Posted on 09/23/2008 4:59:40 PM PDT by jokyfo
Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 (Reuters) - President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and sell each other's products.
"This legislation is truly historic," President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. "We have done right by the American people."
The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.
This was a GOP initiative though. However, McCain was one who did not vote, although he initially supported the bill. It may have been loaded up with too much pork to get the Democrats behind it.
The push to get this kind of law passed began under President’s Ford and Carter and a long standing Rat Congress.
None of the fears cited by opponents of this bill came to pass.
Instead, an entirely different and unexpected problem appeared. Nobody thought that financial instututions would be dumb enough to lend money to people who could never pay it back.
Clinton gave a”blank check” to all the crooks.
Actually, Clinton and the GOP Majority Congress gave a Blank Check to all the Crooks.
They are all to Blame!
GOP majority? Got any names?
We might as well give them some credit here if possible.
That's a good question.
ANYONE KNOW?
I am guessing that the Bill was sponsored by someone in the Republican Majority.
The idea behind Glass-Steagall was sound, and beware when anyone says something is antiquated. Banks couldn’t sell insurance, insurance companies couldn’t offer CDs and checking accounts, brokerage investment banks operated differently than regular depository institutions.
What happened was exactly what the legislation was designed to prevent. It was passed because they had to cover what they were already allowing retroactively.
The CDS deal is banks selling each other insurance on the likelihood of default. These arrangements strictly speaking are almost gambling, completely unregulated, opaque, and off the books, and trade not through any exchange. This meant, even back in 2005 the big banks would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars with just a penny slide in FNM.
I believe Phil Gramm was one of the sponsor's.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley
The bill was signed by Clinton but sponsored by Republican Senator Phil Gramm and Republican Congressman Jim Leach, and voted in overwhelmingly by the Republicans.
The article at this link shows a chart of how much money legislators got in contributions from banks and how they voted on the bill. Both parties are about equally complicit. “Greed is good.”
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/money-and-votes-aligned-in-con.html
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