Against Their Own Interests

One of the saddest stories in American politics, which happens all too often, is when small and medium sized community-based businesses lobby against common sense regulations that would help them compete against the big business conglomerates that dominate their industry. Because of a knee-jerk fear of any regulation, a lot of times the big companies will convince their smaller brethren to be the lead lobbyists fighting something that would actually go a long ways in helping the small guys have a more level playing field with the big dogs.

The classic example lately is on banking policy. The six biggest banks in America control assets equaling more than 64 percent of our national GDP, and because they are Too Big To Fail, they end up getting major market advantages over smaller financial institutions. These Wall Street behemoths' economic clout is making it harder and harder for credit unions and smaller community banks to survive, which is a terrible shame because they are the ones who do most investing in small businesses at the local level. In the financial reform bill that was passed last year, most of the regulations that were passed were designed to create oversight of these biggest banks and leave the smaller ones alone, since the problems that caused the financial collapse were all centered in what the big banks were doing, yet the smaller banks and credit unions frequently sided with the big banks out of a mindless fear of any regulation at all.

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