1/ If you want to understand how Biden became Biden, you have to understand how Delaware became Delaware. (Thread.) bit.ly/32FbyNo
2/ As a longtime senator from Delaware, Biden cast key votes that deregulated the banking industry, made it harder for individuals to escape their credit card debts and student loans, and protected his state’s status as a corporate bankruptcy hub.
3/ In essence, Biden helped build a financial system that’s great for Delaware banks and terrible for the rest of us.
4/ Delaware is a tiny state, and because it is tiny, it has had to get creative to survive. It offers a legal and administrative sanctuary that allows businesses to do things there that they could not do elsewhere.
5/ Corporations can place their profits in Delaware-based holding companies to avoid paying taxes in the places where they actually operate. Delaware LLCs can also be incorporated anonymously via third-party agents, stifling transparency.
6/ In the early 1980s, the state passed a new law—written by banking lobbyists—to make Delaware a national hub for credit card companies. Dozens of companies moved to Wilmington almost overnight.
7/ Biden didn’t build this system, but he helped protect it. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, he supported a series of bank deregulation laws, culminating in the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law barring banks from owning securities businesses. 
8/ The result of these efforts was that the biggest banks got bigger by swallowing up the competition. By 2016, there were almost 5,000 fewer banks in the US than there were two decades earlier, and the 10 largest firms controlled half of all banking assets.
9/ But the biggest agenda item for credit card companies was bankruptcy reform. Rising consumer bankruptcies were costing these companies big $$. They wanted Washington to make it harder for individuals to discharge their debts.
10/ By the late ‘90s, the biggest credit card company in Delaware was MBNA, which made its money by aggressively marketing cards to “affinity” groups, like fans of sports teams or college alumni.
11/ Biden brought in more than $200,000 from MBNA employees during his Senate career. He was friendly with the company’s CEO. And the company hired Biden’s youngest son, Hunter. Critics called him “the senator from MBNA.”
12/ Congress would battle over the bankruptcy bill for eight years and two presidential administrations. And Biden, a high-profile Democrat, became one of its most important supporters.
13/ That didn’t sit well with Democratic critics. His support drew a harsh rebuke from one of the bill’s leading opponents—a Harvard Law School Professor named Elizabeth Warren. bit.ly/32FbyNo
14/ Warren’s criticism of Biden came to a head at a Capitol Hill hearing in 2005, when they sparred over the bankruptcy bill for 15 minutes. This is a must-watch exchange: bit.ly/32FbyNo
15/ In the end, the bankruptcy bill led to an estimated 5% to 17% increase in costs to credit card consumers and made it more likely that borrowers would fail on their bankruptcy payment plans.
16/ Biden’s banking votes have stuck with him—and he now finds himself locked in a tough presidential primary with two candidates, Warren and Bernie Sanders, who have made an issue of his past votes.
17/17 Read @timothypmurphy’s cover story in the Nov/Dec issue of Mother Jones—on newsstands now—and online: bit.ly/32FbyNo
