Posted on 02/18/2009 10:40:21 AM PST by Graybeard58
Time magazine's recent list of "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis" included many obvious choices, and a readers' poll named Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995-2000, as the No. 1 culprit.
Conspicuously absent was the current chairman, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. Yet on the same day the list was published, Time also had this Dodd ditty: "This is, of course, the same Chris Dodd who was Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee beginning in 2007, when the banks began their meltdown. He was the one who received the most campaign cash of any senator from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies that he defended against increased regulation that might have actually tempered some of the disaster that has followed. He was the one who spent a huge chunk of 2007 not in the Senate, but on the campaign trail, carrying out a lackluster presidential effort funded largely by the banking and insurance industries. ... His top contributor was Citibank. His fourth largest contributor was the now-collapsed firm, AIG, a major purveyor of the complex derivatives that helped cause the crisis. He was also the one who in 2007 went before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to praise the 'history of solid regulation' in the U.S. capital markets. 'Win or lose, (people) invest with a high degree of confidence that American balance sheets are accurate, that investment products like securities and derivatives are properly valued, and that the markets are well-policed against those who would commit negligent, deceptive or fraudulent acts,' he said."
How is it possible for one person to be this wrong this often, and cause so much financial hardship and havoc, and still not make Time's top 25?
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
‘How is it possible for one person to be this wrong this often, and cause so much financial hardship and havoc, and still not make Time’s top 25?’
Uhmmmm, see Time Magazine’s April 1975 cover titled ‘The Coming Ice Age’...and then ask yourself if you are embarrassed to be asking this question over a quarter of a century later....duoh!
“....and still not make Time’s top 25?”
You know the answer Mr Editorial. Dodd is too big a Rat to go down.
Because Dodd is a member of the liberal elite, to them failure means success.
Time magazine has been our Pravda for many years. Anyone who reads it and participates in the polls is obviously just another Marxist rat.
No recession for Dodd
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2008/12/13/opinion/385488.txt
With the 2006-08 election season quickly receding, it’s time to take stock on how Chris Dodd did. To recap: While the housing and lending industries, overseen by the Banking Committee he chairs, were crumbling, Sen. Countrywide took 2007 off to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, eventually moving to Iowa to be closer to the voters he really cared about. Hey, with nearly $17 million in campaign dough, with his Senate pay and expense checks still coming in, and with all the money he’d saved on his mortgages, he could afford it.
The more than $16 million spent bought him 0.04 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses last January, earning him one of the 2,501 delegates to the Iowa Democratic State Convention.
Where did Sen. Dodd get all his campaign cash? Opensecrets.org, which compiles Federal Election Commission data, reports Sen. Dodd was the Senate’s No. 1 recipient of grease from cruise lines; No. 2 from finance and credit companies; No. 3 from hedge funds and savings and loans; No. 4 from accountants, commercial banks, insurance, mortgage bankers and brokers, private equity and investment firms, the real estate industry, and security and investment companies; and No. 5 from lobbyists. (Among the top 5 in all those categories: Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.)
Taxpayers, too, chipped in almost $2 million toward Sen. Dodd’s quixotic campaign. As of Oct. 31, he had $520,831 left over, which in due course he will transfer to his senatorial campaign to give him a fund-raising leg up for his 2010 re-election bid. In between, he has pledged to stay on as Banking Committee chairman in the next Congress. Why not? With all the bailout money the government is giving away to all the industries that give money to him, some of it’s bound to make it into one or more of Sen. Dodd’s pockets.
I hope so.
Glad Dodd wasn’t elected.
His face and voice grates on me even worse than Millstone’s.
He probably has the same look for the same reason. He is selling the department out for the same reason.
TIME are a bunch of sleazy liars. Gramm had nothing to do with this. Nothing. And the bill he put together was supported by the Clinton admin and signed by Clinton. In 1998.. Was Clinton #2? If not, then its partisan bullpukey.
Go to your bookstore and shake out all the Slimes subscription litter cards and drop them in the mail for proce$$ing. It costs them more than the stamp and send a message.
Thus proving that Time magazine's readership is incompetent. Sadly, there are a few Freepers who share their economic ignorance.
Gramm is blamed because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall via the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, which opened up competition between banks, security companies, and insurance companies when it came to offering financial services to retail customers.
Glass-Steagall was a stupid law, and anyone who believes repealing it was a bad idea is equally stupid for the following reasons:
1. First, the idea that additional competition can somehow damage the free market is an idiotic idea. Blaming Gramm-Leach-Bliley for the current financial problems is as silly as blaming supermarkets for a meat shortage and demanding that meat only be sold by butcher shops.
2. Second, the behavior they claim this allowed had nothing to do with this law. Companies with sufficient political connections were already able to get waivers to override the requirements of Glass-Steagall. As proof of this, note that Citibank had already merged with Travelers Group, forming Citigroup in 1988. Gramm-Leach-Bliley wasn't passed until 1999.
3. Third, the company that most exploited this opportunity was Wells Fargo, and up until being forced to take loans (that it didn't want) under the first bailout, Wells Fargo was probably the most stable bank in the United States.
The only part of Gramm-Leach-Bliley that had anything to do with the current mess is the Community Reinvestment Act changes (banks with a "less than satisfactory" rating for making CRA loans were not allowed to go through with any merger). But this was an amendment and not part of Gramm's bill, so blaming Phil Gram for it would be like blaming a construction company for a vandal's graffiti.
The only problem with Gramm-Leach-Bliley is that it didn't go far enough in deregulating banking. The current system banking system in the US would be far more robust if it had also removed the restrictions from the Bank Holding Act and allowed banks to own non-financial corporations as well. If Gramm-Leach-Bliley had corrected this defect, it would have allowed Wal-Mart to enter retail banking and the additional competition would have forced other banks to become more efficient.
Socialists of all varieties (including the "populist" socialists on FR) are trying to insist that our current problems come from a lack of government regulation, when in fact the exact opposite is true. With all the government bloat interfering with the free market (from the very existence of Fannie Mae down to the CRA requirements that banks make irresponsible loans and the current bailouts that are propping up the most irresponsible companies with taxpayer dollars), suggesting that the problem is "insufficient regulation" is simply insane.
The people blaming Phil Gramm are the ones who caused this problem.
Amen.
Reagan was right. Government can't fix the problem; government is the problem.
Never was the faiolure of big government more evident.
I didn’t see Bawney Fwank on that list either.
Dodd is an embarrassment. He should resign.
This strikes me as more like a bogus 'Push Poll' because how many people, even well informed, could name someone from 4 congressional terms previous? He has been out of the Senate since 2003, only Ranking Member during the 2001-2003 term (remember Jumpin' Jim Jeffords?) and was a middling adviser to McCain in the '08 campaign. Methinks that Time or Dem partisans skewed the poll.
It would be better for the country if Sen. Dodd took an exit like his father.
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