Oh, I don’t think so. Gramm is no saint by any means, but as a matter of fact:
“Gramm blocked passage of a similar deregulation bill last year (1997) over demands to cripple the CRA, and bank lobbyists were in a panic, during the week before the deal was made, that the dispute would once again prevent any bill from being adopted.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/bank-n01.shtml
As a matter of fact, he almost blocked it again, because he knew what the CRA was doing. And it was Clinton that demanded the CRA be left in the bill or he would Veto it. Gramm did get two of his components in the final bill that weakened the CRA somewhat. But of course we know now that the democrats with their puppet Franklin Raines, et al never complied with the public disclosure portion and in fact cooked their books and Dodds, Fwanks, Waters, et al all covered up for them.
The democrats tried to make political capital out of it by saying that Gramm was trying to cripple the CRA so as to discredit the democrats. Gramm knew what the derivatives were doing already and had been since the CRA was passed in 1977.
It was Bill Clinton that went back to Congress and begged for de-regulation because he had let CitiFinancial and Travelers Insurance merge which was flat out against the law and he was about to be called on the carpet for it.
Nothing I read there absolved Gramm. Far from it, he should have been very aware of the potential danger:
“And there is a much more recent experience than 1929 to serve as a cautionary tale. A financial deregulation bill was passed in the early 1980s under the Reagan administration, lifting many restrictions on the activities of savings and loan associations, which had previously been limited primarily to the home-loan market. The result was an orgy of speculation, profiteering and outright plundering of assets, culminating in collapse and the biggest financial bailout in US history, costing the federal government more than $500 billion. The repetition of such events in the much larger banking and securities markets would be beyond the scope of any federal bailout.”
May I add. It is really a crying out loud shame when the durn Socialist Party of America has a better grasp on economics that the GOP or the Democrats. You know, I mean right is right and here a bunch of near-commies predict what is going to happen while rocket scientists like Phil Gramm smugly march us off the plank. . .
parsy, who is ROTFLMAO