I remember Bill Clinton bad-mouthing most of the Republican bills he signed within minutes on Capitol Hill, so he wouldn't mess up his liberal bona files with the left. He oversaw welfare reform and spending reforms. None of it would have even been possible without Newt's "Contract With America ", programs Democrats referred to as a despicable "Contract ON America". Meanwhile Clinton was destroying the banking industry, repealing Glass - Steagall, which led to the crash in 2006 and 2008.
Glass–Steagall: Aftermath of repeal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
........the GLBA’s “repeal” had permitted “super-banks” to “re-enact the same kinds of structural conflicts of interest that were endemic in the 1920s,” which he characterized as “lending to speculators, packaging and securitizing credits and then selling them off, wholesale or retail, and extracting fees at every step along the way.”[47] Stiglitz argued “the most important consequence of Glass–Steagall repeal” was in changing the culture of commercial banking so that the “bigger risk” culture of investment banking “came out on top.”[48] He also argued the GLBA “created ever larger banks that were too big to be allowed to fail,” which “provided incentives for excessive risk taking.”[49] Warren explained Glass–Steagall had kept banks from doing “crazy things.” She credited FDIC insurance, the Glass–Steagall separation of investment banking, and SEC regulations as providing “50 years without a crisis” and argued that crises returned in the 1980s with the “pulling away of the threads” of regulation.[50] Weissman agrees with Stiglitz that the “most important effect” of Glass–Steagall “repeal” was to “change the culture of commercial banking to emulate Wall Street's high-risk speculative betting approach.”[51]
