Comments on: Flashback: Clinton Repeals Glass-Steagall

By: Greg Poland

Greg Poland — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:50:29 +0000

It was Laurence Summers and Robert Rubin (both appointed by Clinton) along with the Republican controlled House and Senate that repealed the Glass-Steagall act. Summers, Rubin and Allen Greenspan helped to suppress a report on the possible dangers of derivatives by Brooksley Born, then the Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. What I don’t understand is why these same people are advising President Obama (except Born) and why there is no talk of re-instating the Glass-Steigall act.

By: Anonymoose

Anonymoose — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:20:47 +0000

I remember 1999; the over-hyped Millennium celebrations no one cared about, The Matrix was hot and everybody wanted to invest in the coming bazillions on the Internet. Yes, Clinton’s hand was in it deep-n-dirty, like they all were.

But the people ultimately to blame (points finger) are all the bankers and executives who somehow thought sub-prime mortgages would be a great idea. You start giving $450,000 loans to people with bad credit so they can buy their McMansions and what do you expect will happen? All I can think is a either A. A few bigwigs wanted to cash in and get out before it all fell apart, or B. Someone seriously thought there’d be some great economic good times to carry it all through.

I’m going back to counting my nickels and dimes now………

By: Arctain

Arctain — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:12:49 +0000

RW -

The problem is, it was a bi-partisan effort to repeal parts of Glass-Steagall. McCain did support it – just as Clinton did sign it. It was wrong – but both sides bear the blame (I’m agreeing with you, here…)

But, as we know; like three-year olds, Democrats never take responsibility for their actions – they always blame someone else. I doubt that Republicans are going to act in kind and respond by whining “…but they did it, too!” It’s hard for the the free-market conservatives to claim on one hand that the repeal was a good idea in light of the current financial mess, and on the other hand support the current administration’s plan for Wall Street socialism – but that’s exactly the position that we are in. Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, are on very comfortable ground with socialism. It comes as no surprise that they want more – more pork, deeper control over the markets, caps on salaries, etc… The truly disheartening thing is that fiscal conservatives cannot make a coherent argument to stop this madness.

By: RightWinger

RightWinger — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:36:25 +0000

I saw the Glass-Steagall Act mentioned a few days ago on some lefty blog. The blogger was trying to say that as much as everybody wanted to skin Bush for this, that this was all Phil Gramm’s fault and McCain was to blame because he voted for it.

Now I see on Politico they are ripping Phil Gramm and McCain for supporting this. Naturally there is not one mention any place of Bill Clinton’s overwhelming support and the overwhemling support in it’s passage by Both sides as Steve pointed out here.

If this was such a POS, the vote would have been down party lines and in the end, Clinton would have vetoed it under pressure from his party. Just another red herring to throw everybody off of Dodd and Frank and Obama and all the rest of them who are responsible.

What is really steaming me right now is that the RNC, McCain and everybody needs to get out and scream this from the roof tops and I am not hearing it. The RNC better be filling up the Sunday shows to dismiss this nonsense.