Hillary Clinton released proposals Thursday aimed to curb Wall Street behavior and include a tax on high-frequency stock trading, an area a Clinton aide slammed as having "unnecessarily burdened our markets and enable unfair and abusive trading strategies."
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Democrat Hillary Clinton is moving closer to the populist wing of her party with a suite of proposals aimed at curbing some Wall Street risk-taking and holding more individuals accountable for misconduct.
Among her proposals: a tax on certain rapid-fire stock traders, whom some see as contributing to market instability. She also wants to extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting financial crimes and require that responsible individuals pay a portion of fines levied because of wrongdoing at their companies.
These ideas are part of a wider proposal on financial regulation that aims to address discontent about Wall Street that is running high in the Democratic Party—and the electorate at large—in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
However, despite public condemnation and promises of tackling the sector, Clinton recently took hundreds of thousands at a fundraiser hosted by a trader who works in the industry.
Clinton attended the minimum $2,700-a-head private fundraiser on July 21 at the Chicago home of Raj Fernando. Fernando, a Democratic mega-donor and founder and CEO of stock firm Chopper Trading, raised a total of $450,000 to pump into Clinton’s presidential campaign from the event. Fernando has also given anywhere between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation and has donated an additional $500,000 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.
The high-speed trader, who was also a top bundler for President Obama having raised more than $500,000 the last presidential cycle, was appointed as part of a group of State Department security advisors to Hillary Clinton in 2012.
Fernando’s stock trading group has also come under scrutiny in the past.
In April 2014, more than a half-dozen high-frequency stock trading firms were issued subpoenas, including Chopper Trading, by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as part of an investigation into whether some groups had an "unfair advantage" over other trading outfits.
Fernando sold Chopper Trading to the competing DRW Trading Group earlier this year.