"Money, Power and Wall Street" - HUGE!!

The cause the financial meltdown is not covered in Money Power & Wallstreet. They are only covering the bailout. It also was not just republicans. Bill Clinton and many prominent democrats pushed for the killing of "Glass Steagall". Bill Clinton personally signed all the laws that deregulated Wallstreet & turned it into a gambling casino that raises prices on citizens & steals their savings.

Feb 27, 1995 TIME: CLINTON PROPOSES BANKING REFORMS - The Clinton Administration proposed sweeping changes in the nation's banking system that would permit commercial banks to sell insurance and underwrite securities. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin outlined the new proposal, which would allow banks to "affiliate" with Wall Street firms, insurance companies and other financial service providers. It would repeal several federal restrictions, including the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act, which forbids banks from underwriting securities or selling insurance.

September 25, 1998 EIR-Economics: Clinton takes the lead on new financial architecture - “Today, I have asked Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to convene a major meeting of their counterparts within the next 30 days to recommend ways to adapt the international financial architecture to the 21st century,” the President said. “If you consider today’s economic difficulties, disruptions, and plain old deep personal disappointments of now tens of millions of people around the world, it is clear to me that there is now a stark challenge not only to economic freedom but, if unaddressed, a challenge that could stem the rising tide of political liberty as well,” the President warned. “For most of the last 30 years, the United States and the rest of the world has been preoccupied by inflation, for reasons that all of you here know all too well,” Clinton said. “But clearly the balance of risks has now shifted, with a full quarter of the world’s population living in countries with declining economic growth or negative economic growth.”

October 23, 1999 New York Times: Agreement Reached on Overhaul of U.S. Financial System - Dodd, whose state is home to the nation's largest insurance companies, and Schumer, with strong ties to Wall Street, have long sought legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Both men said in interviews Friday that they moved to strike a compromise after it became apparent that the legislation might be killed, as it was last year by Gramm, over the debate about the Community Reinvestment Act.

Gramm had maintained that he did not want anything in the bill that would expand the application of the Community Reinvestment Act because it was, he said, unnecessarily burdensome to banks. He had sought a provision that would exempt thousands of smaller banks from the law. He also wanted a provision that would expose what he has described as the "extortion" committed by community groups against banks by requiring the groups to disclose any special financial deals the groups extract from the banks.

But the White House found that provision unacceptable and had its own ideas about community lending. It wanted the legislation to prevent any bank with an unsatisfactory record of making loans to the disadvantaged from expanding into new areas, like insurance or securities. The White House had insisted that the President would veto any legislation that would scale back minority-lending requirements.

October 24, 1999 New York Times: Deal on Bank Bill Was Helped Along By Midnight Talks - Mr. Dodd was not optimistic about the bill, which had reached the point of do or die. After four days of bitter polemic between Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Administration officials, the two sides were stuck over highly symbolic and racially tinged community lending rules that threatened to rip the legislation apart.

The discussions had become so poisoned by Thursday night that Mr. Gramm threatened both the top White House economic adviser, Gene Sperling, and the head of the nation's largest financial services company, Citigroup, that he would pull the plug on the bill, something neither the Administration nor Wall Street wanted.

But Mr. Dodd returned to the Capitol and, with a handful of other Democrats from the Banking Committee, slowly managed to turn Mr. Gramm around in an emotional confrontation in a tiny back office crammed with three dozen lawmakers and aides and Administration officials. There, they agreed to split a critical difference -- giving Mr. Gramm a provision he wanted that would make community lending advocates more accountable, and giving the White House what it wanted by making sure banks provided credit in poor communities before entering new lines of business.

At 2 o'clock on Friday morning, a few scant hours after his pessimistic report to the President, Mr. Dodd and other exhausted Democratic lawmakers placed a telephone call to a weary Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers to report that they had clinched a deal with Mr. Gramm to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. After eluding its advocates for decades, the agreement to deregulate Wall Street, favored by many of the nation's most powerful business interests, was struck.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0k2PmF-o5Q"]Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?[/ame]

October 27, 1999 New York Times: Former Treasury Secretary Joins Leadership Triangle at Citigroup - Robert E. Rubin, arguably the best-known financier of his generation and the recently retired Treasury Secretary, has taken a top position at Citigroup, the nation's largest financial services company...

The appointment came less than a week after the Clinton Administration and Congress agreed on a compromise bill that would overhaul the laws that regulate the financial industry, a measure that removes many of the restrictions preventing banks, securities firms and insurance companies from buying one another or engaging in one another's businesses. Both Mr. Rubin and Citigroup strongly supported the bill, which would greatly benefit the company. Mr. Rubin said he played a role in arranging the final compromise that will probably lead to the repeal of the so-called Glass-Steagall legislation.

Nov 13, 1999 New York Times: Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws - President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and to sell each other's products.

''This legislation is truly historic,'' President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. ''We have done right by the American people.''

The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.

''With this bill,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said, ''the American financial system takes a major step forward toward the 21st Century -- one that will benefit American consumers, business and the national economy.''

Time: 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis - President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3Z2Z2WMJk"]Bill Clinton Admits "I Was Wrong"[/ame]
 
The cause the financial meltdown is not covered in Money Power & Wallstreet. They are only covering the bailout. It also was not just republicans. Bill Clinton and many prominent democrats pushed for the killing of "Glass Steagall". Bill Clinton personally signed all the laws that deregulated Wallstreet & turned it into a gambling casino that raises prices on citizens & steals their savings.

Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?

Time: 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis - President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3Z2Z2WMJk"]Bill Clinton Admits "I Was Wrong"[/ame]

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Nice try, Skippy.......

*

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKKvMJeBBSA]Q&A: Leslie & Andrew Cockburn - YouTube[/ame]


See: 5:00 thru 12:00

.....for the Phil Gramm HU$TLE.


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*

Run, along, Skippy......

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All true. However, I do note that too much regulation slows business, too little leads to massive failure such as we just experianced. At present, I lean toward over doing rather than under doing the regulation. The Savings and Loan failures, and the present economic disruption reinforce those opinions on my part.

Which, of course, have no value, except at the ballot box. Because one does not influence high finance from the factory floor.

I do note that too much regulation slows business, too little leads to massive failure such as we just experianced.

What added regulations do you feel would have prevented the recent failures?

The Savings and Loan failures,

Were caused by what?
 
It's a tough balancing act, and we sure as hell don't have it figured out yet.


Not hardly. I spent 18 years writing mortgage loans. And we had a fine system in place when it was run by true mortgage bankers.

As soon as investment houses were permitted to write, fund and sell mortgage loans, all the BS loans started hitting the streets.

Now what was the legislative act that permitted this change?

And to think that people in the industry did not know what was going to happen is crazy.
I and some of my cohorts would bet on which month a loan would go into default.
Any decent underwriter or loan officer KNEW that we were creating a disaster. The ONLY reason it was allowed to continue is because of the money being made and with the sale of MBS, the risk of these bad loans could be passed on to an un suspecting investor.
Thanks to the credit rating agencies.

BTW, sub prime loans used to serve a useful purpose in the mortgage market. A niche if you will. When sub prime loans became the norm the end was near. I always wrote what was considered "A" paper loans and got out as the sub prime collapse was near. Besides that, as the end neared you couldn't find anything but crummy borrowers getting sub prime loans.

But to think the industry did not know what they were doing is crazy. They knew. They just didn't care. Greed was king. You had loan officers making 200k a year that had never made over 50. That will make you greedy. Managers making 500k a year. The amount of money being made was astounding.

But surely the right wing knows it was all Barney Frank's fault.

As soon as investment houses were permitted to write, fund and sell mortgage loans, all the BS loans started hitting the streets.

I know, that investment bank, Countrywide, really screwed the pooch.
 
The problem with "regulation" is that the feds tend to assume that more regulation is better regulation, and that's just not true. Effective, elastic regulation is crucial, but when it's nothing more than red tape designed to restrict, it becomes a negative.


The mortgage market was not "over regulated". And when investment houses got in the mortgage business, they worked very hard through their lobbying organizations to take the teeth out of the regs that were in place. And they succeeded.

Now who sponsored the bill that allowed investment firms to write mortgage loans.

And if investment houses writing mortgage loans was such a good idea, why hadn't it been done before?

Somehow you all think that the banking industry was just to dumb to figure out how to manipulate the guvmint so they could do what they wanted. That is way funny.


Now who sponsored the bill that allowed investment firms to write mortgage loans.


How much did Citibank and Bank of America lose on mortgages?
What bill allowed banks to write mortgages?
 
The cause the financial meltdown is not covered in Money Power & Wallstreet. They are only covering the bailout. It also was not just republicans. Bill Clinton and many prominent democrats pushed for the killing of "Glass Steagall". Bill Clinton personally signed all the laws that deregulated Wallstreet & turned it into a gambling casino that raises prices on citizens & steals their savings.

Feb 27, 1995 TIME: CLINTON PROPOSES BANKING REFORMS - The Clinton Administration proposed sweeping changes in the nation's banking system that would permit commercial banks to sell insurance and underwrite securities. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin outlined the new proposal, which would allow banks to "affiliate" with Wall Street firms, insurance companies and other financial service providers. It would repeal several federal restrictions, including the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act, which forbids banks from underwriting securities or selling insurance.

September 25, 1998 EIR-Economics: Clinton takes the lead on new financial architecture - “Today, I have asked Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to convene a major meeting of their counterparts within the next 30 days to recommend ways to adapt the international financial architecture to the 21st century,” the President said. “If you consider today’s economic difficulties, disruptions, and plain old deep personal disappointments of now tens of millions of people around the world, it is clear to me that there is now a stark challenge not only to economic freedom but, if unaddressed, a challenge that could stem the rising tide of political liberty as well,” the President warned. “For most of the last 30 years, the United States and the rest of the world has been preoccupied by inflation, for reasons that all of you here know all too well,” Clinton said. “But clearly the balance of risks has now shifted, with a full quarter of the world’s population living in countries with declining economic growth or negative economic growth.”





[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0k2PmF-o5Q"]Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?[/ame]



Nov 13, 1999 New York Times: Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws - President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and to sell each other's products.

''This legislation is truly historic,'' President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. ''We have done right by the American people.''

The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.

''With this bill,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said, ''the American financial system takes a major step forward toward the 21st Century -- one that will benefit American consumers, business and the national economy.''

Time: 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis - President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3Z2Z2WMJk"]Bill Clinton Admits "I Was Wrong"[/ame]

Thanks for the accurate historical facts insead of Shaman's regurgitated after the fact spin by PBS.
 
Nobody has to watch this to know that the average hard working man has no chance to ever get ahead because the system isnt designed to let working people get ahead. Wealth means power. Power means control. Keep others down and you have it made. This is what our system is and nobody can argue any differently. As a former business owner I knew that I couldnt strike it big. But that didnt bother me. The system is skewed ONLY for those making the huge money. Heck, who doesnt know this. Its called GREED. Its the biggest part of the whole system.
 

"Activists from the 99 Percent Movement took to the streets across America to mark May Day on Tuesday, but their campaign against Wall Street is just beginning. In the month of May, activist groups and religious leaders will again turn their focus to urging customers to move their money from Wall Street banks."

:clap2:

:woohoo: . :woohoo: . :woohoo: . :woohoo: . :woohoo: . :woohoo: . :woohoo:
 
The cause the financial meltdown is not covered in Money Power & Wallstreet. They are only covering the bailout.

Thanks for the accurate historical facts insead of Shaman's regurgitated after the fact spin by PBS.

You stupid-shits (quite) obviously never watched:


Your preference for ignorance truly is amazing....and, anti-American.

:eusa_hand:


eusa_doh.gif

Stupid Fuckin' Teabaggers
 
Here it IS, folks!!!

Part 1 of a GREAT documentary (shown earlier, this evening, on PBS), on the timeline of The MELTDOWN!!!!!

It starts-out with a group o' young, 20-something "cowboys" (with J.P. Morgan), who came-up with a plan to share credit-risks....with other banks.....that SNOWBALLED!!!

Part 2 ends with the meeting John McCain called....to deal with an all-too-apparent Wall Street IMPLOSION....while he suspended his Presidential campaign.

Shortly after the meeting begins, Presidential-nominee Barack Obama TOOK-OVER.....eventually, President George Bush RUNS-OUTTA-THE-ROOM....and, Presidential-nominee John McCain proceeds to utterly MELT-DOWN!!!!


.....And, the Tea Party folks are still blaming Blacks, who took-out loans they couldn't afford.

Money, Power and Wall Street

Interviews

cant wait to see it
 
The cause the financial meltdown is not covered in Money Power & Wallstreet. They are only covering the bailout. It also was not just republicans. Bill Clinton and many prominent democrats pushed for the killing of "Glass Steagall". Bill Clinton personally signed all the laws that deregulated Wallstreet & turned it into a gambling casino that raises prices on citizens & steals their savings.

Feb 27, 1995 TIME: CLINTON PROPOSES BANKING REFORMS - The Clinton Administration proposed sweeping changes in the nation's banking system that would permit commercial banks to sell insurance and underwrite securities. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin outlined the new proposal, which would allow banks to "affiliate" with Wall Street firms, insurance companies and other financial service providers. It would repeal several federal restrictions, including the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act, which forbids banks from underwriting securities or selling insurance.







[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0k2PmF-o5Q"]Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?[/ame]





Time: 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis - President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3Z2Z2WMJk"]Bill Clinton Admits "I Was Wrong"[/ame]

Thanks for the accurate historical facts insead of Shaman's regurgitated after the fact spin by PBS.

what was the name of that ACT this stuff talks about?


Gramm leach biliely act.


It is named after Phil Gramm who wrote it and as soon as it passed he left congress and was given a big ticket job at UBS bank.


There were reasons Clinton signed the bill.

There were protections written into the bill to keep this mess from happening.

Guess what happened to those written in protections?
 
SEC Votes for Final Rules Defining How Banks Can Be Securities Brokers
Eight Years After Passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Key Provisions Will Now Be Implemented
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2007-190
Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2007 - Ending eight years of stalled negotiations and impasse, the Commission today voted to adopt, jointly with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), new rules that will finally implement the bank broker provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. The Board will consider these final rules at its Sept. 24, 2007 meeting. The Commission and the Board consulted with and sought the concurrence of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Office of Thrift Supervision.
 
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6bmEv2-rFA]President Bush's speech on the financial crisis 9/24/08 (1) - YouTube[/ame]
 
One short year latter the jig was up with the mess leaving the rules hanging caused
 
.

If it's anything like HBO's "Too Big to Fail", I won't bother.

It is nothing like Too Big To Fail.


I'm in the industry. My guess is that I know quite a bit more than you do about what happened, regardless of what Rachel Maddow tells you.

You should watch the Frontline show. If you really are in the industry, you will be captivated and nodding your head along with it. It is extremely well done.
 
Mac, they go all the way back to BISTRO, although they don't mention it specifically by name. Even further back than that. They even extensively interview two of the 20-somethings at JP Morgan who invented it and then watched their creation get turned into a monster by other firms who had no idea what they were doing.

It really is well done.
 
Mac, they go all the way back to BISTRO, although they don't mention it specifically by name. Even further back than that. They even extensively interview two of the 20-somethings at JP Morgan who invented it and then watched their creation get turned into a monster by other firms who had no idea what they were doing.

It really is well done.


My concern is that they try to point all the blame in one simplistic direction (as "Too Big to Fail" did) instead of painting the big picture. So they illustrate that there were many pieces, many villians (including the consumer) in this? If so, then yeah, I'll try to check it out.

.
 

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