marcodbeast wrote:
flipper wrote:
On Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:26:36 -0500, "marcodbeast"
wrote:

flipper wrote:
On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 13:35:33 -0500, "marcodbeast"
wrote:

flipper wrote:
On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 11:23:34 -0500, "marcodbeast"
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
http://www.chuckroger.com/conversation.htm

...Jim Thompson
James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens
Analog Innovations, Inc. | et
Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus
Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only |
Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass
Rat | E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |
1962 |

"The way I see it, anyone thinking our prospects are better
because of Obama has the body part farthest from the ground
lodged in the bodily orifice closest to the ground... The tide
is begin- ning to turn. The Marxist Messiah may crash to earth
in 2012, the Bolshevik donkeys perhaps as early as 2010." -
Chuck Rogér

Kookspew.

Well, you're correct in calling your post kookspew.


Remember McCain's campaign co-chair, Phil Gramm, who had to be
fired once he called Americans 'whiners'? Author of the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley act? Welcome to the architect of the credit
crash.

http://losangeles.injuryboard.com/mi...oogleid=242468

or

http://tinyurl.com/5lh83s

And those articles *are* kookspew which, despite all the 'words'
and unsubstantiated 'opinion' lines like "proper oversight " (oh
really? What *is* "proper oversight?"), say not one thing about
their 'theory' as to how the supposed act 'caused' the crisis.

Lie.

And there's a good
reason for that: it didn't.

Lie.

Thank you for demonstrating one of the typical, and despicable,
characteristics of 'liberals': the knee jerk use of "lie" and
"liar" with no substantiation or reason, or even any respect to the
meaning.

I re-read it just to double check my first opinion and it stands.
The article does a Jim Dandy job of dancing through every 'fighting
word' and innuendo it can dream up but provides no theory as to how
this 'caused' the crisis.

and once the Act passed, an influx of "megamergers" took place among
banks and insurance and securities companies, as if they had been
eagerly awaiting the passage of Gramm's Act.

"megamerger" -- fighting word

"as if they had been eagerly awaiting" -- innuendo

But not one thing about how any of that 'caused' a housing bubble,
declining prices, bad loans, toxic assets. or anything else.

See 'research'. lol



How come I can do this in 15 minutes, and you can't do it at all? lol

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s106-900

Sep 24, 2008 6:34 PM - Is this the bill that has lead to the financial
debaucle facing our nation today, Sept.24,2008, where Congress is querying
the Fed Chairman about bailing out Fanny Mae and Feddy Mac? - Read Answers

Answered by a visitor on Sep 28, 2008 5:56 AM - Yes. Also see its renewal
(CFMA 2005) and at least 1 of its lobbying supports (ISDA.org). It basically
removed OTC and off balance book derivative trades (swaps) from regulatory
oversight.

Answered by a visitor on Oct 3, 2008 4:07 AM - Yup.. this left the door
open for our current situation to transpire.

http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/law...-675369&siap=1

"[..] the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act (GLBA),
repealing after 66 years the Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited cross-sector
affiliation between the banking and securities industries. It also repealed
the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act, which prohibited unions between the
banking and insurance industries."

---------------------------------------------

http://mises.org/story/3098

"But an insidious form of "market-based policy" is also a real culprit in
the current mess. In 1999 a bill was passed by a Republican Congress and
signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton that rescinded the Depression
era's divorce of commercial banking activities from investment banking,
called the Glass-Stegall Act of 1933. That opened a floodgate of "creative"
financial instruments backed by notes and other commercial paper. Much of
the banking regulation of the Roosevelt administration - including
abandonment of the gold standard - made absolutely no sense, but markets can
fail with dire short-run consequences under a fiat monetary system. With
Glass-Stegall, Congress put its finger on and mitigated the tendency and
temptations of banks to create massive costly externalities to society, in
this case, by holding bundled mortgage-backed securities which were deemed
safe by rating agencies but which ultimately failed the market test.

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 would make perfect sense in
a world regulated by a gold standard, 100% reserve banking, and no FDIC
deposit insurance; but in the world as it is, this "deregulation" amounts to
corporate welfare for financial institutions and a moral hazard that will
make taxpayers pay dearly. Such government privileges are nothing new to
Republicans - consider the effective subsidies to the pharmaceutical, sugar,
and steel industries - but this particular gift to financial institutions is
what allowed the credit bubble to expand to such absurd proportions, because
it allowed banks of all types to engage in increasingly risky transactions
and to greatly expand the leverage of their balance sheets. As the crisis
unfolds, credit continues to contract, the risk of bank failures increases,
and the possibility of far more serious economic consequences become more
apparent. The S&L crisis cost the taxpayers a few hundred billion, but this
crisis has the potential of saddling the taxpayer with several trillion in
bailouts."

---------------------------------------------

http://www.creators.com/opinion/from...-meltdown.html

McCain's former economic adviser is ex-Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. On Dec. 15,
2000, hours before Congress was to leave for Christmas recess, Gramm had a
262-page amendment slipped into the appropriations bill. It forbade federal
agencies to regulate the financial derivatives that greased the skids for
passing along risky mortgage-backed securities to investors.

And that, my friends, is why everything's falling apart. That is why the
taxpayers are now on the hook for the follies of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,
Bear Stearns and now the insurance giant AIG to the tune of $85 billion.
On Monday, McCain issued a tough-talk statement that he was "glad" that the
feds "have said no to using taxpayer money to bail out Lehman Brothers, a
position I have spoken about throughout this campaign." On Tuesday, the
government did the daddy of all bailouts. It took over AIG, fearing its
bankruptcy could set off a cataclysmic chain of events.

And do you know where the problems lay at AIG? They weren't in its main
insurance business. They were in its derivatives-trading unit.

Last February, Fortune Magazine called Gramm "McCain's Econ Brain." Gramm
lost the official title of economic adviser for making an impolitic remark
about this being "a nation of whiners." But Gramm's belief in letting
speculators do as they please was never an issue. And even after he left the
campaign, Gramm had been mentioned as a possible treasury secretary in a
McCain administration.

Another Gramm contribution was the "Enron loophole," which prevented federal
oversight of Enron's electronic energy trading.

Such favors proved very expensive to consumers but profitable to the Gramms.
Enron CEO Ken Lay chaired Gramm's 1992 re-election campaign, and wife Wendy
Gramm spent years on the Enron board, earning as much as $1.8 million,
according to Public Citizen, a consumer advocate."

----------------------------------------------

http://www.politicaljackass.com/2008...-yes-biden-no/

In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed 1930's legislation that had
separated commercial and investment banks. Commercial banks, where people
deposit their paychecks and do personal banking, have regulation. Investment
banks didn't have that "fettering" as Republicans saw it.
John McCain voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Joe Biden voted NO. The act passed
54-44, mostly a party line vote. Yes, Clinton signed the law. But Joe Biden
was against it.

With the 1930's Glass-Steagall Act repealed, the theory was competition
could happen now in financial services. The evil enemy of regulation was
gone, free markets would reign. Mergers happened that couldn't before. A
broader range of institutions could offer a broader range of products. Which
grew to include obscure, unregulated financial products with no collateral
to support them. Like sub-prime mortgages. Regulated banks couldn't take
those kinds of risks. Unregulated companies could.

------------------------------------------------

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/fo...sage609571/pg2

GLBA essentially eliminated the barriers between commercial and investment
banks to consolidate and merge, so that you could have hedge funds, regular
banking, lenders, brokerage services and insurance companies all under one
roof. One stop shopping! GLBA repealed key parts of the Glass-Steagall Act,
enacted in 1933 in response to the Great Depression to enact stricter
controls, and yes, regulation over the banking industry where speculation
had run amok. Indeed, without Glass-Steagall, regular folks who currently
are keeping their money in failed banks would be out of luck totally,
because Glass-Steagal created the FDIC to have government ensure their
deposits. (Never mind that FDIC is running of out money right now...I'm sure
some more deregulation would help that.)

You see, Senator McCain, a lot of us could see this coming because
everything that went out with deregulation in the past 10 years obviated the
need for common sense and created irrational exuberance in the economy.
Kuttner again:

Thanks to deregulation, these several realms are interconnected. Inflated
assets in real estate, the bond market, hedge funds, and private equity feed
on each other. And the most important bubble is the stock market itself. The
ratio of stock prices to corporate earnings is not quite as high as it was
in 1929 or 2000, but it is still very high by historic standards. Takeover
deals executed by hedge funds and private equity companies use borrowed
money to pay a premium for companies they take over. That inflates the stock
price. They hope that by selling off pieces of the company after cutting
costs (mainly wages), they can make a quick bundle. But this whole business
strategy is based on stock prices continuing to rise. If the cycle goes into
reverse, and the deal makers have no buyers at their desired price, or if
their financiers stop advancing them credit, the game stops and the stock
market sags. Today, the game has certainly slowed: According to research
firm Dealogic, the value of takeover deals fell from $695 billion in April
and $579 billion in July to $222 billion in August.

-----------------------------------------------------------

http://letters.salon.com/tech/htww/2...view/?show=all
Credit Default Swaps and the SEC
Yes indeed, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act put this exclusion in new sections 2A
of the Securities Act of 1933 and 3A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
where they are referred to as "securities-based swap agreements". As a law
professor who teaches securities regulation I am embarrassed to say that I
did not concentrate on the unusual nature of this exclusion until this
Summer when I was researching CDS's. I doubt many others did either because
plain-vanilla interest rate and currency rate swaps probably wouldn't fall
within the statutory definitions of "security" under the standard
interpretation and I, like most people not in the financial industry, did
not become aware of the importance of CDS's until the past year. No doubt
this exclusion explains why these deals, which are economically similar to
insurance, are papered using the ISDA (International Swap Dealers Assn)
form. (To give the devil his due, CDS's are subject to the anti-fraud
provisions of Sec. 10(b) of the '34 Act).