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Here is an amazing YouTube video which chronicles the events leading up the current financial meltdown.
Dante was right about the road to hell.
A partisan minority of Senators has used the filibuster to block efforts to bring the troops home from Iraq, to frustrate passage of clean energy legislation, to block giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs, and much more.
You dont need some bullshit youtube piece put together by the white house to know what went wrong when people like the SEC have already told you.
The idea that only poor people defaulting on their loans caused this problem is insane. I know so many people who have lost their homes. Some because they lost their jobs and some because they just walked away from a very bad investment.
And, the idea that it's the Democrats fault when the GOP controlled everything for 6 of the last 7 years is
Why are you afraid to watch this video in which you will hear truth from the Democrats' own mouths?
The securities and exchange commission tells what went wrong
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Press Release: Chairman Cox Announces End of Consolidated Supervised Entities Program; 2008-230; Sept. 26, 2008
Chairman Cox made the following statement:
The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work. When Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, it created a significant regulatory gap by failing to give to the SEC or any agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies, like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns.
Because of the lack of explicit statutory authority for the Commission to require these investment bank holding companies to report their capital, maintain liquidity, or submit to leverage requirements, the Commission in 2004 created a voluntary program, the Consolidated Supervised Entities program, in an effort to fill this regulatory gap.
As I have reported to the Congress multiple times in recent months, the CSE program was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate of the CSE program, and weakened its effectiveness.
The Inspector General of the SEC today released a report on the CSE program's supervision of Bear Stearns, and that report validates and echoes the concerns I have expressed to Congress. The report's major findings are ultimately derivative of the lack of specific legal authority for the SEC or any other agency to act as the regulator of these large investment bank holding companies.
With each of the major investment banks that had been part of the CSE program being reconstituted within a bank holding company, they will all be subject to statutory supervision by the Federal Reserve. Under the Bank Holding Company Act, the Federal Reserve has robust statutory authority to impose and enforce supervisory requirements on those entities. Thus, there is not currently a regulatory gap in this area.
The CSE program within the Division of Trading and Markets will now be ending.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding between the SEC and the Federal Reserve that was executed in July of this year, we will continue to work closely with the Fed, but focused even more clearly on our statutory obligation to regulate the broker-dealer subsidiaries of the banking conglomerates. The information from the bank holding company level that the SEC will continue to receive under the MOU will strengthen our ability to protect the customers of the broker-dealers and the integrity of the broker-dealer firms.
The Inspector General's office also made 26 specific recommendations to improve the CSE program, which are comprehensive and worthy of support. Although the CSE program is ending, we will look closely at the applicability of those recommendations to other areas of the Commission's work and move to aggressively implement them.
As we learned from the CSE experience, it is critical that Congress ensure there are no similar major gaps in our regulatory framework. Unfortunately, as I reported to Congress this week, a massive hole remains: the approximately $60 trillion credit default swap (CDS) market, which is regulated by no agency of government. Neither the SEC nor any regulator has authority even to require minimum disclosure. I urge Congress to take swift action to address this.
Finally, I would like to commend the extraordinary efforts of the SEC's diligent staff, who for so many months have been working around the clock in the current market turmoil. Their dedication and commitment in behalf of investors and the American people are unequaled.
The idea that only poor people defaulting on their loans caused this problem is insane. I know so many people who have lost their homes. Some because they lost their jobs and some because they just walked away from a very bad investment.
And, the idea that it's the Democrats fault when the GOP controlled everything for 6 of the last 7 years is
You idiots! Stop blaming each other! It was EVERYONE's fault! This wasn't just the Democrats, this wasn't just the Republicans - NO ONE knew this was coming (except Jim Cramer). The greedy bastards on Wall Street made billions and lost trillions on this whole thing. They're the ones to blame the most! These AIG executives spending half a million dollars of YOUR tax money - BLAME them! Stop saying this is Obama's or Reed's or Gramm's or McCain's fault - it's EVERYONE's fault!
See if you can follow the timeline? 1979, Carter administration passes the Community Reinvestment Act aimed at doing away with redlining. 1998, Clinton administration HUD director, Andrew Cuomo (as seen in the video), beams while he announces that he has forced the Texas bank to give $2 BILLION in risky loans. Obama, as lawyer to ACORN, puts pressure on the government to give risky loans. The result is the meltdown we see today (2008).
Once again, good intentions combined with a lack of understanding of human nature, leads to disaster.
So five years ago, there was one of those rare moments in Washington when the branches and personalities of governmentin this case, the Bush administrationare less interested in protecting or expanding their turf than in fixing a looming catastrophe. What was Frank's response to the proposal?
"These two entitiesFannie Mae and Freddie Macare not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Barney Frank's Fannie and Freddie Muddle - Sam Dealey (usnews.com)
oh yeah, and barney's male lover was an exec at fannie....
