WASHINGTON, DC – Pennsylvania U.S. Senator John Fetterman yesterday participated in a Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs oversight hearing on Wall Street firms, with witnesses including executives of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, State Street, BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. During his line of questioning, Senator Fetterman grilled the executives about their share buybacks and stock dividends, laid into them about how bank failures imperil the national economy, and advocated for stronger capital requirements.
“Are you okay with this idea that a relatively small bank, especially compared to the size of all of you in front of us today, could cause a crash, systemwide, unless the president had to quickly intervene and make sure that we addressed this?”Senator Fetterman asked Bank of America CEO about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. “Is it okay to worry that a small bank could imperil our entire financial system?”
“You claim that the capital requirements will increase costs and reduce lending. Chase did $5.7 billion in share buybacks and $9 billion in dividends so far this year. So wouldn’t it be easier just to kind of hold onto a lot of that money and lend it out?” Senator Fetterman asked the CEO of Chase. “Why would you want to give it away to the shareholders or buying back stock?”
The full clip can be found HERE.
Senator Fetterman is a staunch proponent of executive accountability and fighting corporate greed and has fought for commonsense bank regulations. In Spring 2023, he slammed bank executives from Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank andcalled out the role of corporate greed at Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearings on the failures of their banks. He has also taken legislative action, co-sponsoring the Secure Viable Banking Act, which would restore critical protections to keep Big Banks in check & prevent future crises, and the Failed Bank Executives Clawback Act, which empowers the federal government to engage in more aggressive enforcement of clawbacks of compensation from bank executives of failed banks.
Most recently, he led Senate colleagues on a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam sharing their serious concerns with the CFTC’s Proposed Rule on Seeded Funds and Money Market Funds, which they called a “step in the wrong direction” that would “undermine the goals of Dodd-Frank.”