Posted By: Alessandro Machi @ 07/12/2008 9:01:18 PM
Comment: Did Gramm have a role in the Keating Five?
The Senator and the Swiss Bank
Did Texas' Phil Gramm help undo UBS?
Jul 8, 2008 | Updated: 11:48 a.m. ET Jul 8, 2008
Discuss
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Posted By: Nins @ 07/10/2008 7:38:12 PM
Comment: Can you believe that McCain considered this charlatan Gramm for Secretary of Treasury?
That fact shows you that either McCain is an inside player with the investment bankers who have ruined our economy with the help of Bush and Gramm, OR McCain is a naive fool who doesn't understand the first thing about the interface of banks, government and the stock market.
Either way, McCain looks pretty bad. No wonder he wants to distance himself from Gramm. -
Posted By: Nins @ 07/10/2008 7:33:14 PM
Comment: Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It is not just because of Gramm's recent obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" and that unemployed Americans are in "a mental recession." In fact, those remarks were so obnoxious that I wonder if they were engineered just to provide McCain an excuse for publicly distancing himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.
When Gramm was a Senator he was chair of the Committee on Banking, and in that capacity he was able to push through the legislation now known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass the Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why the investment banks were able to falsely inflate the prices of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities through massive futures trading, causing your costs of gas, heating oil and food to go through the roof.
Gramm was a member of McCain's campaign team, but now Gramms' name is turning to mud. In addition to the Enron loophole, Gramm pushed through the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act in 1999, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. Essentially, this Act did away with all of the good laws written after the Great Depression to protect us from another Wall Street/Banking Industry collapse. That's right, Gramm stripped the system of it's safe guards nine years ago, and guess what? The value of the dollar has nose-dived, Wall Street is highly unstable, and we are in the midst of a recession.
Now you could say that this is not Gramm's fault, that he didn't know what the outcome of his actions would be. However, it turns out that the same investment banks that benefited from the Enron loophole and from the Gramm Act gave more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign. Uh oh. A Congressional hearing is going to be convened to investigate this. And McCain wants to have noting to do with Gramm, wants us to forget that Gramm has been a key player on McCain's campaign team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISER.
With Gramm in the driver's seat as his leading economic adviser, now you know why economists and analysts are saying that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable. -
Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/09/2008 3:04:50 PM
Comment: We also have a "trickle job" economy. The jobs trickle away to India, Mexico, the Philippines, and other countries where wages are low and job benefits do not exist.
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Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/09/2008 3:02:18 PM
Comment: Well, actually, as our treasure dwindles it is not so important any more who is secretary of it. I would tend to look for a person who speaks fluent Chinese, since the Chinese own so much of our treasure in the form of treasury bills and notes. Trickle economics, they call it.
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Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/09/2008 12:21:34 PM
Comment: Go for "Duh".
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Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/09/2008 12:20:58 PM
Comment: You could hunt for something crooked in his banking endeavors, but you'll get to the goal line with the ball a lot faster if you hunt for just plain incompetent.
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Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/09/2008 12:18:34 PM
Comment: The best thing that happened to the Democratic party in a long while happened when Phil Gramm changed over to the Republican party, long time passing. In his early days he bought watermelons in the field for 50 cents apiece and sold them in the big city for 50 cents apiece. That bank should have checked him out on what he did before he got on the public payroll.
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Posted By: expatincebu @ 07/09/2008 5:12:58 AM
Comment: Yes, Rubin was involved along with Gramm, who pushed much of the deregulation through congress. This is not a partisan issue, Democrats and Republicans both serve the same master, the big banking interest that own the Federal Reserve. My comment had nothing to do with partisanship, merely a comment on the truth about Gramm. Funny how conservative apologist must always make it partisan with the old, "yeah but they do it too" whine. So we have Furman for Obama and Gramm for McCain, just highlights that it does not matter who gets elected, the US is screwed.
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Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 07/09/2008 15:30:21
Comment: You are missing the point. Gross only mentions Gramm precisely DUE to his partisan allegiances.[Or,Gramm-plus McCain equals economic trouble for everyone else]. Mutter anything as a ''truth''and soon it will become accepted as such. But the ''fact''that Gramm wrote the deregulation compromise,accepted gospel among the leftwinged netroots,is not a ''fact''at all. Gross forgets that with the corporate scandals of the early century at the time even prior to SARBANES-OXLEY,Rubin had ridden CITIGROUP into the ground,where it only began its recovery due to its involvement in sub-prime loans,a condition that its chairman,Robert Rubin,advanced while he was Treasury Sec.
As it now stands,the AFL-CIO,while backing Obama,remains leery of his embrasure of what is now termed ''Rubinomics''. This is,unfettered behaviors by the banking industry that do not act under the imprimatur of centralized regulatory practices as deemed neccesary by the federal government. Obviously,the banks and loan companies found gigantic loopholes in SARBANES through which to ride. FANNIE MAE,is one solid example. Under the outlandish leadership and horrific records-keeping of its boss,which brought near ruin to that arm of government-involved loans,he was yet hired onto the Obama campaign to seek his VP. and may still play a role as a future economics adviser. The Holders and Furmans we do not need,as any return to a Rubin era will promise more instability in the years ahead. Nor does it help that the lions share of campaign monies entering into Obamas warchests,coming from the banking industry,are the selfsame CITIGROUPs,GOLDMAN-SACHs,and UBS'that Gross and I mention. You should bear in mind that you rendered a partisan decision[''Gramm ] should be shot''],based upon a erroneous reading of who was actually behind this deregulation,and why there were those,nearly a decade past now,who were worried over its future implications which still came to pass. I,like Gross with Gramm,and Weissman with Rubin,is sounding the alarm right now,in order to defray any notion that the new Messiah has anything other than clay feet,and to address patent weaknesses in Obamas economic team that the Gross'of the world simply will not address themselves.[again,due to partisanship,which is a patent reason why NEWSWEAKS sales and subscriptions are in freefall].
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Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 07/08/2008 8:59:10 PM
Comment: Better add here that Obama has hired Jason Furman as his economics czar. Who used to work for....Bob Rubin.
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Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 07/08/2008 8:54:57 PM
Comment: This is false. In point of fact [a fact,that quite strangely,Gross,who should know better, neglects to mention],is that it was Clintons Treasury Sec. Robert ''Teflon Bob''Rubin,who pushed for such deregulation at the behest of CITIGROUP,which,lo and behold,made Rubin their top gun after he left the administration in 1999.Indeed,it was Rubin,and not Gramm,who authored the language of the final degregulation compromise between Congress and the White House that Clinton signed that would alter the decades-long Glass-Steagall Act,which would make it possible for the power of the sub-prime market to begin making itself felt. Indeed,writing on on the 6th of November,1999,corporate watchdogs Russ Mokhiber and Robert Weissman observed,presciently as it became,that:
''Rubin helped deliver his ticking time bomb to Wall Street. He is sure to escape unscathed,but it is sure to blow up on the rest of us''.
So it was written.So it was done. -
Posted By: expatincebu @ 07/08/2008 6:26:52 PM
Comment: Gramm was the key lawmaker behind financial deregulation that started the sub prime explosion. He should be shot, not made head of treasury.
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