Chilton knows why Wall Street always seems to win. Financial-industry executives contribute more money “in every election, than any other sector, and they have made more profits in every single quarter since the fall of 2008 when many of them helped crash the economy,” he explains. “So while the rest of the nation is suffering still, and trying to get a leg up to get out of the ditch, the financial sector didn’t miss a beat.”

In case you didn’t catch Chilton’s meaning, here is the shorter version: Unless and until Wall Street’s disproportionate ability to bully Washington is curtailed, the rest of us will be held hostage to its agenda. For those interested in the fuller version, Chilton has been writing a book. Its working title: “Theft.”

(William D. Cohan, the author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was formerly an investment banker at Lazard Freres& Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase.)

By William D. Cohan
Bloomberg News
Tuesday, December 24, 2013

After almost 30 years in Washington, Bart Chilton will soon be taking his leave. For the past 6 1/2 years he has been an outspoken member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of the financial industrys most important regulators.

Chilton leaves behind a sobering message: As we long suspected, Wall Street continues to use every trick in its playbook to do whatever it can to eviscerate numerous post-financial-crisis rules. The arsenal includes high-powered lobbyists who outnumber lawmakers 10-1; $1,000-an-hour letter-writing lawyers who gain strength from negotiating over arcana; and the occasional hoodwinking of a president whose knowledge of the ways of finance are close to nil.

In a recent interview Chilton said that, despite years of hard work by financial regulators to put the 2010 Dodd-Frank law into force (witness the 882 pages required to explain a 71-page Volcker Rule), their efforts will be futile in the face of Wall Street's money and power. "The lesson for me is: The financial sector is so powerful that they will roll things back over time," Chilton says. "The Wall Street firms have tremendous influence, and they can impact policy to a greater degree than any one regulator or a small group of regulators can." ...

... For the full story:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/angry-bart-takes-his-parting-sh...