Former U.S. President Bill Clinton speaks during a news conference on the fight against childhood obesity at the offices of the Clinton Foundation in New York February 17, 2010.
Posted on 02/17/2010 6:01:01 PM PST by Libloather
Bill Clinton Is Responsible For Our Current Mess
posted February 17, 2010
Just as I have been saying all along, this current economic mess in which we find ourselves lies at the feet of Bill Clinton. While I have known this for some time from evidence found through various sources, the fact was driven home last night on a television special. Was it on Fox News? Far from it. It was on the PBS show, "Frontline." Long story short is that the deregulation of the financial industry under Clinton and his Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, along with their complete refusal to even acknowledge the possibility of a financial meltdown through the unregulated over the counter derivatives markets caused this entire situation.
Despite a major lawsuit by Proctor & Gamble over a derivatives investment scandal in 1994, Clinton and Rubin looked the other way with full knowledge of the fact that the scandal was the tip of the iceberg. In 1998, the new chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Brooksley Born, brought to the attention of Congress as well as Rubin and Clinton the growing investment by banks in the unregulated over the counter derivatives markets. Rubin and Clinton resoundingly rejected Born's proposal for regulating derivatives despite yet another derivatives scandal of billions of dollars at Long Term Capital Management (LTCM.)
When Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which then allowed investment banks to merge with commercial banks, the final piece of the puzzle was in place as normally conservative investing banks could then invest heavily in over the counter derivatives markets, much of which was in the form of speculative credit derivatives closely tied to real estate. Much of that real estate had been financed with sub-prime financing with borrowers who could barely buy a doughnut, let alone a house. Thank Barney Frank, D-MA, for this trend.
Once so many bad borrowers had their rates adjusted, the house of cards started to come tumbling down. The default rate started to grow rapidly while many derivatives sold to banks and large institutional investors were based on credit derivatives, basically betting that people and companies would not default on their mortgages. There was little or nothing that George W. Bush could have done as the pieces were already in place for this catastrophe.
Perhaps the severity could have been mitigated somewhat, but the bullet had left the gun long before and there was no bringing it back. How does one "undo" the unregulated, highly speculative investment of hundreds of trillions of dollars by the largest banks and investment banks in the world? The fact is that had Clinton and Rubin simply looked at what was going on and listened to those trying to prevent this disaster, we would be in a far better situation.
You may ask what happened to those in the Treasury who sat by while this happened. Robert Rubin only recently left Citibank after pocketing an estimated $40,000,000 during his time there. Tim Geither, the #3 man at the Treasury while this was going on, is now our illustrious, tax-evading Treasury Secretary. The #2 man under Rubin, Larry Summers, is now serving as the Chief Economic Advisor to Barack Obama. The prisoners are definitely running the jail. Oh, did I mention that Clinton was also given the precise location of Osama bin Laden while military personnel were waiting to launch missiles into that location? He could not be bothered during his fund-raising event as written about by his Nation Security Advisor, Sandy Berger. He failed to do anything to prevent the biggest disasters of the last 80 years. Is there any other way to see it?
Joel Walker
They like to blame Phil Gramm for that one.
Oh yeah, they sure do.
Clinton also did the “I paid down the national debt” while at the same time his buddy and ex-budget director Franklin Raines ran up staggering debt at Fannie Mae. So, he DIDN’T pay down any debt — he actually dramatically raise the debt setting the stage for this debacle.
Clinton also did the “I paid down the national debt” while at the same time his buddy and ex-budget director Franklin Raines ran up staggering debt at Fannie Mae. So, he DIDN’T pay down any debt — he actually dramatically raise the debt setting the stage for this debacle.
That might be because Gramm was behind it . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
As a matter of fact, three Republicans were behind it.
parsy, who says there is plenty of Republican blame to go around
Phil Graham was indeed involved in it. This legislation was very bipartisan in nature with major input from Greenspan and Rubin.
Yep. No one's hands are clean in this mess. I'm all for deregulation - to an extent. It seems that the banking industry was a whole lot more stable - perhaps less sexy, but more stable - when there were more regional banks, and less of these Goliath mega banks.
Also, mortgages really became a mess when they were allowed to be securitized. Before, mortgages were locally originated and locally serviced. If a borrower got into trouble, they had a better chance of going through loan workout, as opposed to instantaneous foreclosure. Sure, there were fewer loans made, but banks made sure that the borrowers were lower risk because the bank held onto the paper for a much longer period of time.
I’m glad you picked a reputable source for your claim.
(parsy, who always seems to show up when it’s time to defend the most insidious of liberal behavior.)
IMHO allowing your local bank to offer mutual funds wasn't a bad thing in a sense of one stop shopping. The banks then afraid of lawsuits via Sarbanes Oxley over-reaching causing these banks to cut back on the funds offered, offering no asset allocation and pushing annunites to cover their @$$es instead, did us no good.
Once again, Gov't possibilty deregulating to line Rubin's buddies pockets and then them over-reaching with Sarb-OX. What a mess.....
for later.
I still hold Ken Starr responsible for not going beyond his final report in all things Klinton, and not prosecuting that bastard for Treason, and malfeasance! Not to mention prosecuting that venal beotch wife of his!
The bill (signed into law) was either called the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, or it wasn't. It seems that the source he used to illustrate that is more than a little irrelevant. Gramm is at least somewhate culpable because Gramm was one of the principle architects of the legislation. There's nothing insidious or or liberal about the truth.
That was Gramm’s baby. And I’m not really convinced it was anything more than just a little more fuel to a major fire. Gramm amde a good point that the banks hit hardest were least affected by his legislation.
Like most of the stuff on PBS, this is a pretty bogus account. Glass-Steagall was arcane, useless, and placed our financial organizations at a disadvantage with international firms that had no such restriction.
It seems to me to be an effort to misdirect blame on “de-regulation” rather than where it belongs - regulation.
The reason that derivatives of high risk mortgage backed investments existed was because lenders that were “regulated” into making high risk loans sought ways to spread the risk into packaged securities.
Fannie and Freddie effectively laundered the derivatives by buying them and re-selling them as US GOVT SECURITIES with the implied backing of the US Federal Government. These Fannie and Freddie securities were NEVER off limits for consumer bank investment, and in fact were encouraged by the Fed rules which allowed them to be held as a “cash equivalent” when determining liquidity qualifications.
Citing the repeal of Glass-Steagall as a major factor in the financial meltdown is a smoke screen, and trying to tag Bill Clinton with it is just a way to sound “non-partisan” while pushing for higher regulation and further intrusion into the private sector.
We’re not big on accountability when things go wrong around here.
Let’s just get to the point. Marxists want total state power not because it’s good or because it works, but because the idea of government domination seems to fulfill something inside them that they have no clue about.
Being a leftist is kind of like being valedictorian of a school for students with mediocre intelligence.
Well if that bothers you, you’ll really get irritated about this Democrat who warned us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2nZbo8SKbg
And like it or not—Gramm and Leach and Bliley were all......
drumroll......REPUBLICANS!
The reality is the GOP is as much and probably more IMHO to blame for all the deregulation. You know all that “let’s get government out of this and let the free market run itself” stuff.
Conservatives should be all about common sense, and the innate pessimism that human nature don’t change all that much. Big Business screwed the people in the 1800’s, the early 1900’s and they’ll do it again. They are doing it now while the GOP types are sitting around the pickle jar and cracker barrel and blaming the CRA and Barney Franks.
parsy, who has been telling you so for years
When the posting pattern over time screams “I’m a leftist trying to cover for all the crimes committed by Democrats while hoping to pin them on Republicans,” I don’t give much consideration to the content of the post.
The pattern establishes fact, not the individual post.
I know and it scares me. I do not think we can rely on the liberals to make the right choices and the conservatives have gotten so deep in bed with the libertarians that most of them have become economic illiterates. Makes me want to go dig up Ayn Rand and stick my size 13 boot right up her....oh never mind.
parsy, the disgusted
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