WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to crack down on bad behavior by Wall Street by imposing a new fee on large financial institutions and vowing that individual bankers who violate the law will be “prosecuted and imprisoned.”
A new proposal released by her campaign would impose a new, graduated “risk fee” on financial companies with more than $50 billion in assets. The fee would increase as companies hold greater amounts of debt, with the goal of discouraging them from taking on excessive risk.
Clinton’s campaign estimates that banks and other institutions would pay an annual charge of “multiple billions of dollars,” according to a summary provided by the campaign.
Her proposals came just days before the first Democratic presidential debate with her primary rivals. Liberal Democrats have spent months calling on Clinton to take a more aggressive approach to regulating Wall Street. In recent weeks, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has gained ground against her in early primary states with a populist economic message that vows to take on the “billionaires.”