The unhinging of the US economy began under Clinton. Repealing Glass Steagal allow banks to include savings accounts as assets to borrow against in leveraged bets by the investment bank side. Clinton then tried to alleviate the risks of subprime mortgages by having the Fed gov buy all of them and bundle them with good mortgages to be brought by Wall Street banks and sold to investors. Clinton and Bush 42 basically let the Sec of Treasury and Fed Reserve who in turn let the large Wall Street bankers run the US into the ground with liar loans and faulty grading of the mortgage backed securities as AAA when they were riddled with liar loans. I actually had a freeper claim that the mortgages products were so new that the rating agencies did not know how to grade them. Well if I got a drug product I never saw before, have no data, no test results, am I criminal if I stamp FDA approved and it kills people? The rating agencies were paid by the banks to give a rating on their financial products. The analysts asked the bankers for loan applications information to assess the risks so they can assign a rating. The bankers knew they had liar loans and refused to provide data. Most of the analysts working for the rating agencies refused to assign a rating, and the bankers simply phone their bosses and complained that the analyst working on their products were jerks and threaten to pull future business. The rating agencies simply told their analysts, find a way to placate the banker customer or find a new career. In the end the bankers and the rating agencies forced the analysts to assign AAA ratings on mortgage backed securities whom they had no data to form a basis for such high rating. Like I said, there are some freepers who felt the rating agencies were not at fault!!!! During the S&L crisis of the 1980’s federal regulators would have closed the rating agencies and bankers, and all records would be audited. Clinton, and GWB regulators did nothing. Even worst, Obama could have scored points against the “filthy rich fat cats” did nothing either. The statue of limitation for the Wall Street fraud is five years. Four years already past. Atleast Bush Sr and part of Clinton had over 1000 criminal referrals which resulted in trials and 900 convictions.
Bottom line, Clinton laid the groundwork for the diseaster, GWB failed to react but Obama is letting the bankers get away. Now we will have bailouts and QE to infinity, as the dollar weakens, the US middle class will die. The gov and Wall Street bankers already decided we cannot pay off our huge debt, so they will inflate their way out. Middle class is being killed off and they do not even know that.
The Financial Modernization Act of 1999 repealing Glass Steagal was sponsored by three Republicans. It passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate. In fact, more Democrats voted against the bill than Republicans. Both parties wanted to give a big bone to Wall Street. The Republicans deserve just as much blame as Clinton.
George W. Bush appointed money printing Ben Bernanke to chairmanship of the Federal Reserve.
G W Bush appointed the Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury and abdicated responsibility for dealing with the 2008 crisis to him. Paulson put the interests of the big Wall Street banks ahead of the citizens, bailing them out with trillions in taxpayer money and Fed printed money. The other option would have been to let the FDIC back depositors and let the big bank shareholders, bond holders, and management, suffer the consequences of the speculation. Paulson and Bernanke also gave taxpayer backed lifelines to major foreign banks. Four years later the big banks remain on Federal Reserve life support yet are paying big bonuses to executives.
The 2008 financial crisis was brought to the crisis stage by a foreign run on US money market funds. To this day the American people have not been told who was responsible for this external attack. No doubt Bush, the banks, Paulson, and Bernanke knew. Bush should have gone public with the facts and ordered the funds not to redeem the shares if it was truly an attack by foreign governments (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia) or speculators (Soros).
There is much unknown to the people about the 2008 financial crisis and both political parties are part of the coverup. As you pointed out, the statute of limitations will soon expire with zero prosecutions. Shame on Obama but I hear no Republican voices demanding investigations or prosecutions. We don’t even hear the Republicans demanding the prosecution of Jon Corzine, the perfect villian for a corruption scandal. Both parties are protecting the Federal Reserve and Wall Street Banks.