate power. The Consumer Education Foundation is a
California-based nonprofit that supports measures to prevent losses to
consumers.

SOURCE Essential Information

Robert Weissman of Essential Information, +1-202-387-8030, +1-202-360-1844
(cell); or Harvey Rosenfield of the Consumer Education Foundation,
+1-310-345-8816