How the Republicans caused the Wall Street mess

[forestal]

Yep, add it to their legacy...

In the 1990s, after the Republicans took control of Congress, Phil Gramm was able to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which largely deregulated the banking industry and allowed banks to merge with securities firms. John McCain strongly supported and voted for the bill. After that, Gramm slipped an amendment into an omnibus appropriations bill which deregulated the trading of financial instruments and allowed banks and brokers to trade mortgages as if they were stocks and bonds. This opened up the floodgates to massive trading of sub-prime mortgages.
...

Gramm later left the senate for a top position with UBS, a giant international financial firm which owns banks and investment firms such as PaineWebber. At UBS, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Treasury Department on behalf of the banks. He sought to have Congress pass a law designed to forbid states from enforcing stronger laws against predatory lending. As a result of Gramm’s efforts, the law forbidding state regulation of banks was passed, and lenders were free to practice predatory lending. Sub-prime mortgages became routine, and the trading of sub-prime mortgages in bulk became a widespread practice on Wall Street. When millions of people defaulted on those mortgages, the economy went into a tailspin.

Now John McCain, one of the Republicans who deregulated the banks and brokerages and enabled this disaster to happen, is running for President. Without any trace of irony, this Republican is shouting out against the lack of bank regulation! This Republican is talking about putting the chief congressional deregulator of banks, Phil Gramm, into the Cabinet as Treasury Secretary. We are being asked to forget about the perennial Republican opposition to bank regulation and to forget about McCain’s role as a deregulator. We are asked to forget that Phil Gramm and other McCain advisors have been powerful lobbyists for the banking industry.

[wollybugger]

This article is lifted from the "Greene Couny Gazette"????

right next to the artcile on how the Smith's goat soiled on the county road

hahahahahah

[Bann (Premo)]

Originally Posted by forestal

Yep, add it to their legacy...
In the 1990s, after the Republicans took control of Congress, Phil Gramm was able to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which largely deregulated the banking industry and allowed banks to merge with securities firms. John McCain strongly supported and voted for the bill. After that, Gramm slipped an amendment into an omnibus appropriations bill which deregulated the trading of financial instruments and allowed banks and brokers to trade mortgages as if they were stocks and bonds. This opened up the floodgates to massive trading of sub-prime mortgages.

Gramm later left the senate for a top position with UBS, a giant international financial firm which owns banks and investment firms such as PaineWebber. At UBS, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Treasury Department on behalf of the banks. He sought to have Congress pass a law designed to forbid states from enforcing stronger laws against predatory lending. As a result of Gramm’s efforts, the law forbidding state regulation of banks was passed, and lenders were free to practice predatory lending. Sub-prime mortgages became routine, and the trading of sub-prime mortgages in bulk became a widespread practice on Wall Street. When millions of people defaulted on those mortgages, the economy went into a tailspin.


Now John McCain, one of the Republicans who deregulated the banks and brokerages and enabled this disaster to happen, is running for President. Without any trace of irony, this Republican is shouting out against the lack of bank regulation! This Republican is talking about putting the chief congressional deregulator of banks, Phil Gramm, into the Cabinet as Treasury Secretary. We are being asked to forget about the perennial Republican opposition to bank regulation and to forget about McCain’s role as a deregulator. We are asked to forget that Phil Gramm and other McCain advisors have been powerful lobbyists for the banking industry.

HOUSE OF CARDS
LIBERALS FUELED WALL ST. WOES
HOW did America wind up in its worst financial crisis in decades? Sen. Barack Obama explained it this way last week: “When sub-prime-mortgage lending took a reckless and unsustainable turn, a patchwork of regulators systematically and deliberately eliminated the regulations protecting the American people.”

That’s exactly backward. Mortgage lending took that “reckless and unsustainable turn” because of regulation - regulation driven by liberals and progressives, not free-market “deregulators.”

Pushed hard by politicians and community activists, the regulators systematically and deliberately altered financially sound lending practices.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09242008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/house_of_cards_130479.htm?page=0

And even more...
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=307149667289804

http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.html

http://www.just-a-regular-guy.com/2008/09/22/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-the-wall-street-bailout-and-those-sneaky-democrats/

http://townhall.com/columnists/CalThomas/2008/09/25/judgment_day

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelReagan/2008/09/24/lets_get_it_right?page=1

Countrywide Made Home Loans
to Gorelick, Mudd
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122230672551773977.html

Let’s Keep People In Their Homes
Wall Street Journal, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122230767702474045.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[Pete (Premo)]

So let me get this right, you are wanting me to believe the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Investors Business Daily over Earnest Ledbedder at the Green County Dailies?

Shirley you jest.

[Johnll]

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis:

Bloomberg.com: News


Greenspan's Warning

The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Mounds of Materials

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

[Bann (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Pete

So let me get this right, you are wanting me to believe the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Investors Business Daily over Earnest Ledbedder at the Green County Dailies?

Shirley you jest.

It was the best I could come up with on short notice.

[Bann (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Johnll

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis:

Bloomberg.com: News


Greenspan's Warning

The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Mounds of Materials

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

I believe this was during the present administration, where Greenspan had a direct line of communication with the current president, no? That means when Bush did come out and talk about this topic - the masses in the media & Dems in Congress just ignored him or ridiculed him. And here we are today.

[otter (Premo)]

Looks like even Willy Jeff is saying the Democrats stuck their head in the sand about this during his administration.

Chris Cuomo, ABC News: A little surprising for you to hear the Democrats saying, "This came out of nowhere, this is all about the Republicans. We had nothing to do with this." Nancy Pelosi saying it. She signed the '99 Gramm Bill. She knew what was going on with the SEC. They're all sophisticated people. Is that playing politics in this situation?


Bill Clinton: Well, maybe everybody does that a little bit. I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

[Bann (Premo)]

Originally Posted by otter

Looks like even Willy Jeff is saying the Democrats stuck their head in the sand about this during his administration.

Chris Cuomo, ABC News: A little surprising for you to hear the Democrats saying, "This came out of nowhere, this is all about the Republicans. We had nothing to do with this." Nancy Pelosi saying it. She signed the '99 Gramm Bill. She knew what was going on with the SEC. They're all sophisticated people. Is that playing politics in this situation?

Bill Clinton: Well, maybe everybody does that a little bit. I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

: I heard that blurb! Bill is so out there trying to re-write history again! He did the same thing with 9-11. "Uh, ah tried mah best to git Osama and s'pose I should have taken him when ah had the chance, 'cept we rilly din't have nothin' we could hold him own".