Every once and a while I read something that really pisses me off! Not your average irritation, mind you, I mean a real visceral, blood-boiling, punch-the-wall type of anger that only a politician can inspire.
Just take a minute and really think about the current state America finds itself in. I don’t think you would get an argument from anyone if you said that the bursting housing bubble has been at the heart of our troubles (duh). How did we really get to this point? How was it that Wall Street firms were able to give money to those who could only pay it back if housing continued to rise? Subprime loans existed in the past but were mainly offered to people who already had home equity. Why did these loans take a life of their own and grow into the next excuse for Geogre Soros to write another book about reflixivity?
The reason why these things happened is because the government allowed them through deregulation. Who was the sponsor of this fight to deregulate Wall Street? Yup, Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. The ability to engineer credit-default swaps would never have happened without the bills written by the financial industry and pushed through by Sen. Gramm. Without these swaps, or insurace for bad bonds, the banks would never have ignored all of the risk they were taking on by giving money to unqualified borrowers. Here is a bit out of a recent editorial by Jim Sack in the News-Sentinal paper.
A few years back, the Wall Street insiders decided they needed congressional protection for their new “investment vehicles,” so they turned to the chairman of a banking committee in Congress, Phil Graham of Texas. They wrote a bill, and he carried it for them. The goal of the act was to free Wall Street from federal and state regulations. Wall Street was free, thanks to Graham, to build a system that was “off the books,” free from the scrutiny of, among others, state insurance regulators who would normally require sufficient reserves to cover losses. Without checks and balances, the system became unstable and has failed. Losses are not being covered. Instead, bailouts, at your expense, are in the works. Bear Sterns, among other financial concerns, has collapsed, and you, my fellow taxpayer, are paying through job losses, tighter credit to buy a home, much tighter credit to run a business, destabilized neighborhoods and much more to come, including higher taxes.
Also read a piece called “Foreclosure Phil”, by David Corn
So knowing all of this already I read that Sen. Phil Gramm, now economic adviser to John McCain, is telling people that we are not in a recession and that Americans whine too much. He says that 1% growth is not a recession (he obviously trusts government numbers) and that the recession is only in our heads. Well hell Sen. Gramm, it is no wonder why you are living with your head in the sand, as you are the one person most responsible for the mess America finds itself in. But hey, there hasn’t been any accountability in the last 10 years, why should it start now?
CNN article about Gramm comments.
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