Financial sector spent $5 bln lobbying DC last decade: Report11:12a ET March 4, 2009 (MarketWatch) NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. financial services firms spent more than $5 billion on lobbying and political donations between 1998 and 2008, and won fights on regulatory and political matters that contributed to the current financial collapse, according to a report from two watchdog groups.
Essential Information, and the Consumer Education Foundation, reported that banks, investment firms and others made $1.7 billion of political contributions, and spent $3.4 billion on lobbying efforts in the last decade.
The report, titled, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," identified roughly 3,000 officially registered lobbyists working for the financial services industry in 2007.
"These companies drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, "Sold Out" finds 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the Executive Branch or Congress," the report said.
The report, which runs to a frighteningly long 231 pages, details more than a dozen political and regulatory decisions out of Washington since 1998 that favored the financial services industry and are now credited with contributing to the financial and economic meltdown.
From the 1999 decision to repeal the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act that forbade commercial and investment banking operations at the same firm, to the Credit Rating Agencies reform Act that muted SEC oversight of the influential firms, the report says lobbying and political contributions carried the day.
The securities industry, which topped all contributors to politicians, spent just over half a billion dollars on political contributions during the last decade, according to the report's authors.
The insurance industry topped all sectors on lobbyist spending, shelling out a whopping $1 billion to curry favor in the nation's capital since 1998, the report said.
"In return for the investment of more than $5.1 billion, the Money Industry was able to get rid of many of the reforms enacted after the Great Depression and to operate, for most of the last ten years, without any effective rules or restraints whatsoever," the report concluded.
Edited by johngeorge, 04 March 2009 - 11:23 AM.
