Clinton unfortunately did sign the bill... at least he later said it was a mistake
but make no mistake where it came from
"...Gramm was the biggest of the big guns behind the 1999 repeal of the banking regulations — the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — which was officially called The Financial Services Modernization Act. (Don’t you just love the name!)
Passage of the law was greased with an astonishing $300 million in lobbying money, and it encountered little opposition other than from those old-fashioned banks that actually insure your deposits, while receiving the enthusiastic blessing of the Bill and Hillary Clinton co-presidency.
One of many consequences of the repeal was that a year later the Swiss bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. A year after that, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm and has since energetically lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department on banking and mortgage issues.
This has included rolling back state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers that led directly to the subprime mortgage meltdown.
McCain and Gramm go way back.
In 1992, the two worked closely as senators to defeat Hillary Clinton’s 1993 health care plan, and in 1996 McCain was national chairman of Gramm’s unsuccessful presidential run.
In 2002, as the full extent of the Enron scandal was emerging, The New York Timescalled Gramm “a demon for deregulation” as one of the chief engineers of the stealthy approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure.
Meanwhile, Gramm’s wife Wendy was paid over $1 million in salary, stock options, dividends and other goodies from 1993 to 2001 as an Enron board member, but of course was deaf, dumb and blind to the energy company’s rampant cooking its books with the acquiescence of the late unlamented Arthur Andersen accounting company.
The result was economic ruin for thousands of families.
Considering the pain and suffering that Gramm’s masterwork has caused ordinary Americans, it is not hyperbolic to say that he is a terrorist, he just doesn’t wear funny looking headgear and carry a Kalashikov. |
