US sounds a Brexit alarm

Sir, – Another clue to the shape of a post-Brexit deal with the US was revealed on Tuesday. The US House of Representatives passed a bill to exempt the vast majority of financial firms from the DoddFrank bank regulations passed after the 2008 Wall Street crash.

Amid surging bank profits and CEO pay and as the 10th anniversary of the Wall Street crash approaches, the token restrictions on the banks passed during the Obama administration are being dismantled.

These minimal measures were mainly enacted to provide political cover for the administration’s multitrillion-dollar bailout of the institutions responsible for the wholesale destruction of jobs, millions of home foreclosures and the wiping out of retirement savings.

This is all happening as America’s largest corporations continue their unprecedented stock buyback scheme in the wake of President Donald Trump’s

$1.5 trillion tax cut, dramatically increasing the risk of another crash.

The most profitable corporations are posting obscene profits and using that cash to reward wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks while investing nothing in their workers.

This is how the Trump sideshow works. While people are distracted by inconsequential events, such as the bogus Russia investigation or alleged pay-offs to adult movie actresses, the US Government gets on with gutting rights and rewarding plutocracts.

And this is the shape of things to come if a “Hard Brexit” becomes a reality.

Alan Hinnrichs. Gillespie Terrace, Dundee.

The building control and planning departments of Dundee City Council occupy the same building and answer to the same chief executive. Yet events appear to indicate they operatefrom different planets