The Ticker finds Clinton's Bart-Simpsonesque flapjaw on 'deregulation' to be completely without merit.
Mr. Bill. You do remember this little law PL 106-102, 113 Stat 1338, right?
Do you remember it's title and the date it was enacted?
Yes, you did sign it Mr. Clinton on November 12th, 1999, and in doing so you retroactively made legal an unlawful merger of two companies that your fabulous former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, intentionally allowed to occur (and granted a waiver for which he had no lawful authority to give), remember?
The law in question is otherwise known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley.
Without it the disastrous derivatives mess could not have happened, because regulated banks with access to The Fed window, not to mention FDIC depositor protection, could not have engaged in derivative trades.
By the way, we've never thought that Phil Gramm was (or is) some sort of knight in shining armor, either, no matter how many times he shoves his puss into TEA Party pictures.
At the very best, Gramm's zombie-libertarianism (like Greenspan's) could be considered 'pollyanna-esque,' which is to say 'naive in the extreme.'
We know how well THAT worked, don't we?
At worst, he was just another opportunist married to a Member of the Board of Enron.
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