I am for deregulation! Just before I am in favor of it first!
A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation’s largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end “reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed” on Wall Street.
“Government has a clear responsibility to act in defense of the public interest, and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” a fiery McCain said at a rally in Tampa yesterday. “In my administration, we’re going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we’re going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place.”
I caught his bullshit comments on the news this morning! He has all the answers and seemed to have perceived what would happen but yet remained silent until now!
Wait! Just had a brain fart! If Lee and Copeland proclaim Jack Markell as being part of the Minner administration does this mean Copeland is part of the Bush administration and is in part responsible for the U.S. financial crisis?
So let me get this straight. I help push through legislation to deregulate because big government is hampering our markets. Then when the cards fall, I blame it on the regulators for not doing their job.
Which lie are we supposed to believe today.
From the “hindsight is 20/20” department, in 2003 John McCain sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act (S.190) following multi-billion dollar “accounting restatements” at Freddie and Fannie. The Dems shot it down, led by Franks and Dodd.
Gee, just imagine where we’d be without that pesky sub-prime mortgage crisis? I’m not saying it would have been avoided altogether, but we surely wouldn’t be talking about bailing out AIG today.
Richardson was asked about this on Fox this morning, his response was, “Well, George Bush was in the White House.”
George Bush doesn’t write and pass legislation.
I spray vile disease filled feces in your direction Mike W.
For the adult sin the group, if you want to know how we all got here, just listen to this episode of “This American Life” about the SEC under Georege Bush.
No, George Bush avoids the whole congress / constitution thing. To much time and effort involved. He just writes his own executive statements.
Talk about out of touch.Bill Clinton was the president during the time you are now talking about. He demanded that banks and lenders give more loans to people who hadn’t qualified before–or face stiff fines. So the lenders, never ones to mind making a buck or two, start making the loans. And George Bush, who tried to rein in the lenders five years ago was stopped because Democrats didn’t see a problem with Fannie and Freddie. And then in 2005, John McCain tries again to rein in the Freddie/Fannie problem.
Where’s the Barack Obama legislation trying to stop this problem?
You guys are hopeless.
By the way…HAPPY CONSTITUTION DAY!
What are you doing to end governmental abuse of your rights today?
Sharon – You and I both know this, but we also know that the folks here aren’t going to face the facts. Bush = Bad, Republicans = Bad, therefore it’s impossible that any of this could have been caused by Clinton or the Dems, facts be damned!
David – I would go to the shooting range but it’ll be closed by the time I get home.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, but only one party uses deregulation as a platform issue, or dogma.
Phil Gramm has his dirty, bastard hands all over this…and he’s getting plenty of the blame for his 1999 last-minute inclusion of an Act which basically allowed the ‘intermingling’ of Banking Institutions and Investment Firms.
The elephant in the room is one of the major players which helped precipitate this crisis is McCain’s Economic Adviser.
Change by not changing at all.
Sharon,
The Blame Clinton alarm must be highly sensitive today. Just a recap. When the economy is performing John McCain wanted significant deregulation (which would exacerbated this mess as the deregulation would have crippled the Federal Reserve and Congress) but when the economy tanks under a REPUBLITHUG president and Congress he starts to preach the regulation concept? The Fannie and Freddie debacle hits both sides of the aisle and therefore if McSame really wanted the legislation passed he should have worked on a compromise (but that goes against his temper). Also, the loans were provided to those that met the proper criteria and all the law did was make sure that a certain amount of loans were provided to those whose credit was subprime so that the banks could not neccessarily discriminate against the poor. Also, since this law has been on the books don’t you think the banks would have been well aware of the exposure of bad loans (what we have now) would have been and kept it to a minimum required. NO THEY DID NOT. Because what they actually learned from this is that during a rising economy the poor have more income but not greater education and understanding. So they are willing to pay significant crazy interest and fees to obtain something that would not fly with the prime and/or educated consumer. So they found out that this makes profits rise substantially so they kept the focus on number of sales and not neccessarily risk and exposure. It happened at every major bank. It was not the fault of Freddie and Fannie as they don’t originate the majority of thier portfolios. And it happened b/c REPUBLITHUGS don’t want gov interference and regulation of the banks.
Here’s a well-documented debunking of the “blame Clinton” line:
economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/yet-again-it-wa.html
He demanded that banks and lenders give more loans to people who hadn’t qualified before–or face stiff fines. So the lenders, never ones to mind making a buck or two, start making the loans.
This is bullshit. And probably comes from some wingnut radio trying to convince you (fairly successfully) that this is Clinton’s problem. The folks on the other thread took this question on pretty thoroughly and here you are back with the same worn out lie. The clear answer to what happened here lies in a completely dismantled regulatory scheme — no one was forced to write or take the bad loans that were written. It was the mortgage industry themselves who turned loose their own standards for lending — which you can tell by the local banks relatively unfazed by this who stuck with their knitting. And still have the same CRA requirements as the bigger ones do.
“McSame really wanted the legislation passed he should have worked on a compromise (but that goes against his temper). ”
Right, because in your world McCain never works on the other side of the aisle and Obama is the “uniter” despite having no record of, you know, uniting people.
And no Cass, it’s not wingnut bullshit. It comes right from a 1993 Clinton White House briefing on the issue.
http://clinton6.nara.gov/1993/12/1993-12-08-briefing-by-bentsen-and-rubin.text.html
“the poor have more income but not greater education and understanding. So they are willing to pay significant crazy interest and fees to obtain something that would not fly with the prime and/or educated consumer. ”
Sorry. You have no business signing a mortgage contract if you don’t understand the basic concepts behind an ARM with no (or a ridiculously high) cap.
The real danger here is that our government never gets these things right. There is always a knee jerk reaction to any crisis with the end result creating more problems than we had to begin with.
Another 400 points off the Dow this morning. Getting ugly out there.
He demanded that banks and lenders give more loans to people who hadn’t qualified before–or face stiff fines.
More bullshit, there were no fines. And there was no requirement to issue loans to proven poor credit risks.
Enforcement was through a CRA rating, which was considered when the bank applied for something else it wanted like a merger or an expansion.
The Clinton CRA reforms were intended to attack the banks’ nasty racist practice of redlining. Remember redlining? That is the trick of denying loans to anyone in a certain neighborhood whether they are creditworthy or not.
The CRA was and still is a good idea.
DJIA on Jan 20 2001:
10,587.60
we’re almost back to the future
In Mike’s world, all mortgage brokers and underwriters are strict, moral and ethical creatures that do right by the client every single time.
So, McCain has a secret plan to rescue our economy just like he has a secret plan to catch bin Laden. Perhaps McCain could share his secret plan with the current administration? Or, does his plan involve sitting down and saying “stop the bullsh*t?”