Difference between revisions of "Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Banking Insurance Reform"

Revision as of 14:42, 9 April 2010

[NOTE FROM MARNIE: THIS ONE IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO UPDATE]

SECTION TITLE: BANKING AND INSURANCE REFORM

SECTION SUBTITLE: Justice and stability for our banks and insurers

OUR POSITION: ONE SENTENCE.

The Green Party supports far-reaching reforms of the banking and insurance industries, to end their culture of impunity and ensure that never again will they commit fraud and malfeasance so severe that it causes a massive recession or depression.

GREEN SOLUTIONS

Break up our nation's biggest banks so that no bank is "too big to fail."

Re-enact the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited bank holding companies from owning other financial companies and engaging in risky economic transactions.

Enact an independent and free-standing Consumer Financial Protection Agency, to stop banks and other financial companies from ripoffs, fraud and other abuses

Enact single-payer universal health insurance.

Agressively crack down on crime and fraud in the financial and insurance industries.

1. Ensure that low and moderate-income people have access to banking services, affordable loans, and small-business supporting capital.

2. Strengthen disclosure laws, anti-redlining laws, and a general openness on the part of the private sector regarding criteria used in making lending decisions.

3. Oppose arbitrary or discriminatory practices that deny small business access to credit.

4. Oppose disinvestment practices, in which lending and financial institutions move money deposited in local communities out of those same communities, damaging the best interests of their customers and community.

5. Support the extension of the Community Reinvestment Act to provide public and timely information on the extent of housing loans, small business loans to minority-owned enterprises, investments in community development projects, and affordable housing.

6. Support development of charter community development banks, which would be capitalized with public funds and work to meet the credit needs of local communities.

7. Clean up the insurance industry. Eliminate special-interest protections, collusion, over-pricing and excessive industry-wide practices that too often injure the interests of the insured when they are most vulnerable. Prohibit bad-faith insurance practices, such as avoidance of obligations and price fixing.

8. Support federal laws that act to make policies transportable from job to job and seek to prevent insurance companies' rejecting applicants because of prior conditions.

9. Support initiatives in secondary insurance markets that work to expand credit for economic development in inner cities, affordable housing and home ownership among the poor, transitional farming to sustainable agriculture and rural development maintaining family farms.

10. Oppose insurance laws that permit a company to own insurance on its employees.

11. Ban combinations of insurance or consumer banking with merchant, commercial banking or financial brokerage houses.

12. Oppose the federal government being the final guarantor of speculative investments.

13. Favor a tax on stock, bond, foreign currency and derivatives transactions to discourage speculation.

14. Support the right of the people, through their government, to investigate any finance or banking business at any time and to halt activities that are deemed harmful or wreckless.

15. Support the strengthening of regulatory agencies like the SEC.

16. Require the IRS to focus its investigations on corporate tax evasion.

17. Support regulation of all financial derivatives, including an outright ban on any speculative use of derivatives.

2004 PLATFORM ON BANKING AND INSURANCE REFORM

The Green Party supports a broad program of reform in the banking, and the savings and loan industries that acts to ensure their commonwealth obligations to all communities. Since lending institutions are chartered by the state to serve the best interests of communities, the privileges that come with power at the center of commerce carry special social responsibilities.

1. The government should ensure that low- and moderate-income persons and communities, as well as small businesses, have access to banking services, affordable loans, and small-business supporting capital. Loans should be made available to small business at rates competitive to those offered big business. We support disclosure laws, anti-redlining laws, and a general openness on the part of the private sector regarding criteria used in making lending decisions. We oppose arbitrary or discriminatory practices that deny small business access to credit.

2. We oppose disinvestment practices, in which lending and financial institutions move money deposited in local communities out of those same communities, damaging the best interests of their customers and community. We support the extension of the Community Reinvestment Act and its key performance data provisions to provide public and timely information on the extent of housing loans, small business loans to minority-owned enterprises, investments in community development projects, and affordable housing.

3. We believe Congress should act to charter community development banks, which would be capitalized with public funds and work to meet the credit needs of local communities.

4. Insurance industry regulation is essential to reduce the cost of insurance by reducing

   * special-interest protections;
   * collusion and over-pricing, and;
   * excessive industry-wide practices that too often injure the interests of the insured when they are most vulnerable.

We must prohibit bad-faith insurance practices, such as avoidance of obligations and price fixing.

5. We support federal laws that act to make policies transportable from job to job and seek to prevent insurance companies’ rejecting applicants because of prior conditions. This is a move in the right direction but in no way addresses the scope of the problem, whether in health insurance, life insurance, business, liability, auto, or crop insurance.

6. We support initiatives in secondary insurance markets that work to expand

   * credit for economic development in inner cities;
   * affordable housing and home ownership among the poor;
   * transitional farming to sustainable agriculture, and;
   * for rural development maintaining family farms.

7. We oppose insurance laws that permit a company to own insurance on its employees.