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A Wall Street casino atmosphere in the early 2000s was a significant cause of the 2008 Great Recession. Bankers engaged in imprudent bets in a highly competitive environment that lacked transparency. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 and its Volcker Rule were instrumental in trying to prevent further banking abuses like the conflicts of interest and high rolling that were rampant in the Wall Street casino in the years leading up to the 2008 crash.

It has been reported by the Associated Press that Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, was a key proponent of the Volcker Rule in 2010. Merkley was reported to have said that “supporters of the Volcker Rule wanted to create a firewall between ordinary banking activities like taking deposits and making loans and high-risk hedge fund style activities.�

Elimination of most of the Volcker Rule protections undermines our banking system. That action, the fulfillment of a 2016 Trump campaign pledge, has been led by one of the greatest gamblers ever to have occupied the White House. Trump never saw a crap shoot he didn’t want to be part of — especially when he was gambling with other people’s money.

In this case, Trump is cavalierly and carelessly eliminating necessary and fundamental banking safeguards and returning us to the brink of another financial catastrophe like the 2008 Great Recession. That financial disaster saw the life savings of ordinary Americans wiped out by greedy bankers.

Leading up to the 2008 crash, most bankers were greedily grasping at long shots as they tried to maximize profits by playing roulette with extremely risky stock market, leveraging and monetary exchange bets. Such banking gambles caused vertigo headaches for ordinary investors whose life savings in IRAs and 401ks were dependent on stable markets that were not subject to obscure and risky manipulations.

Even leading bankers knew that the wildly out-of-control gambling mania was foolhardy. Charles Prince, former Citigroup CEO at that time, famously said, “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.�

In the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, most people are more reliant on the security of their banked savings, especially those who have lost jobs due to the pandemic. These ordinary people cannot afford to risk their prudently banked assets to another Wall Street casino where a new crop of avaricious bankers cavalierly plays risky and imprudent games with their lifelines to security in these sequestered times.

If we end up with another crash and Great Recession, like that of 2008, because of the foolish scrapping of the Volcker Rule safeguards, I believe that millions of sequestered individuals who thought that their finances were secure, may be unable to buy necessities like food, medications and the like.

They may not be able to make mortgage or rent payments. In addition to the unfortunate Americans stricken with the coronavirus or dying from it, we might have millions more starving and homeless.

While such a catastrophe is not guaranteed, it is likely enough that all of us need to express our outrage. Aroused individuals should press their elected officials to act to save the Volcker Rule provisions from being scrapped.

Trump has already decimated our treasury with needless tax cut gifts to Wall Street, big business, and the most wealthy. On top of that, efforts to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic have resulted in Congress tapping our nation’s credit card for trillions of dollars. Wake up! We are in a financial mess. The best defense when you’re in a hole, like we are, is to stop digging.