REMINDER: Conservative economic ideals got America where she's at NOW

[uponit7771]

Just a kind reminder

The Bush administration ...

1. Allowed "free markets" & "small government" = Deregulate EVERYTHING (Glass Steagall exploitation, allowing 30 to 1 CDS's), allow mergers ad nausea (ShitiGroup, BoA, Wells Fargo), minimize government oversight (Madoff) and letting derivatives regulation office go "overseas" (WTF!?!?!?)

2. Cut taxes for the rich passing the bill off to the middle class to pay the interest on the loans borrowed for said rich folk tax cuts. But the rich spend their extra money on the economy right? NOPE, for the most part they invest it....creating bubbles....EVERY TIME!

3. Controled speed of economy via monetary policy, letting the interest rates stay near zero for more than a year. No, it wont effect housing interest rates as much as it will effect the price of borrowing against said house and the cost of borrowing overall which if goes unchecked (like it did during the Bush admin) creates even MORE of a bubble in the stock market.

4. Cut spending...LOFL!! ...yeah, the Bush admin spent money on the poor and needy right? NOPE, they spend it on defense as if we're going to be fighting aliens from Mars some time soon. The other half was spent giving mostly rich people tax cuts, cause you know...they're gonna "trickle" us down a lil somethin.

Please pass this reminder along and add to it as needed, I'm convinced conservative econ ideals don't work for a country ran by, for and with the middle class.

[RoccoR5955]

1. U got dat right! n/t

[amandabeech]

2. I'll be the first to give you the news. Glass Steagall was repealed under the Clinton

administration.

Summers was Clinton's treasury secretary at the time, and I believe that Geithner was one of his top deputies. Summers was a big proponent of the repeal.

Of course, that doesn't excuse Phil Gramm and his friends. Far from it.

There's going to be a lot of blame to go around here. I just hope that I live long enough to read some good history of it.

[uponit7771]

3. Glass Stegal was slipped in at the last hour but Clinton did say he doesn't regret passing it though

...I'll amend that part to Glass Steagall exploitation

[amandabeech]

6. I was practicing law doing securities filings for community banks.

This was not a slip in. There was a lot of talk about it, and my boss was overjoyed because that meant that he could get his clients into all kinds of new lines of business and get bigger fees.

I thought that people don't change much, and that unscrupulous people are around just as much as they were before Glass Steagall. For me, it's deja vu all over again.

[uponit7771]

9. Thx for that information, I don't know why Clinton trusted the conservatives after he left office.

[amandabeech]

10. You're welcome.

Clinton really was a Republican when it came to economics.

He was also a champion ass-kisser right from the git-go.

[uponit7771]

11. Yes, I've heard this many many times...I'm now just understanding the details why this was said

[amandabeech]

12. Well, he appointed Bob Rubin to head treasury.

Rubin was a smart, slick piece of Wall Street pond scum who didn't give a rat's ass about anyone who wasn't worth at least $10 mil.

I thought that his welfare "reform" bill was a problem, because it would have caused the least of us to be caught with no safety net in the midst of a recession or depression. No one knows what really happened to the people affected. Bush wasn't exactly going to do a study to find out. However, it did save money.

Greenspan actually was right about "irrational exuberance" in the stock market in the late '90s. It was clearly a tech bubble. Even I could figure it out.

Nonetheless, Clinton did nothing to try to cool the market down to some approximation of rationality. Instead, he kept talking about Bosnians making a living day trading U.S. stocks via the internet.

Then he did nothing about the repeal of Glass Steagall and he caved to Summers and Greenspan over the proposal to regulate the derivatives market.

That's just from memory.

P.S. I did opposition research for one of Clinton's primary opponents in 1992. I thoroughly reviewed his Arkansas record, and none of this should have come as a surprise to anyone who had. Obviously, no one in the media had.

[depakid]

5. As the OP says CONSERVATIVE ideas brought us this meltdown

On economic and regulatory poliy, the Clinton administration may as well have been chock full of Republicans- right up the the big dog himself.

[amandabeech]

7. I couldn't agree with you more.

That was my chief beef with Clinton.

[Double T]

4. Exactly! Just like the last GD Economic and Financial Depression.

Right wing conservatives should not be allowed to hold political office or corporate executive management positions.

[uponit7771]

8. Yes,..another historian....this is almost STEP FOR STEP what happened during the GD but back then...

...the prez was a conservative and he lasted for 4 years vs. the conservative we have now lasting for 4 months after the depression hit.

[uponit7771]

13. Shout out to Prep_H