Wall Street Profits Just Aren’t High Enough, Darn It

It’s been ten years since Wall Street destroyed the world, and apparently that’s plenty of time for them to have learned their lesson:

Federal bank regulators on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping plan to soften the Volcker Rule, opening the door for banks to resume some trading activities restricted as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. The changes would give the largest banks significant freedom to engage in more complicated — and possibly riskier — activities by largely leaving it up to Wall Street firms to determine which trading is permissible under the rule and which is not.

The Federal Reserve, along with four other regulators, took steps on Wednesday to ease several parts of the Volcker Rule, which was put in place to prevent banks from making risky bets with depositors’ money. The rule, which took the agencies more than three years to write, has been criticized by Wall Street as onerous and harmful to the proper functioning of financial markets.

My guess is that banks found the Volcker Rule onerous and harmful to their profits, and that’s about it. I haven’t noticed that financial markets in general have had any serious trouble functioning lately.

Of course, I haven’t noticed that financial sector profits are in any serious trouble either. But if you’re in the financial sector, I guess no amount of profit is ever enough.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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