[font size="3"] While the Republicans have obstructed 4.2 million jobs, they can't take credit for a historically bad cold snap and mega snowfalls affecting 23 states nor the traditional post-Christmas lay-offs phenomenon.
Regardless of historically bad winter weather in January- February period, ADP expects jobs added in January to be 175,000. Since the [font color="red"] Republican Trickle Down Deregulation Disaster[/font] began the average net change for the month of January is [font color="red"] -44,000[/font] - jobs lost (which includes the loss of 794,000 jobs in January 2009, at the beginning of the Supply Side Surprise courtesy of the GOP (with special ignominy going to Alan "Mr. Magoo" Greenspan and Phil "Deregulator REX" Gramm - Dr. FrankenGramm's monster: the Commodities Futures Modernization act 2000)).
Dr. FrankenGramm's monster: the Commodities Futures Modernization Act - 2000
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In other words, three of the nation's largest financial institutions had made more bad bets than they could afford to pay off. Bear Stearns was sold to J.P. Morgan for pennies on the dollar, Lehman Brothers was allowed to go belly up, and AIG, considered too big to let fail, is on life support thanks to a $180 billion investment by U.S. taxpayers.
"It's legalized gambling. It was illegal gambling. And we made it legal gambling…with absolutely no regulatory controls. Zero, as far as I can tell," Dinallo says.
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The vehicle for doing this was an obscure but critical piece of federal legislation called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. And the bill was a big favorite of the financial industry it would eventually help destroy.
It not only removed derivatives and credit default swaps from the purview of federal oversight, on page 262 of the legislation, Congress pre-empted the states from enforcing existing gambling and bucket shop laws against Wall Street.
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Alan "Mr. Magoo" Greenspan
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/aug/06/financial-crisis-25-people-heart-meltdown
Greenspan's super-low interest rates and consistent opposition to regulation of the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market are now widely blamed for causing the credit crisis. Under Greenspan's tenure the derivatives market went from barely registering to a $500 trillion industry, despite billionaire investor Warren Buffett warning that they were "financial weapons of mass destruction".
His rock-bottom rates encouraged Americans to load up on debt to buy homes, even when they had no savings, no income and no job prospects.
These so-called sub-prime borrowers were the cannon fodder for the biggest boom-bust in US history. The housing collapse brought the global economy to its knees.
He was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 for his "contribution to global economic stability" [font color="blue"](in true Marx Brothers style comedy_Bill USA)[/font], but in 2008, at a Congressional hearing investigating the causes of the financial crisis, Greenspan finally admitted he "made a mistake in presuming" that financial firms could regulate themselves.
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