Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, hasn’t forgotten the Great Recession.
In the first half of 2007, Brown recalls, there were more foreclosures in his hometown than anywhere else in the country. It was a period that led to the Global Financial Crisis: Millions of Americans lost their homes, while banks and other corporate sectors were rescued by billions of dollars in bailouts.
More than a decade later, Democrats control the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, and Brown and fellow populists like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., are in powerful perches to oversee the big banks.
And Brown, like many of these top Democrats, believes that too many Americans are still getting the short end of the stick.
“They never get bailed out,” Brown says in an interview with NPR. “They never get a second chance. They’re just not in a position in an economy like this, where Wall Street writes the rules, where they can get ahead.”
That anger has been magnified at a time when banks have seen their profits soar during the pandemic, in part, thanks to strong actions by the Federal Reserve to support markets.
And top Democrats believe they are justified in pushing for change at big banks.