Today's news carried two related stories that seem to demonstrate how dysfunctional our government is.

One story was that of the civil lawsuit by the SEC against Goldman Sachs for fraudulently designing and selling securities which were expected to result in huge losses to investors, but huge profits for Goldman and their clients. Let me sum up the high points of the deal in question...

Goldman purchased and assembled large groups of sub-prime mortgages into mortgage-backed bonds, which evidence apparently shows they knew were certain to default. Of course, they took fees for creating and selling those bonds to investors. Then they designed a complicated derivative contract--call it an insurance policy--that would pay off to the owner of that contract when the bonds defaulted. They took more fees for designing and selling those derivatives to another client, a hedge fund. When the bonds defaulted, the investors in the bonds--mostly city and state retirement funds--lost almost their entire investment. But the owner of the derivative "insurance policy" profited just about dollar for dollar in the amount of the investor's losses. Goldman Sachs made millions of dollars, having been on both sides of the transaction. And the way Goldman is organized, a very large proportion of their profits were paid to the people involved in the form of huge bonuses. The SEC is alleging that there was fraud involved, but there is nothing apparently illegal about the transaction.

This happened as the result of a couple of events in the preceding years. Congress got involved, thru their oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to incent those lenders to dramatically loosen their lending standards. Those loosened standards rippled thru the banking industry, resulting in the origination of millions of loans to borrowers who were not creditworthy, based solely on frothy increases in home values. When residential market values declined, the losses imbedded in all those bad loans were revealed.

The actual losses resultant from the bad mortgage loans were actually multiplied several times over as the result of investment bankers and insurance companies creating a variety of derivative financial contracts based on those mortgages and sold to a variety of investors worldwide. So when the decline in home values caused defaults on the underlying mortgage loans, the effect on the owners of the variety of derivative contracts was even worse. There was nothing illegal about what was done by the investment banks and they didn't violate any regulations--there weren't any.

The entire financial system was pushed to the edge of almost complete failure because in 1999, the legislation that required that commercial banks not be permitted to assume the types of high risk businesses and securities that the investment banks were permitted to create was eliminated. That legislation, put in place at the time of the Great Depression in 1933, had been largely effective in protecting the banking system from losses from risky businesses and securites for more than 50 years. Following the elimination of the "separation" legislation, the decade of the 1990's was one where the regulatory system of the Federal Reserve system was purposely diluted by the politicians and appointees then in power. The number of various kinds of derivative financial contracts and products also escalated. But the government passed legislation in the mid-1990's to completely de-regulate any of the derivatives businesses of the banks of investment banks. There simply was no legal requirement for regulation of any of those financial products that ultimately deepened to recent financial crisis by several orders of magnitude.

Another story in today's news had to do with the legislation which has been proposed by both the POTUS as well as the Senate Banking Committee to strongly increase and improve the regulation of banks and investment banks, including the specification of how a few financial institutions who would be deemed "important to the financial system" including how they would be dealt with should it be determined that they assumed too much risk and had become financially unstable. The legislation is reported to describe the process by which such financially-threatened banks would be broken up and sold off. The opponents of the legislation are referring to that part of the legislation as a "bailout", even though no government investment is proposed. The legislation has been discussed for many months, but the bill has reached a point where it will be presented to the Congress for debate and vote. Today's news article said that the Republican leadership in the Senate announced that it would vote 41-0 to oppose any new financial regulation, even before the first committee meeting has been scheduled to discuss and debate the proposed bill.

There are a whole lot of details that can't be presented in just one post on this board. But I ask you--does this completely partisan decision on the part of one of our political parties seem like a reasonable position to take given our experience with the financial crisis and as recently as today, the window into the self-profiting inner workings of the leading investment bank on Wall Street? What they are saying is that no further regulation of the financial industry appears to be needed.

It does not take an advanced degree in finance or years of experience in banking--both of which I have by the way--to see the continued partisan dysfunctionality of our government with laser-like clarity. Our politicians seem to be more interested in winning the argument rather than doing anything that might assure increased stability of the American financial system.

While we may disagree on many subjects VH, you will find no argument on this one. Being right with our current run of politicians has found more favor that doing what is correct for the American people and our economy, of which running it into the ground seems quite a popular sport now amongst both sides of the aisle's meaning common ground has become almost a "no man's land."

Modifying your last sentence by eliminating the reference to banking and it describes the US current problems in general:

"Our politicians seem to be more interested in winning the argument rather than doing anything that might assure increased stability..."

btk

Today's (Saturday, April 17) Business section of The New York Times has several articles regarding the SEC/Goldman Sachs case, as well as other information regarding how this one case and thousands of others like it contributed to the financial crisis. I can't recall a single 8-10 page section of a newspaper that had so many pertinent and interesting articles.

You will be enraged by how much money the "free market" was able to earn, while at the same time contributing to or even causing the financial crisis that is affecting all of us and even the entire world. One of the counterparties to the deal that the SEC is suing Goldman about, the Paulson hedge fund, earned something in the range of $40 billion in just 2-3 years. They are not a party to the SEC complaint, as they did not break any laws or violate any financial industry regulations. They didn't because there weren't any, all regulations applying to derivative financial products or the firms that traded them having been excluded from regulation by an act of Congress right at the end of the Clinton administration. (Do you think there might have been any special interest money behind that bill?)

What these New York Times articles do describe is the desperate need for strong new regulations that will permit the government to oversee and control the amount of systemic risk being created by these firms in the interest of profit, even while knowingly risking the financial collapse of the financial system.

The print edition of the Saturday NYT has all these great articles. I'm not sure that they're all in the online edition. I think the NYT remains a free site, so you should be able to read all the articles I referred to posted electronically.

Here are a few of the articles I found particularly enlightening. I hope they're free so you can navigate to them and read them...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/bu...cus.html?fta=y

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/bu...era.html?fta=y

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/bu...p=5&sq=&st=nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/bu...p=2&sq=&st=nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/us...p=3&sq=&st=nyt

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Today's news carried two related stories that seem to demonstrate how dysfunctional our government is.

One story was that of the civil lawsuit by the SEC against Goldman Sachs for fraudulently designing and selling securities which were expected to result in huge losses to investors, but huge profits for Goldman and their clients. Let me sum up the high points of the deal in question...

Goldman purchased and assembled large groups of sub-prime mortgages into mortgage-backed bonds, which evidence apparently shows they knew were certain to default. Of course, they took fees for creating and selling those bonds to investors. Then they designed a complicated derivative contract--call it an insurance policy--that would pay off to the owner of that contract when the bonds defaulted. They took more fees for designing and selling those derivatives to another client, a hedge fund. When the bonds defaulted, the investors in the bonds--mostly city and state retirement funds--lost almost their entire investment. But the owner of the derivative "insurance policy" profited just about dollar for dollar in the amount of the investor's losses. Goldman Sachs made millions of dollars, having been on both sides of the transaction. And the way Goldman is organized, a very large proportion of their profits were paid to the people involved in the form of huge bonuses. The SEC is alleging that there was fraud involved, but there is nothing apparently illegal about the transaction.

This happened as the result of a couple of events in the preceding years. Congress got involved, thru their oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to incent those lenders to dramatically loosen their lending standards. Those loosened standards rippled thru the banking industry, resulting in the origination of millions of loans to borrowers who were not creditworthy, based solely on frothy increases in home values. When residential market values declined, the losses imbedded in all those bad loans were revealed.

The actual losses resultant from the bad mortgage loans were actually multiplied several times over as the result of investment bankers and insurance companies creating a variety of derivative financial contracts based on those mortgages and sold to a variety of investors worldwide. So when the decline in home values caused defaults on the underlying mortgage loans, the effect on the owners of the variety of derivative contracts was even worse. There was nothing illegal about what was done by the investment banks and they didn't violate any regulations--there weren't any.

The entire financial system was pushed to the edge of almost complete failure because in 1999, the legislation that required that commercial banks not be permitted to assume the types of high risk businesses and securities that the investment banks were permitted to create was eliminated. That legislation, put in place at the time of the Great Depression in 1933, had been largely effective in protecting the banking system from losses from risky businesses and securites for more than 50 years. Following the elimination of the "separation" legislation, the decade of the 1990's was one where the regulatory system of the Federal Reserve system was purposely diluted by the politicians and appointees then in power. The number of various kinds of derivative financial contracts and products also escalated. But the government passed legislation in the mid-1990's to completely de-regulate any of the derivatives businesses of the banks of investment banks. There simply was no legal requirement for regulation of any of those financial products that ultimately deepened to recent financial crisis by several orders of magnitude.

Another story in today's news had to do with the legislation which has been proposed by both the POTUS as well as the Senate Banking Committee to strongly increase and improve the regulation of banks and investment banks, including the specification of how a few financial institutions who would be deemed "important to the financial system" including how they would be dealt with should it be determined that they assumed too much risk and had become financially unstable. The legislation is reported to describe the process by which such financially-threatened banks would be broken up and sold off. The opponents of the legislation are referring to that part of the legislation as a "bailout", even though no government investment is proposed. The legislation has been discussed for many months, but the bill has reached a point where it will be presented to the Congress for debate and vote. Today's news article said that the Republican leadership in the Senate announced that it would vote 41-0 to oppose any new financial regulation, even before the first committee meeting has been scheduled to discuss and debate the proposed bill.

There are a whole lot of details that can't be presented in just one post on this board. But I ask you--does this completely partisan decision on the part of one of our political parties seem like a reasonable position to take given our experience with the financial crisis and as recently as today, the window into the self-profiting inner workings of the leading investment bank on Wall Street? What they are saying is that no further regulation of the financial industry appears to be needed.

It does not take an advanced degree in finance or years of experience in banking--both of which I have by the way--to see the continued partisan dysfunctionality of our government with laser-like clarity. Our politicians seem to be more interested in winning the argument rather than doing anything that might assure increased stability of the American financial system.

Is it not correct that the Republican party voted against AND the President threatened a veto because the legislation did not have ENOUGH regulation concerning derivatives ? And did the Republican leader also not praise the President for that threat of veto ?

Originally Posted by Bucco

Is it not correct that the Republican party voted against AND the President threatened a veto because the legislation did not have ENOUGH regulation concerning derivatives ? And did the Republican leader also not praise the President for that threat of veto ?

As illogical as it seems, from what I've read, that is mostly correct, although I haven't been able to find a quote from Mitch McConnell complimenting the President.

While the legislation has been in the drafting stage for the better part of a year, it is only now that Harry Reid announced he wanted to bring it to the Senate floor for debate and a vote. It was at that point that Mitch McConnell, the GOP minority leader, announced that the 41 GOP senators would vote unanimously against the bill (41 votes). Later, the deputy GOP leader, Senator John Kyl, announced that the GOP would even be prepared to filibuster the bill to assure that debate wasn't even started.

President Obama did threaten to veto any financial regulatory bill passed by Congress that didn't have robust regulation of financial derivatives. A second bill, with comprehensive focus on derivatives, has been introduced by Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), chairwoman of the Senate Agricultural committee. The White House has said that the content of this bill, if integrated into the Banking Committee's bill, would meet with Obama's approval regarding derivative regulation. (The Agriculture Committee got involved because of the extensive use of derivatives by farmers to assure the cost of seed, feed and fertilizer and to assure the selling prices of crops and feed animals.)

While Republicans have enough votes to block the Democrats’ bill, they do not have enough votes to win approval of any amendments they might attempt to offer, which is why they are fighting so hard to make changes to the bill before the start of formal debate. Senators on both sides say that an agreement will likely be reached. Some observers believe that the Republicans may be attempting to prolong the process, using up legislative time that Democrats might use to introduce legislation on other issues.

Also yes, I think at one time or another several GOP senators were complimentary of the proposed legislation. One was Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) who was heavily involved in drafting the bill (but has now signed the letter saying he would vote against it). He said, "...the differences we have on this bill could be resolved with five minutes of negotiation".

A real good, balanced summary of the content of the bill and the winners and losers is presented in the following Reuters News summary...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN...pe=marketsNews

One last forewarning...watch how the influence of the lobbyists for the banks and Wall Street investment banks affects this bill as it is negotiated. Their closest relationships have been with the GOP side of the aisle. Mitch McConnell met with a group of bank lobbyists just this week to discuss the proposed bill.

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

As illogical as it seems, from what I've read, that is mostly correct, although I haven't been able to find a quote from Mitch McConnell complimenting the President.

While the legislation has been in the drafting stage for the better part of a year, it is only now that Harry Reid announced he wanted to bring it to the Senate floor for debate and a vote. It was at that point that Mitch McConnell, the GOP minority leader, announced that the 41 GOP senators would vote unanimously against the bill (41 votes). Later, the deputy GOP leader, Senator John Kyl, announced that the GOP would even be prepared to filibuster the bill to assure that debate wasn't even started.

President Obama did threaten to veto any financial regulatory bill passed by Congress that didn't have robust regulation of financial derivatives. A second bill, with comprehensive focus on derivatives, has been introduced by Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), chairwoman of the Senate Agricultural committee. The White House has said that the content of this bill, if integrated into the Banking Committee's bill, would meet with Obama's approval regarding derivative regulation. (The Agriculture Committee got involved because of the extensive use of derivatives by farmers to assure the cost of seed, feed and fertilizer and to assure the selling prices of crops and feed animals.)

While Republicans have enough votes to block the Democrats’ bill, they do not have enough votes to win approval of any amendments they might attempt to offer, which is why they are fighting so hard to make changes to the bill before the start of formal debate. Senators on both sides say that an agreement will likely be reached. Some observers believe that the Republicans may be attempting to prolong the process, using up legislative time that Democrats might use to introduce legislation on other issues.

Also yes, I think at one time or another several GOP senators were complimentary of the proposed legislation. One was Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) who was heavily involved in drafting the bill (but has now signed the letter saying he would vote against it). He said, "...the differences we have on this bill could be resolved with five minutes of negotiation".

A real good, balanced summary of the content of the bill and the winners and losers is presented in the following Reuters News summary...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN...pe=marketsNews

One last forewarning...watch how the influence of the lobbyists for the banks and Wall Street investment banks affects this bill as it is negotiated. Their closest relationships have been with the GOP side of the aisle. Mitch McConnell met with a group of bank lobbyists just this week to discuss the proposed bill.

Here is the quote you could not locate...

""I appreciate the Obama administrations recognition of the need to substantively improve this bill," McConnell said. "And I hope we can work with them to close the remaining bailout loopholes that put American taxpayers on the hook for financial institutions that become too big to fail."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...dEAlgD9F4ETRG2

Just shocked that this quote and fact did not make your summary of this legislation where you said...."...does this completely partisan decision on the part of one of our political parties seem like a reasonable position to take given our experience..." in referring to the Republican party vote on it.

PS: I am also shocked at the TIMES for not being able to find that quote....at least I could not find it in there....ah heck....I am sure that Fox news probably had something to do with it !

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Today's news carried two related stories that seem to demonstrate how dysfunctional our government is.

One story was that of the civil lawsuit by the SEC against Goldman Sachs for fraudulently designing and selling securities which were expected to result in huge losses to investors, but huge profits for Goldman and their clients. Let me sum up the high points of the deal in question...

Goldman purchased and assembled large groups of sub-prime mortgages into mortgage-backed bonds, which evidence apparently shows they knew were certain to default. Of course, they took fees for creating and selling those bonds to investors. Then they designed a complicated derivative contract--call it an insurance policy--that would pay off to the owner of that contract when the bonds defaulted. They took more fees for designing and selling those derivatives to another client, a hedge fund. When the bonds defaulted, the investors in the bonds--mostly city and state retirement funds--lost almost their entire investment. But the owner of the derivative "insurance policy" profited just about dollar for dollar in the amount of the investor's losses. Goldman Sachs made millions of dollars, having been on both sides of the transaction. And the way Goldman is organized, a very large proportion of their profits were paid to the people involved in the form of huge bonuses. The SEC is alleging that there was fraud involved, but there is nothing apparently illegal about the transaction.

This happened as the result of a couple of events in the preceding years. Congress got involved, thru their oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to incent those lenders to dramatically loosen their lending standards. Those loosened standards rippled thru the banking industry, resulting in the origination of millions of loans to borrowers who were not creditworthy, based solely on frothy increases in home values. When residential market values declined, the losses imbedded in all those bad loans were revealed.

The actual losses resultant from the bad mortgage loans were actually multiplied several times over as the result of investment bankers and insurance companies creating a variety of derivative financial contracts based on those mortgages and sold to a variety of investors worldwide. So when the decline in home values caused defaults on the underlying mortgage loans, the effect on the owners of the variety of derivative contracts was even worse. There was nothing illegal about what was done by the investment banks and they didn't violate any regulations--there weren't any.

The entire financial system was pushed to the edge of almost complete failure because in 1999, the legislation that required that commercial banks not be permitted to assume the types of high risk businesses and securities that the investment banks were permitted to create was eliminated. That legislation, put in place at the time of the Great Depression in 1933, had been largely effective in protecting the banking system from losses from risky businesses and securites for more than 50 years. Following the elimination of the "separation" legislation, the decade of the 1990's was one where the regulatory system of the Federal Reserve system was purposely diluted by the politicians and appointees then in power. The number of various kinds of derivative financial contracts and products also escalated. But the government passed legislation in the mid-1990's to completely de-regulate any of the derivatives businesses of the banks of investment banks. There simply was no legal requirement for regulation of any of those financial products that ultimately deepened to recent financial crisis by several orders of magnitude.

Another story in today's news had to do with the legislation which has been proposed by both the POTUS as well as the Senate Banking Committee to strongly increase and improve the regulation of banks and investment banks, including the specification of how a few financial institutions who would be deemed "important to the financial system" including how they would be dealt with should it be determined that they assumed too much risk and had become financially unstable. The legislation is reported to describe the process by which such financially-threatened banks would be broken up and sold off. The opponents of the legislation are referring to that part of the legislation as a "bailout", even though no government investment is proposed. The legislation has been discussed for many months, but the bill has reached a point where it will be presented to the Congress for debate and vote. Today's news article said that the Republican leadership in the Senate announced that it would vote 41-0 to oppose any new financial regulation, even before the first committee meeting has been scheduled to discuss and debate the proposed bill.

There are a whole lot of details that can't be presented in just one post on this board. But I ask you--does this completely partisan decision on the part of one of our political parties seem like a reasonable position to take given our experience with the financial crisis and as recently as today, the window into the self-profiting inner workings of the leading investment bank on Wall Street? What they are saying is that no further regulation of the financial industry appears to be needed.

It does not take an advanced degree in finance or years of experience in banking--both of which I have by the way--to see the continued partisan dysfunctionality of our government with laser-like clarity. Our politicians seem to be more interested in winning the argument rather than doing anything that might assure increased stability of the American financial system.

What you did not mention about the Goldman Sachs travesty was that they targeted AIG to insure that mountain of sub-prime trash. Goldman knew exactly what they were doing, including that these transactions would destroy AIG. Goldman did it out of sheer greed and because greatly weakened banking regulations allowed it. Need I remind anyone who spent billions to bail out AIG?
So. IMHO, the SEC should find ANY conceivable reason to sue Goldman.
And remember, in the name of free enterprise, it was the previous administration which presided over the final dismantling of finance regulations. Hindsight's 20/20, and I don't really blame the Republican majority for this. Just like Alan Greenspan, it was WHAT THEY BELIEVED WAS BEST. But we are hopefully smarter now, have proof that greed trumps everything, and hopefully we will continue what the current administration is doing until Wall Street, the banks and the insurance companies can no longer control and steal from us.

I dont think we should ignore the motivation behind all this sub prime trash either. These guys took advantage of a situation that congress allowed to occur !!

Originally Posted by ijusluvit

What you did not mention about the Goldman Sachs travesty was that they targeted AIG to insure that mountain of sub-prime trash. Goldman knew exactly what they were doing, including that these transactions would destroy AIG. Goldman did it out of sheer greed and because greatly weakened banking regulations allowed it. Need I remind anyone who spent billions to bail out AIG?
So. IMHO, the SEC should find ANY conceivable reason to sue Goldman.
And remember, in the name of free enterprise, it was the previous administration which presided over the final dismantling of finance regulations. Hindsight's 20/20, and I don't really blame the Republican majority for this. Just like Alan Greenspan, it was WHAT THEY BELIEVED WAS BEST. But we are hopefully smarter now, have proof that greed trumps everything, and hopefully we will continue what the current administration is doing until Wall Street, the banks and the insurance companies can no longer control and steal from us.

I sure won't argue that the Goldman guys weren't greedy. (Remember Gordon Gecko's "greed is good" statement in the original Wall Street movie?)

But I have a different take on why AIG wound up as the most damaged of the insurers, requiring billions of our money to bail them out.

• They were big, maybe the only insurance company large enough to take on the kinds of risks being created by Wall Street.

• They were sophisticated. They understood the risk positions they were taking as counterparties to the Wall Street derivative deals. They were wrong, but they understood. I can't think of another insurer who had the expertise to take the positions AIG took.

• AIG went out of their way to establish the business subsidiary to take on the Wall Street risks in places that weren't subject to any regulation, state or federal. They set up the subsidiary that took on all these risks in London, where they were not subject to any regulatory oversight.

• And yes, during the first half of the decade of the 1990's the Congress then in power gutted the financial regulatory system that had served the country very well since 1933. That's where free-market greed and the absence of any oversight met to create the perfect storm.

Note that the SEC's action is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal indictment for the violation of a federal law or regulation. Firat, the regulations were quite weak or non-existent. More importantly, a civil case requires much weaker rules of evidence and will be far easier for the SEC to prove legally.

Originally Posted by Bucco

I dont think we should ignore the motivation behind all this sub prime trash either. These guys took advantage of a situation that congress allowed to occur !!

That's correct, Bucco. But thru the invention of financial derivatives that permitted the creation of many additional levels of risk, "betting" and cross trading derivatives that were not at all based on the underlying sub-prime mortgages, Wall Street multiplied the losses incurred as the result of loan defaults manifold.

Here's an example. Assume there was a horse race with eight horses, with each one required to pay a $100 entry fee, and a single first prize to the winner of $800. That's a zero sum game. The most any horse owner could lose is $100, but he could win $800. Easy to figure out the risks involved.

Now let's assume that betting on the race skyrocketed all around the world, but no one kept the books on who was betting, how much they were betting, or whether they had the money to pay off the bets they lost. Then, let's assume that some really smart bettors figured out a way to get insurance companies to insure them against any betting losses, but the insurance companies took on way too many insurance policies of that type for them to pay off if a worst case scenario occurred.

The end of the line comes when the race is run, only to find out that a huge number of the bettors didn't have the money to pay off their losing bets. And then the insurance companies discover they can't pay all the bettors they insured when they came to collect on their policies.

Certainly, the problem began with too many mortgage loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them off. But the financial crisis was mostly produced by the financial derivative products invented by Wall Street, most of which weren't based on the underlying loans at all. All that risk was multiplied hundreds of times over when a large number of the original loans defaulted (and continue to default, by the way).

VK SAYS "Certainly, the problem began with too many mortgage loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them off.

BINGO BINGO BINGO and congress (BOTH parties) knew it was happening...knew what could happen and allowed it !

I just need to add based on some of the other discussions this evening on this. This fact is one of the reasons I get so upset when folks on here continually say that all the trouble economically was "Bush s fault". My reaction is not party driven but fact driven. Did the Republicans over spend..yep....did mostly Dems ignore what was happening in the housing market...yep ! It has become very convenient with no explanation for the current WH to mouth the words describing what he inherited and to hear Pelosi, Franks, Dodd and the lot of them with the same old song.

It were not one person or one administration.....just go back and research what was going on during the Clinton administration. If you are gonna throw stones make them accurate and on point...not party oriented !

Originally Posted by Bucco

VK SAYS "Certainly, the problem began with too many mortgage loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them off.

BINGO BINGO BINGO and congress (BOTH parties) knew it was happening...knew what could happen and allowed it !

I just need to add based on some of the other discussions this evening on this. This fact is one of the reasons I get so upset when folks on here continually say that all the trouble economically was "Bush s fault". My reaction is not party driven but fact driven. Did the Republicans over spend..yep....did mostly Dems ignore what was happening in the housing market...yep ! It has become very convenient with no explanation for the current WH to mouth the words describing what he inherited and to hear Pelosi, Franks, Dodd and the lot of them with the same old song.

It were not one person or one administration.....just go back and research what was going on during the Clinton administration. If you are gonna throw stones make them accurate and on point...not party oriented !

Bucco, since you continue to ask good questions and claim to be objective, may I ask that on just this one occasion, you might acknowledge that the eight year period, after the (near balanced budget) Clinton era, was the time when finance regulations were finally dismantled. I agree that those god awful Democrats were involved. I'd love to give Sen. Dodd a piece of my mind for lending his support to deregulation. But at least he admits how badly he screwed up.

What I don't think you heard me say was that the folks who are in the party that starts with "R" have for a long time felt deeply in their hearts that unfettered free enterprise would ensure the most productive, successful US economy. It was a popular thought: strong dollar, corporate profits reinvested in production, jobs galore, low taxes, etc. They REALLY believed it, and so, it seems, did you.

All I'm asking is that you be objective enough to admit that there was a flaw to unregulated finance. Something that is very costly to fix, but must be done.

Can you at least agree to that?

Did not Barney Frank and the Dems pressure on banks have something to do with all the people who got mortgages and could not pay for said mortgages have something to do with our financial meltdown?

How does Barney get away with so much?

Originally Posted by ijusluvit

Bucco, since you continue to ask good questions and claim to be objective, may I ask that on just this one occasion, you might acknowledge that the eight year period, after the (near balanced budget) Clinton era, was the time when finance regulations were finally dismantled. I agree that those god awful Democrats were involved. I'd love to give Sen. Dodd a piece of my mind for lending his support to deregulation. But at least he admits how badly he screwed up.

What I don't think you heard me say was that the folks who are in the party that starts with "R" have for a long time felt deeply in their hearts that unfettered free enterprise would ensure the most productive, successful US economy. It was a popular thought: strong dollar, corporate profits reinvested in production, jobs galore, low taxes, etc. They REALLY believed it, and so, it seems, did you.

All I'm asking is that you be objective enough to admit that there was a flaw to unregulated finance. Something that is very costly to fix, but must be done.

Can you at least agree to that?

I absolutely agree with that premise. It began in the 90's and CONTINUED DURING THE 8 YEARS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

I think that during both the Clinton and Bush administration they took what "may" have been a good thing and took it much too far.

What one might consider my partisan posts have to do with the constant and ongoing rant from this administration about how they inherited a financial mess from Bush....they make sure they mention it THAT way....while congress was the one who oversaw it and that seems to get lost in the dialogue !