Stock Market and Banking Reform

Here is my plan to reform the stock markets:

Eliminate short selling. I see no societal benefit to profiting from a company's stock price decline. It only invites corruption and market instability. The stock market should only be a place to invest in America and its economy, not bet and hope that it crashes. If you think a company or overall economy is in decline, just sell your stock.
Eliminate options trading. Investment products that require investors to be able to "time the market" are a losing game for the investor (especially the individual ones) and again causes increased market volatility.
All but eliminate day trading via an 80% income tax on profits on investments held less than 30 days (to include real estate as well!). Day trading is not investing, it is gambling! Again, it increases market volatility and incentivizes market manipulation.
Eliminate trading in crypto currencies. They have no inherent value and are nothing more than a Ponzi scheme that risks economic disaster for everyone! Also keep in mind that crypto currency is the preferred payment option by criminals everywhere.

I know I will make a lot of enemies with this plan but I think we need to have a national discussion about these practices. I am willing to listen to anyone who can prove societal benefit in continuing them.

Banking Reform

I only took a few courses in economics in college, but even I knew that when a country pumps almost 6 trillion extra dollars into its economy during a pandemic, it will no doubt cause inflation. So for bank executives to be caught off guard on this and not position themselves to weather an impending inflationary cycle coupled with higher interest rates is totally incomprehensible to me. It seems that time after time bank executives make the dumbest (or most greedy and corrupt?) investment decisions only to have to be bailed out by the taxpayers and ultimately suffer little or no consequences. I guarantee that will change under my administration. Here are a few more of my pet peeves with the banking industry and federal regulations:

Interest rates on credit cards are out of control. I propose they be capped at 10% or twice the Fed Funds rate, whichever is higher.
Interest rates on most traditional bank savings accounts are only a fraction of 1%. That doesn't make sense to me when the Fed Funds rate is over 5%.
Banks seem to penalize those who pay their bills on time, and some of that may be due to what I'll call perverted federal banking regulations. During the 2008 financial crisis I heard many stories of homeowners who were current on their mortgages but had lost their jobs. In an attempt to negotiate with banks to restructure their mortgages to a level they could continue to afford, they were told no unless they were behind on their payments. So banks were literally incentivizing people to stop paying their mortgages—what sense does that make? Then when the Government stepped in and started bailing out the banks' bad mortgages, the banks lost all incentive to work with homeowners since they'd get full value for the homes from the Government. This increased foreclosure rates and left the average American literally in the dust. It appeared to me that the only ones who paid the price for banking mismanagement were homeowners who lost their homes and taxpayers who had a few more trillion dollars added to their national debt.
I also do not understand why the Government (and banks?) insist on making subprime loans (i.e. loans to individuals with bad credit ratings). We seem to be revitalizing that practice again. I realize there are many claims of racism when it comes to loaning money, but loans should only be made according to a set of credit worthiness standards that apply to everyone—no exceptions. Anything otherwise, no matter how well intentioned, only leads to catastrophe as we saw in 2008. The catastrophe was not only incurred by our economy and financial state, but also incurred by the homeowners who lost their homes after being led to believe they could afford them. In instances where it can be shown that banks are engaged in discriminatory practices and not making loans for whatever reason to those who qualify, those banks need to be held accountable.
We also need to start requiring completion of financial management courses in order to receive a high school diploma (see my "Education Reform" section for more details).