MEDIA RELEASE: R00087 – 20 April 2016

There was a public outcry. There was a financial industry commission. Yet few changes have been made on Wall Street as a result of the 2008 financial crisis.

Brock University Assistant Professor Trish Ruebottom recently co-authored a paper on Wall Street reform that examined industry executives to understand and explain how they maintained their positions after the crisis and why the needed industry changes didn’t happen.

In researching testimony from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and several media reports where executives spoke on behalf of their banks, Ruebottom and her co-authors found that executives spoke in a way that reaffirmed their authority and undermined their culpability in the crisis. They did so by talking about their own expertise and concern for stakeholders, while challenging the same of government and regulatory bodies.

Not much has happened, even after a huge outcry for reforms, Ruebottom says, adding that the research shows in order for reforms to take place, another governing body needs to claim the authority.

“Consumers themselves need to have trust in another body that’s not the Wall Street executives,” she says.

Ruebottom says the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may be able to take on the authority necessary to challenge Wall Street executives, but this is yet to be proven.

“The reforms can only happen if there is independent leadership and the ability to challenge the authority,” she says.

When asked about what voters need to take into consideration in the upcoming American presidential election, Ruebottom talks about the need to look for a plan to make the reforms.

“Bernie Sanders has been positioning himself as the independent candidate, but this is only one piece of the puzzle. He has talked about how he would not put a Goldman-Sachs person in charge of the regulatory bodies, but he hasn’t talked about who he would put in,” she says.

Ruebottom says one key takeaway from her research is that there needs to be a space for counter-narratives wherever people have positions of power.

Assistant Prof. Trish Ruebottom recently recorded a podcast with the Goodman School of Business discussing her research. The full audio is available for download at Soundcloud.com/brock-university
 

For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
* Dan Dakin, Media Relations Officer, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca,
905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970

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