Sanders: When I'm President, Wall Street Foxes Won't Guard Fed Henhouse

Despite seven years of bank bailouts and alleged financial reform, “Wall Street is still out of control,” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders writes in a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday.

In particular, Sanders blames the Federal Reserve, the central banking system of the U.S., which oversees financial institutions and is charged with using monetary policy to maintain price stability and full employment.

“Unfortunately,” the Vermont senator says in the scathing op-ed, “an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates.”

Sanders says the Fed’s recent decision to raise a key interest rate by 0.25 percent is merely “the latest example of the rigged economic system.”

Echoing the arguments of progressive economists, Sanders says the Fed’s main reason for raising the interest rate—to keep inflation under control—is grounded in false premise. “Big bankers and their supporters in Congress have been telling us for years that runaway inflation is just around the corner,” he wrote. “They have been dead wrong each time.”

In fact, Sanders states, “[r]aising interest rates now is a disaster for small business owners who need loans to hire more workers and Americans who need more jobs and higher wages.”