stephen bannon, president-elect donald trump<u+2019>s choice for white house chief strategist, argued that bank bailouts went against the <u+201c>underpinnings of the judeo-christian west<u+201d> and questioned why no bankers had been criminally prosecuted for their role in the financial crisis. mr. bannon made the comments in 2014 during a video discussion with conservative christians, who were attending a conference at the vatican. buzzfeed news published a transcript of the remarks on tuesday. in his role as white house chief strategist , mr. bannon will have an influential voice in policy debates, where he and other populists on the trump team could clash with some of the team<u+2019>s more business-friendly members who have called for undoing major portions of the dodd-frank financial-overhaul law. mr. bannon, through trump transition-team officials, didn<u+2019>t respond to requests for comment, and it is unknown if the 2014 remarks reflect his current views. if they do, he is at odds with some members of mr. trump<u+2019>s transition team and top republicans, who have called for rolling back postcrisis financial regulations, not adding new ones. and his lament that no one had been criminally prosecuted for the financial crisis echoes complaints from many on the left, who note that not only are banks <u+201c>too big to fail,<u+201d> but bankers are <u+201c>too big to jail.<u+201d> besides blasting the federal government<u+2019>s response to the financial crisis, mr. bannon criticized the banking industry for straying from its core functions, saying that <u+201c>you really need to go back and make banks do what they do.<u+201d> mr. bannon, a former goldman sachs group inc. banker and until recently the chairman of breitbart news, put it in simple terms: <u+201c>commercial banks lend money, and investment banks invest in entrepreneurs.<u+201d> that suggests an endorsement of the glass-steagall act, though he didn<u+2019>t mention it by name. the law, repealed in 1999 , separated commercial and investment banking by barring banks from betting with commercial deposits. some of his other views on finance dovetail with the priorities of many prominent congressional republicans. in the remarks, mr. bannon said that one of the primary drivers of the tea party movement that gave republicans the house majority in 2010 was opposition to bank bailouts . rather than helping taxpayers, the emergency injections of capital into some of the country<u+2019>s largest financial institutions <u+201c>bailed out a group of shareholders and executives who were specifically accountable,<u+201d> mr. bannon said, arguing that all the <u+201c>upside<u+201d> of the bailouts had gone to <u+201c>crony capitalists.<u+201d> both his diagnosis and proposed remedy for crisis-era bank failures seem to align with the house republican plan for revamping bank regulation. the gop measure would require banks to meet a 10% leverage ratio while simplifying other regulatory requirements. in the 2014 discussion, mr. bannon said that insufficient leverage made banks highly susceptible to changes in liquidity<u+2014>leading to a systemic meltdown when the subprime-mortgage crisis hit . to put banks on sound footing, they must <u+201c>address all the liquid assets they have. i think you need a real cleanup of the banks<u+2019> balance sheets,<u+201d> he said. write to gabriel t. rubin at gabriel.rubin@wsj.com
stephen bannon in 2014 slammed bank bailouts, lack of wall street prosecutions  - wsj
gabriel t. rubin