Great Moments in Bi-Partisanship: The Signing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999

[Octafish]

7. Oh! The DERIVATIVES!

The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) Brooksley Born issued a first call for her regulatory commission to have power to oversee financial derivatives. While previous legislative attempts had been made earlier, Born’s efforts were the most direct and threatening to the financial industry. During an April 1998 meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (and later Secretary Larry Summers), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Arthur Levitt opposed Born’s efforts and attempted to derail her.

(A)n unregulated derivatives market ... could “pose grave dangers to our economy.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-blumenthal/how-congress-rushed-a-bil_b_181926.html

As if!