We got one of those, and here we are.
I’m sure that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it either was a delusion or it got abused and spiraled into financial chaos.
Congress’ vote margin on Gramm-Leach-Bliley was not close, with 450 of the members of both chambers voting for it and only 64 voting against. The measure had bipartisan support. And small wonder…Financial sector interests gave more than $86 billion to members of Congress in the three-year run up to the November 1999 vote on the bill. Those members who supported the bill received about $180,000 in cash on average from financial sources over those three years. http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/gramm-leach-bliley-act/
(House of Representatives - November 04, 1999)
[Page: H11542]
Mr. DINGELL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time for purposes of closing.
Madam Speaker and my colleagues, I think we ought to look at what we are doing here tonight. We are passing a bill which is going to have very little consideration, written in the dark of night, without any real awareness on the part of most of what it contains.
I just want to remind my colleagues about what happened the last time the Committee on Banking brought a bill on the floor which deregulated the savings and loans. It wound up imposing upon the taxpayers of this Nation about a $500 billion liability. That is what it cost to clean up that mess.
Now, at the same time, the banks by engaging in questionable practices wound up in a situation where the Fed and the Treasury Department had to bail them out also at the taxpayers’ expense. But it did not show.
Having said that, what we are creating now is a group of institutions which are too big to fail.
Not only are they going to be big banks, but they are going to be big everything, because they are going to be in securities and insurance, in issuance of stocks and bonds and underwriting, and they are also going to be in banks. And under this legislation, the whole of the regulatory structure is so obfuscated and so confused that liability in one area is going to fall over into liability in the next. Taxpayers are going to be called upon to cure the failures we are creating tonight, and it is going to cost a lot of money, and it is coming. Just be prepared for those events.
You are going to find that they are too big to fail, so the Fed is going to be in and other Federal agencies are going to be in to bail them out. Just expect that.
With regard to the privacy, let us take a look at it. We are told about all the protections for privacy that you have here. If you want to have a good laugh, laugh at it, because here is the joke: The only thing the banks are going to be required to say with regard to what they are going to do with regard to your privacy, and this is everything, from your health to your financial situation, to everything else, is “we are going to stick it to you.” The privacy that you are going to have under this legislation is absolutely nothing. And what is going to drive that is going to be a simple fact, and that is that the banks are all going to be competing with the most diligence, and the result will be that those protections are going to be manifested in a race to the bottom.
Consumers, investors and the American public will have no protection to their privacy whatsoever under this bill. The only thing the banks have to say and the other institutions have to say is “we are going to stick it to you.”
http://fatkidspecial.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/gramm-leach-bliley-the-financial-crisis-john-dingell-saw-it-coming-amazing-floor-speech-from-1999/
Thought maybe you might like to read what congressman Dingle said about this bill, that the CRA was attached to.
Innerestin’
now the los angeles times is turning the blame for the results of cra
back onto the greedy banks and financiers.
Wasn't this an ACORN tactic?
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ACORN signed up Snow White and the dwarfs - - the FBI's gonna take them far, far away...