Jill Stein: There Are More Options Than Just Bailing Out Banks
Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein discusses why she thinks established politicians must earn the American vote.
Shares of Deutsche Bank on Monday slid to a new low, as German President Angela Merkel ruled out the possibility of a state-sponsored bailout for the bank as investors around the world question its financial health.
The German bank’s struggles are a reminder of similar problems American banks faced in 2008, until they were bailed out by the U.S. government. The topic, though, is not exactly at the forefront of the 2016 presidential race, and it’s absence has been noted by candidates, including third-party contenders.
The Green Party’s presidential nominee, Jill Stein, joined the FOX Business Network and explained how she would, if necessary, bail out banks in the future.
“We would ensure that the American people are getting a return on their investment,” Stein said. “So the bailouts of 2008 were just handouts. They were corporate welfare on steroids, to the tune of $16 trillion when you add up all of it.”
Stein, who is in favor of bailout out student debt and providing tuition-free public college education, said there are more options than just bank bailouts.
“The bank can be, for example, nationalized and turned into a public bank or broken up into smaller banks,” Stein said. “We need to correct the problem and not just go back to the same problem of banks that are too big to fail, because that’s where we are.”
Commenting on the latest news about the struggling Deutche Bank, the Green Party nominee said:
“This failure of Deutche Bank has been in the works for a while. And our own banks are more consolidated than ever; more risky than ever. What a President Stein would do upon taking office is insist that we use what are called ‘minimum capital requirements’ so that the banks are not taking really dangerous risks with taxpayer money. And if they do fail, we need to ensure that taxpayer interests are insured going forward and in the process of that bailout.”
Though Stein will not be on the debate stage Monday night due to missing part of the requirements set forward by the Commission on Presidential Debates, she stated that she would be responding to questions online.
“We are virtually opening up the debate through Facebook and through Twitter,” Stein said. “People can go to social media. They can go to my website and our web media… and they can see through Twitter and through a new app. They can basically watch us live, inserted into the debate through this new democratized form of media that is social media, and the open internet.”
She added:
“The way it’ll work is that the candidates will each first answer the questions on the stage in the debate arena, and following Trump and Clinton, then I will answer will answer the question. Then we’ll revert to the open discussion, in which I will also take two opportunities to respond to the issues as they come up. So it will be a virtually liberated debate in which the American people can actually hear the real issues in front of us.”