Let's Take Back The Microphone From The Crooks And Liars - The Repeal Of The Glass-Steagall Act WAS AND IS A Major Contributor To This Crisis.
It seems since the President came out last week and talked about restraining the activity of Wall Street that many are remarking Glass-Steagall would not have kept this crisis from happening. That the repeal of Glass-Steagall had no impact on what we see on Wall Street today. The day of the President's remarks last week the CFO of Goldman Sachs stated that Glass Steagall was irrelevant since Bear Stearns and Lehman were not regulated banks. Well, the CFO of Goldman Sachs has no idea what caused this crisis since he had his head so far up his ass (Doing God's work) before the collapse that he had no idea what was going on. And he still doesn't. This is one of the most incompetent financial officers in the United States today for witnessing Goldman Sachs lever itself up more than 40:1 - something we wrote of before the global economy imploded. Were he to reap what he sowed, he would be searching for grubs in the gutter with the rest of us as opposed to living the life of a millionaire off of the back of unemployed Americans and your grandmother's Social Security, formerly used to pay her heating bill and put food on her table. Americans who owe their unemployment in large part to his complete incompetence. Excuse my French but I tire of listening to learned idiots (who also happen to be assholes) responsible for this mess telling us what we should be doing with our country and our financial system.
Byron Dorgan, a populist Congressman, foretold of this crisis ten years before it came to pass when he argued on the Senate floor against Bill Clinton's fraudulent repeal of Glass-Steagall. To watch Dorgan's remarks in the video below is a chilling experience. To watch the specificity with which he accurately describes an environment ten years into the future is frightening. Forecasting may be folly as Barry Ritholtz often writes, but foretelling the future is not if one understands the past. Glass-Steagall is not the end all to this economic crisis, because it is an economic crisis, not a financial crisis, but it would have spared the United States the worst of what has happened over the last ten years including the massive fraud and political bribery we now see to prevalent in Washington and Wall Street. This video is a must watch for everyone.
"I think we will, in ten years time, look back and say we should not have done that because we forgot the lessons of the past." -- Byron Dorgan, November 1999
Only crooks, liars and uninformed ideologues would ever argue that the dismantling of regulations and Glass-Steagall was not a prime determinant of the collapse of our financial system. As Dorgan states, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And, in fact, we are repeating the collapse of our financial system just as happened in the Great Depression. And the reasons are exactly the same - fraud and corruption. And, as we have said many times, the world is in the early phases of a depression. There is no recovery without a new economic model.
In the mean time, I would encourage you to write your Congressperson and the White House to demand support for Maria Cantwell's effort to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act. All of it. Not what the President selectively chooses to support. That includes not just what was there in 1999 but all of the components dismantled up until that point.
Bill Clinton repeatedly made decision after decision during his Presidency which has contributed to this crisis. Bill Clinton did more to create this economic collapse than any President. Substantially more than George Bush. Bill Clinton is quite possibly the worst President in American history. Yet many Americans believe Clinton was a great President because they associate economic correlation with his time in office. Contrarily, what we see today is Bill Clinton's work. And now all of his cronies surround President Obama. This is contributing to the continuation of this crisis. Frankly, I believe the President should excuse his entire economic team and all of the former Clinton advisors and start anew.
We have written incessantly about Glass-Steagall since starting this blog. Anyone who foresaw the instability in our banking system understands the role dismantling our regulations, including Glass-Steagall, played in the collapse of Wall Street. Wall Street didn't spend $300 million (In today's dollar terms, likely more than $1 billion) bribing Washington politicians to overturn Glass-Steagall if its impacts were irrelevant.
Byron Dorgan, a populist Congressman, foretold of this crisis ten years before it came to pass when he argued on the Senate floor against Bill Clinton's fraudulent repeal of Glass-Steagall. To watch Dorgan's remarks in the video below is a chilling experience. To watch the specificity with which he accurately describes an environment ten years into the future is frightening. Forecasting may be folly as Barry Ritholtz often writes, but foretelling the future is not if one understands the past. Glass-Steagall is not the end all to this economic crisis, because it is an economic crisis, not a financial crisis, but it would have spared the United States the worst of what has happened over the last ten years including the massive fraud and political bribery we now see to prevalent in Washington and Wall Street. This video is a must watch for everyone.
"I think we will, in ten years time, look back and say we should not have done that because we forgot the lessons of the past." -- Byron Dorgan, November 1999
Only crooks, liars and uninformed ideologues would ever argue that the dismantling of regulations and Glass-Steagall was not a prime determinant of the collapse of our financial system. As Dorgan states, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And, in fact, we are repeating the collapse of our financial system just as happened in the Great Depression. And the reasons are exactly the same - fraud and corruption. And, as we have said many times, the world is in the early phases of a depression. There is no recovery without a new economic model.
In the mean time, I would encourage you to write your Congressperson and the White House to demand support for Maria Cantwell's effort to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act. All of it. Not what the President selectively chooses to support. That includes not just what was there in 1999 but all of the components dismantled up until that point.
Bill Clinton repeatedly made decision after decision during his Presidency which has contributed to this crisis. Bill Clinton did more to create this economic collapse than any President. Substantially more than George Bush. Bill Clinton is quite possibly the worst President in American history. Yet many Americans believe Clinton was a great President because they associate economic correlation with his time in office. Contrarily, what we see today is Bill Clinton's work. And now all of his cronies surround President Obama. This is contributing to the continuation of this crisis. Frankly, I believe the President should excuse his entire economic team and all of the former Clinton advisors and start anew.
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