Did Phil Gramm open the Casino Doors.
With the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act effectively pulling the teeth from Glass Steagall and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 opening the casino doors for Wall St. Did senator Phill Gramm and Congress effectively set up America for the financial looting we are enduring now?
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-106pu … etail.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_ … ct_of_2000Yes. No other politician has had such a strong hand in the collapse of our economy. The part that is so puzzling is Gramm's insistence that collateralized securities not have reserves equal to the risk. That's so elementary- econ 101- UNLESS you willfully ignore the risks involved for the sake of monsterous gains and plan your exit from the market with uncanny timing. Hmmmmm,,,,
No, Bill Clinton was in charge for a lot of the major changes, and a Democratic Congress in Bush's tenure likewise, and Carney Barney Frank and Chris the Doddling Dodd were key architects of all the major financial legislation during both administrations that led to the financial crisis.
How clueless! You didn't even try to look anything up...just throw out ignorance...as always.
So the Gramm Bliley Act was really the Dodd Act? Did they just not know how to spell Dodd? The merger between Travelers and Citi was orchestrated by Dodd huh? The non regulation of derivatives was created by Dodd huh? You haven't the slightest clue!
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks
Search:Phill Gramm Ruined the EconomyAfter he ruined it, he called us all a bunch of whiners for complaining about the aftermath of his destruction..As he rode off with millions....the bum!
I think as people of a country we need to have a referendum or something that would permit us to have a trial and possibly imprison an elected official found guilty of selling out "WE The People" for personal or corporate gain. The Unaccountability factor for our elected officials needs to end. As of 2009 Phill Gramm was working (or on the payroll) of UBS.
yes--they're all above the law.
Above accountability.
Above human decency.
Greed and lust for power has destroyed America.
You are right: the corporate politicians need to go to jail just as much as a poor kid selling dope to feed his family. MORE, because their only excuse is greed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSgUTfchBcE
But Barney Frank and Chris Dodd did the Wallstreet reform bill. Barney Frank was chairman, and pushed to have the Fed audited, along with Paul, Kucinich and Sanders.
The bs began having the brakes put on it in 07, when the Dems took Congress.
Every single Repub is against any and all Wall street, banking or any other regulatory reforms.
Also against a tax increase for the absurdly wealthy, and against ending subsidies for the absurdly wealthy oil co's.
They are all about Big Money. P e r i o d.
Blue-Dog Dems too, yes---but not all Dems.'THE PRIVATE SECTOR got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."
That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it, the current financial crisis was the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "
In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.
Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits -- many of whom have been learning lately just how pitiless the private sector’s discipline can be -- they weren't the ones who "got us into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so - or else.
The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.
Frank had no choice but to push for this reform that actually was started by Repubs Richard Stanley. He had to save himself from his actions. Also the Dems needed to steal the issue from the Repubs and since they controlled the White House and the Congress, It was easy to accomplish.
Richard Shelby, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee and the one who proposed the changes to the Fed governance, voiced his reasons for why he felt the changes needed to be made: "It's an obvious conflict of interest […] It's basically a case where the banks are choosing or having a big voice in choosing their regulator. It's unheard of." Democratic Senator Jack Reed agreed, saying "The whole governance and operation of the Federal Reserve has to be reviewed and should be reviewed. I don't think we can just assume, you know, business as usual."[
Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Seven years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.
Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.How ridiculous! You have proven that you haven't a clue what is really going on. BTW - How did Reagan fair with the Savings and Loan scandal? That is what deregulation leads to. BTW - How did Reagan fix things? Oh yeah - tax increases! You Republicans always ignore the tax increases don't you. This is like debating a 8 yr old. Why bother.
Did you miss my original post? Gutting of Glass Steagall and the CFMA of 2000 started it all.Lots of good info in that Young Turks vid also.This is not a partisan issue it's a AMERICAN issue,too bad for Repubs Phill Grammm has his grubby fingerprints all over it.Barney Frank had nothing to do with the Gramm Leach Bliley act or the Commodities Futures Modernization act of 2000. I was talking about the merging of Investment banks,Savings banks and Ins Co.s that we had to bail out and the creation of Too Big too Fails .The runaway commodities markets that are looting us as we speak are another example of deregulation that didn't work.
Modern,
I did read your original post and agree Gramm has a hand in what has happened to our economy. I was responding to Chris. She blames all of it on Gramm and believes Frank had nothing to do with a share of the financial problems we now face. My response was to show she was wrong, he is waist deep in it. But while those 2 have a big role in it, so does congress for going on a spending free for all, and past and current President for not vetoing the out of control spending.You don't understand what the crisis actually was. How so many still don't get it is beyond me, but then again, several still think Iraq was involved in 911. Greenspan kept derivatives unregulated. Travelers and Citi merged, illegally, so Gramm and Bliley revoked Glass Steagall and created the Gramm Bliley Leach Act allowing, in practice, investment banks to buy the mortgages from the lenders. Upon doing so, the investment banks bundled those loans along with any risk they had, student loans, corporate writeoffs, etc...into CDOs, and then sold them to investors. However, the investment banks bribed the rating agencies to mark them as triple A, allowing state pensions and foreign investors to purchase them, as pension funds are legally required to only purchase triple A rated commodities. SO, the risk of default on the original loan is passed down through the chain to the final investors...so if default happens, there is no ramification. Nobody loses except the final investor. That cycle created the housing bubble, and with no risk, they need MORE. How do you get more? Lower the requirements on getting a house of course. Why worry about default? They won't lose money...the investors will lose money, state pensions will lose money. So, they lobby the Fed to allow banks to use more of their investor's money to purchase these things, and less of theirs...up to 33/1 in some cases. Then, they create fake insurance with no capital in the form of credit default swaps on those bs CDOs. ALL of the risk is passed down to foreign banks and state pensions, so when the system collapses, nobody has to pay except the states and foreign banks. The reason all of the states are all of the sudden broke and in the billions is they got hosed on this deal and now have to actually pay those pensions out of state funds, legally. How do they fix THAT problem? They take away things from the very people who's pensions they defunded through ignorant and risky investments. Blaming Frank, who was in favor of low income housing is narrow sighted and a very small element of the problem. BTW- we have had that initiative since the 40s. Frank didn't invent it. NOW...not all of the parties were Republican, though the concept of deregulating the markets (which led to crisis after crisis since: savings and loan, dot com, energy shell game, and then this recession) is a Republican neocon idea. However, Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, Greenspan...all of these cats were at the heart of it.
Now as a liberal, which I proudly am, Obama did tick me off by putting Summers as an adviser when I blame him for dang near a third of it. Luckily he kicked him out after a while. The funny thing is, from an objective point of view, Obama is a hardcore market based guy, and not by any stretch of the imagination close to the left winger the neocons claim he is. Every problem, including the Health Care issue, he has used market principles to solve. It is kind of hilarious when he is called a socialist and clear evidence that those calling him so, have a 2nd grade idea of what it actually is.Now with the Securitization Food Chain (which is what this was) in place...where did all of the money go you might ask? That is where the outrage over billion dollar bonuses came in. They funneled the massive money in the middle of the chain into personal assets, so when it failed, nobody could touch it. Essentially, then and now (as nothing really has changed- now the bubble is in credit default swaps, which again, have not a dime of capital to back them up, because they are unregulated and don't have to), they are funneling the money out of the economy and into their personal assets as quickly as they can, and we, the people, are blaming poor people who wanted a house and were told by the buyer (which we have discovered were defrauding those buyers on the front end AND on the back end when they repo-ed their house) that they could totally afford it, while putting in variable interest rates down in the middle of a 500 page contract, small print, and in legalese. Then, those same people get their pensions stripped and benefits cut to cover the losses.
The catalyst isn't giving poor people houses, but the deregulation of the markets. Ever since the 80s and Reagan, we have systematically deregulated the markets, and that has led to one financial crisis after another, along with the invention of the idea that you can create money from the transaction and new financial instruments, as opposed to a service or good. Nothing is actually being produced, just the chain extended and transaction fees in the billions in the middle of the passing down of risk from the original lender, back to the very people who purchased the instrument in the beginning. They made you take upon our own risks and took billions in the middle, all while telling us that they are carrying the bag. The money isn't real, so when it is actually ponied up, where do you think it comes from? It comes from you. Where did all the money go? It was fleeced.
"She blames all of it on Gramm and believes Frank had nothing to do with a share of the financial problems we now face"
Stop twisting my words for your benefit.
I pointed out that nothing was DONE about it until Frank took over as head of the Financial(?) Committee.
Over the objection of Republicans, I might add!
Texas,
You are only partly right. Franks committe is in charge of ALL the financial service industry. He oversees all the people you blame for this crisis. Do you not think they should It was Frank and his legislation pushing for low income loans that changed how banks did business. They took advantage of regulations that Frank put in place to make bad loans Do the bundling you point out and allowed it to be dumped into Fannie and Freddy. That was why he was questioned so much about it, he was warned by all the people you blame that his regs were sending us into a financial crises. Frank said all was fine on numerous occasions. Once more, if had read my post, it was not all Franks fault, but do not act like he is innocent or be naive like Chris who thinks Frank only recently joined the committee. He has been there for years and in charge, as head from 2007 -2010 and as ranking member, he is not just a member. And please note this committee overseas ALL THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY, ALL OF IT!! One more thing Chris, just so you know Barney Frank has been on this committee since 1981,
Source, Wikapedia
The United States House Committee on Financial Services (also referred to as the House Banking Committee) is the committee of the United States House of Representatives that oversees the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. The Committee also oversees the work of the Federal Reserve, the United States Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and other financial services regulators. It is chaired by Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and the ranking Democrat is Barney Frank (D-MA).
In 2003, while the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, Frank opposed a Bush administration proposal, in response to accounting scandals, for transferring oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to a new agency that would be created within the Treasury Department. The proposal, supported by the head of Fannie Mae, reflected the administration's belief that Congress "neither has the tools, nor the stature" for adequate oversight. Frank stated, "These two entities ...are not facing any kind of financial crisis ... The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."[63] In 2003, Frank also stated what has been called his "famous dice roll":[64] "I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness [in the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] that we have in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidised housing."[65]
FACTS, JUST THE FACTS, NO OPINION."How ridiculous! You have proven that you haven't a clue what is really going on."
"You haven't the slightest clue"
"How clueless! You didn't even try to look anything up...just throw out ignorance...as always."
Funny when people do not speak with facts and just opinion, and someone responds with facts they start calling names or try to belittle people. I have said several times on threads be careful who you insult or call a lier, it always seems to backfire on you. A wise person once said" better to let people think you are ignorant, then to speak and remove all doubt".
I think it is shameful people cannot just thread without the insulting statements. How do expect someone to take you serious with such remarks? Express you opions, banter back and forth, try to include some facts to back up your opion and not newspaper articles or news clips. Those are just other peoples opinion as well. If you want intelligent threads, above all, Be courtious.
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