New report on how wall street paid for its own death

evince

evince

Truthmatters
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45969


"The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to Wall Street," said Harvey Rosenfield, president of the California-based non-profit organisation Consumer Education Foundation.

"Depression-era programmes that would have prevented the financial meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money," he said. "Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price - trillions of dollars - for that betrayal."

According to the report, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch have, on a bipartisan basis, spent the past three decades steadily eroding the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies.

From 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made political contributions totalling 1.725 billion dollars and spent another 3.4 billion on lobbyists - a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation.

"Congress and the Executive Branch responded to the legal bribes from the financial sector, rolling back common-sense standards, barring honest regulators from issuing rules to address emerging problems and trashing enforcement efforts," said Robert Weissman of Essential Information and the lead author of the report.

"The progressive erosion of regulatory restraining walls led to a flood of bad loans, and a tsunami of bad bets based on those bad loans," he said. "Now, there is wreckage across the financial landscape."

The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, in concert, led to the financial meltdown
 
"""According to the report, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch have, on a bipartisan basis,spent the past three decades steadily eroding the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies"""

We know this report is bullshit. It's the Republicans who caused this financial meltdown. Who is this hack claiming the Democrats had a role in it? This guy probably works for Lush Limpballs.
 
The report presents data on financial firms’ campaign contributions and disclosed lobbying investments, which supports its claim that "political decisions were influenced by political expenditures and extraordinary lobbying," as Weissman put it.

For example, securities firms invested more than 504 million dollars in campaign contributions, and an additional 576 million dollars in lobbying, while commercial banks spent more than 154 million dollars on campaign contributions and invested 383 million dollars in officially registered lobbying.

Individual firms spent tens of millions of dollars each. During the decade-long period Goldman Sachs spent more than 46 million dollars on political influence buying; Citigroup spent more than 108 million; and the now defunct Merrill Lynch spent more than 68 million dollars.

According to the report, the financial contributions were bipartisan: about 55 percent of the political donations went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats, primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade. Democrats took just more than half of the Wall Street’s 2008 election cycle contributions.
 
Cawacko, this is facts.

Dems took money from these guys as well as Rs.

Who controled the governement over those years?

Who refused to take action when action was needed?
 
evince said:
Cawacko, this is facts.

Dems took money from these guys as well as Rs.

Who controled the governement over those years?

Who refused to take action when action was needed?
Click to expand...

great study... shows both parties were responsible... just as we have been telling you all along.

I would love to see them extend this study throughout the 90's...

Side note Desh... what did the Dems do to stop the mess? Anything? Or did we have people like Barney Frank telling us there were no problems at Fannie and Freddie? Did we have people like Dodd getting special loans? How many Dems did we have who just skipped out on paying their taxes (or at least portions of them)?
 
evince said:
Cawacko, this is facts.

Dems took money from these guys as well as Rs.

Who controled the governement over those years?

Who refused to take action when action was needed?
Click to expand...

Let's see:

President: Republicans 1981 - 1992; 2001 - 2008 Democrats 1993 - 2000;

Republicans controlled the Presidency for 20 out of 28 years or 71.4% of the time.

Congress:

House: Democrats 1981 - 1993; 2006 - current Republicans 1994 - 2005

Democrats controlled the House for 16 out of 28 years or 57.1% of the time.

Senate: I'm too lazy to do the research on this as I know the Republicans control the Senate through some of the Reagan years and the Dems through some of the begginging of the Bush years.

Based on that information who controlled the government? who refused to take action?
 
The republican partys platform is Tax cuts and deregulation.

Who votes them into office on this platform?


The democratic partys platform is just a little different huh?
 
evince said:
The republican partys platform is Tax cuts and deregulation.

Who votes them into office on this platform?


The democratic partys platform is just a little different huh?
Click to expand...

Ok and what is your point?

Clinton signed deregulation in 1999 on the Graham Bill (or whatever its called). Clinton lowered the dividend tax in 1997. George W. signed the massive new regulations bill Sarbnes-Oxley in 2002. Reagan raised taxes in 1986.

So while its nice to parrot the party "platforms" what they do while in power can often have little resemblance.
 
Superfreak said:
great study... shows both parties were responsible... just as we have been telling you all along.

I would love to see them extend this study throughout the 90's...

Side note Desh... what did the Dems do to stop the mess? Anything? Or did we have people like Barney Frank telling us there were no problems at Fannie and Freddie? Did we have people like Dodd getting special loans? How many Dems did we have who just skipped out on paying their taxes (or at least portions of them)?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Vote_1999.png


The only dissent on this bill came from the dems.

Deregulation is not the answer to our problems even if they corps were able to buy some dems too.


Those dems departed from the Dem platform and got all bipartisan with the Rs huh?
 
And in doing so they deregulated the lending industry.

How many of them are still in office now?

How many of them deviated from teh dem platform when they voted for it?

How many of the Rs who voted for it held to the R platform in doing so?

How many of the Rs are now saying it was too many regulations that caused this mess?
 
Austrian Economist have predicted the demise with the most accuracy for the longest and they argue that between the Fed and Freddie and Fannie the markets were over regulated and distorted by phoney credit. If you want to base what we should do on a go forward they have been most accurate.
 
evince said:
And in doing so they deregulated the lending industry.

How many of them are still in office now?

How many of them deviated from teh dem platform when they voted for it?

How many of the Rs who voted for it held to the R platform in doing so?

How many of the Rs are now saying it was too many regulations that caused this mess?
Click to expand...

Ok. What does the Rep platform say and what does the Dem platform say in regards to this issue? How about actually show us so we know where you are coming from.

And how many people run on a "party platform"? Do you think Republicans in the South run the exact same campaign as Republicans in California? There is no unwritten rule that politicians must follow and must not deviate from the "party platform".
 
http://banking.senate.gov/prel99/1112gbl.htm


GRAMM'S STATEMENT AT SIGNING CEREMONY
FOR GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT
Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, made the following statement today in a ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law:

"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it.

"Abraham Lincoln used to like to use the analogy that old and outmoded laws need to be changed because it made about as much sense to continue to impose them on people as it did to ask a man to wear the same clothes he did when he was a child.

"In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

"We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."
 
evince said:
http://banking.senate.gov/prel99/1112gbl.htm


GRAMM'S STATEMENT AT SIGNING CEREMONY
FOR GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT
Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, made the following statement today in a ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law:

"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it.

"Abraham Lincoln used to like to use the analogy that old and outmoded laws need to be changed because it made about as much sense to continue to impose them on people as it did to ask a man to wear the same clothes he did when he was a child.

"In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

"We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."
Click to expand...

Ok, was there a reason you posted this?
 
"We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."
 
LOL. It says that for the past three decades... bipartisanly... we let these people bend us over. Desh is still pretending that means that Ds are somehow exempt from responsibility.

:rolleyes:
 
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