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Forum Post: Grayson-Takano letter Signatures, Work Cut Out for Progressives, Attack on Social Security

Posted 10 years ago on April 11, 2013, 10:36 p.m. EST by Middleaged (5140)
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Great Article for you to read about Progressive Cause and Disappointment with President Obama's Budget. It is a kind of Call to Action... Please click on link. I didn't want to copy a long post even though the article is short & to the point.

Time to Bell the Obama Cat, By Norman Solomon, Global Research, April 10, 2013

http://www.globalresearch.ca/time-to-bell-the-obama-cat/5330827 (something here for progressives and anarchists)

As of today, after many weeks of progressive lobbying and pleading and petitioning nationwide, 47 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have refused to sign the letter, initiated by Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano, pledging to “vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

After all this time, refusal to sign the Grayson-Takano letter is a big tipoff that those 47 House members are keeping their options open. (To see that list of 47, click here.) They want wiggle room for budget votes on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Most of them represent a left-leaning district, and some could be toppled by grassroots progressive campaigns.

By itself, lobbying accomplishes little. Right now, it’s time to threaten members of Congress with defeat unless they vote against all efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. Click here if you want to send that message directly to your representative and senators.

The best way to sway members of Congress is to endanger their seats if they aren’t willing to do the right thing. In the real world, politics isn’t about playing cat and mouse. It’s about power.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

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9 Comments


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[-] 2 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

You know people came here to America for Freedom, security, and the chance to earn wealth.

If you take away SS & Medicare you lose security.

If you tax American lower & Middle Class you hobble them and hold them down.

If you allow Inflation of University Tuition and Medical Cost, and force students to take on $100,000 education debt, then you hold people down & keep them from the Dream.

If you deflate the dollar, create inflation, raise comsumer & Public debt, you lose freedom and financial strength.

If you capture all major part of the federal government, regulators, court systems, and create crony capitalism with fraud & Accounting Fraud, ... then people lose the chance to get wealthy.

If you outlaw Drugs like marijuana and natural herbs even though they come from nature and are part of many cultures and religions, ... then you take away a certain spiritual freedom.

If you create religions based on control, tithing, judging others, attacking others that are different, excluding others, and turn church into a business, then you deprive people of a certain chance at independent thinking and spiritual life.

If you create wars without justification, sterilize women for no reason, or test drugs and diseases on a people or a foreign people in the name of the USA, then ... You deprive us all of a great Country

It is like the Europeans saw the American dream, and set out to create a Central Bank they control, and set out to take control of the American Government & Banking.

[-] 2 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

More Proof from Simon Johnson, Former Chief Economist for IMF:

  • From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.

  • The great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weight—a weight not seen in the U.S. since the era of J.P. Morgan (the man). In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/ (The Quiet Coup)

Simon Johnson, May 1 2009, The Atlantic

  • If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

I didn't know anyone at the IMF was this open and helpful ... I suspect based on IMF Reputation, there was a Quite Coup at the IMF at some Point

The Wall Street–Washington Corridor

Of course, the U.S. is unique. And just as we have the world’s most advanced economy, military, and technology, we also have its most advanced oligarchy.

In a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption—envelopes stuffed with $100 bills—is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding.

Oh, so maybe they just give you an Offshore Bank Account, and you are now part of the Inside guys, a made man

Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.

Oh, Cultural Capital, or .. Cultural Corruption, Business Culture, the Culture of Finance

  • These personal connections were multiplied many times over at the lower levels of the past three presidential administrations, strengthening the ties between Washington and Wall Street. It has become something of a tradition for Goldman Sachs employees to go into public service after they leave the firm. The flow of Goldman alumni—including Jon Corzine, now the governor of New Jersey, along with Rubin and Paulson—not only placed people with Wall Street’s worldview in the halls of power; it also helped create an image of Goldman (inside the Beltway, at least) as an institution that was itself almost a form of public service.

Yep, that is what we have been saying, They are In Bed with Each Other

  • Wall Street’s seductive power extended even (or especially) to finance and economics professors, historically confined to the cramped offices of universities and the pursuit of Nobel Prizes. As mathematical finance became more and more essential to practical finance, professors increasingly took positions as consultants or partners at financial institutions. Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, Nobel laureates both, were perhaps the most famous; they took board seats at the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1994, before the fund famously flamed out at the end of the decade. But many others beat similar paths. This migration gave the stamp of academic legitimacy (and the intimidating aura of intellectual rigor) to the burgeoning world of high finance.

The Corruption of University Professors

  • As more and more of the rich made their money in finance, the cult of finance seeped into the culture at large. Works like Barbarians at the Gate, Wall Street, and Bonfire of the Vanities—all intended as cautionary tales—served only to increase Wall Street’s mystique. ...In a society that celebrates the idea of making money, it was easy to infer that the interests of the financial sector were the same as the interests of the country—and that the winners in the financial sector knew better what was good for America than did the career civil servants in Washington. Faith in free financial markets grew into conventional wisdom.....

astonishing:

• insistence on free movement of capital across borders;

• the repeal of Depression-era regulations separating commercial and investment banking;

• a congressional ban on the regulation of credit-default swaps;

• major increases in the amount of leverage allowed to investment banks;

• a light (dare I say invisible?) hand at the Securities and Exchange Commission in its regulatory enforcement;

• an international agreement to allow banks to measure their own riskiness;

• and an intentional failure to update regulations so as to keep up with the tremendous pace of financial innovation.

The mood that accompanied these measures in Washington seemed to swing between nonchalance and outright celebration: finance unleashed, it was thought, would continue to propel the economy to greater heights.

  • Wall Street paid out $18 billion in year-end bonuses (in 2008 vice last year) to its New York City employees, after the government disbursed $243 billion in emergency assistance to the financial sector. (Taxpayer paid Bonuses Folks)

  • The response so far is perhaps best described as “policy by deal”: when a major financial institution gets into trouble, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve engineer a bailout over the weekend and announce on Monday that everything is fine.

  • Treasury and the Fed did not act according to any publicly articulated principles, but just worked out a transaction and claimed it was the best that could be done under the circumstances.

  • Throughout the (2008 Financial Crisis), the government has taken extreme care not to upset the interests of the financial institutions, or to question the basic outlines of the system that got us here.

  • To paraphrase Joseph Schumpeter, the early-20th-century economist, everyone has elites; the important thing is to change them from time to time.

  • The second scenario begins more bleakly, and might end that way too. But it does provide at least some hope that we’ll be shaken out of our torpor. It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and—because eastern Europe’s banks are mostly owned by western European banks—justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration’s current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy “stress scenario” that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks’ balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.

  • Under this kind of pressure, and faced with the prospect of a national and global collapse, minds may become more concentrated.

  • The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, was the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund during 2007 and 2008. He blogs about the financial crisis at baselinescenario.com, along with James Kwak, who also contributed to this essay.

(CLICK on link it is a long article, I have just excerpted pieces)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/?single_page=true

[-] 2 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

Senate Bill S. 685. to address TBTF by Bernie Sanders (bump)

The Sanders and Sherman legislation would give the Treasury Department 90 days to identify commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies whose "failure would have a catastrophic effect on the stability of either the financial system or the United States economy without substantial government assistance."

VT Senator Bernie Sanders & CA Rep. Brad Sherman introduce bills to break up TBTF banks.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20130409/THISJUSTIN/130409960

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/292623-liberals-push-bank-break-up-bill


New Legislation Senate Sanders 2013 159 Cong. April (search criteria)

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r113:@FIELD(FLD003+d)+@FIELD(DDATE+20130410)

By Mr. SANDERS :

S. 685. A bill to address the concept of ``Too Big To Fail'' with respect to certain financial entities; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

So the Bill in the Senate is S. 685 ...Could not find House Bill

[-] 1 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

Foreclosure Fraud Deal for $300 per house owner and small penalty for Banks.

For Most Homeowners, Gov’t Foreclosure Deal Brings A Few Hundred Bucks

April 14th, 2013
in econ_news, syndication

Special Report from ProPublica

by Paul Kiel, Propublica.org

The government’s largest effort to compensate victims of the banks’ foreclosure practices is finally sputtering to an end. But for most of those eligible – nearly three million borrowers – it won’t be much of an ending: they’ll be receiving a check for $300 to $500.

Payments to Homeowners

Regulators are dividing $3.6 billion in payments among 3.9 million homeowners. Of these, 2.4 million homeowners are receiving $300.

http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog1.php/2013/04/14/for-most-homeowners-gov-t-foreclosure-deal-brings-a-few-hundred-bucks

[-] 1 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

More Proof from Yves Smith, Informationclearinghouse.com

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34410.htm

Simon Johnson clearly described in his important 2009 Atlantic article, The Quiet Coup, that American was in the hands of oligarchs:

  • Every crisis is different, of course….But I must tell you, to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar….Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise…

  • In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again)….But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Now Johnson carefully laid the bread crumbs, but so as not to violate the rules of power player discourse, pointedly switched from the banana republic term “oligarch” to the more genteel and encompassing label “elites” when talking about the US (“elites” goes beyond the controlling interests themselves to include their operatives as well as any independent opinion influencers).

And the results on important metrics are worse than in Russia. The Gini coefficient is a widely-used measure of income inequality. The Gini coefficient is worse (higher) for the US than for Russia.

And the latest statistics on the Gini coefficients (at least readily findable on the Web) are a few years stale. As we’ve written, the income gains in the US from 2009 to 2011 went entirely to the top 1%, which saw a 121% increase; the rest of the population suffered a small decline. That would increase the US Gini coefficient even further.

And on top of that, the cash hoarding habits of both poor and rich Russians, and the comparative difficulty that low and moderate Americans have in escaping the strong grip of the IRS may mean the Russian wealth inequality is lower than official figures indicate.

Top executives have operated in a manner that is less obviously thuggish than the violent ways of some of Russia’s richest, but the hollowing out of labor and shortened job tenures have come with high costs across broad swathes of society. And the oligarchs that Johnson singled out, the elite that control the biggest financial firms, have become singularly, systematically predatory. We discussed long from in ECONNED the scale and nature of the looting that produced the global financial crisis.

Reposting from Link shared by Shadz66

Click for Full Article by Yves Smith, Copyright © Aurora Advisors Incorporated

Why Does No One Speak of America’s Oligarchs? March 25, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"Naked Capitalism"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34410.htm

[-] 1 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

Foreclosures surge in 32 states

http://www.banks.com/articles/foreclosure-starts-surge-32-states

All told, U.S. foreclosure starts were up in 32 states in February, with some states showing alarmingly high rates. Look at these states’ foreclosure rate growth in February:

  • Nevada +334 percent
  • Maryland +319 percent
  • Washington +172 percent
  • New York +139 percent
  • New Jersey +70 percent

But an increase in foreclosures also signals that the U.S. housing market is not out of the woods yet. Until the inventory of foreclosed homes is largely sold off, there can’t be significant recovery in the nation’s residential housing market.

From what RealtyTrac is reporting, that so-called recovery isn’t as strong as one might think.

Control the Info, Don't Collect the data, Plain Lie about the Truth... Now we see the nature of Politics... In this case they artificially reduce foreclosure actions and prevent the problem from being reported or to have Visibility/Transparency

This started in 2007, right? Five years ago....

[-] 1 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

Phases of Financial take Over, & Wild, Wild West of the US Crony Capitalism (Moved from other post)

Proof Gov doesn't Regulate Businesses, but ... enables, protects, aides their monopoly, waives tax payments, waive poor performance of contractors, rarely finds or prosecutes contractor Fraud and is Deeply Involved in Crony Capitalism:

"... Wall Street banks nearly crippled the economy in 2008, wiping out the finances of thousands of innocent people, yet they still receive billions in federal dollars. Big oil corporations also receive federal subsidies while at the same time poisoning our environment with toxic chemicals. Despite a devastating oil spill in the Gulf and a recent major spill in Arkansas, oil companies have no problem getting cash from the government..."

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/04/12/north-carolina-house-passes-mandatory-background-checks-for-food-stamp-recipients/

Government's primary purpose is to regulate commerce, promote health & safety, provide emergency services, mount a defense of the country, ... build roads, bridges & infrastructure which enables both commerce and National defense......

But the Government's purpose is not to Regulate People of the USA. I would say prudent program administration & budgeting relies on some proof that people collecting benefits are not committing fraud .... but I don't know what policy should be used.

If we can identify who we are giving funding & benefits to by thumbprint, drivers license, ... then we can control government spending and reduce Fraud, Waste, & Abuse to acceptable limits.

Sounds like on EBT Cards ... grocery stores & Banks are getting a piece of the action. It also sounds like people trade EBT Cards & buy things that don't help feed the family.

Austerity IS Code for: We the Government have messed up, screwed up,... the Financing and Budgets for Schools, universities, Hospitals, Municipalities, Counties, and States..... The 3 figure pensions in Chicago, The Failing Trust Funds for Universities like Harvard, Collapsing bankrupt cities, under funded Retirement Funds & Pension Funds, Investments in Zobie Hedge Funds,.... Continued Bailouts for Wall Street ..... Quadrillion in US Derivatives, ... Corporate Funding of Congress, ... and the Dependence of all of us on Federal or Banking Money combined with the Interdependence of banks to each other ...But you never hear a Politician take the Blame for the Many, Too Many, Complex, Interlocking, Financial Schemes that continue to Proliferate

Federal Government is never around to take responsibility, but always their to act like they are the solution. In reality, they show how "Brain Dead" they are by Insisting that "there is no Alternative" to give up your social security, privatize your social security, go on sequestration, take money from your bank deposit, make free loans to the incompetent free market bankers that caused the 2008 Global Collapse.... William K. Black proved out the solution in the Savings & Loan Scandal...They prosecuted 4,000 Banking people over 10 years.

Austerity is Code for a bucket full of Financial Schemes that they Can't Control. Government is to Blame for failing to enforce proper Program Administration Policies & Procedures ... that would make sure there were firm rules, proper staffing, and proper enforcement of conservative Accounting & banking Rules.**

Any Politician that Says there is no alternative, should be denounced as a "Dupe & an Idiot".

Apparently we are to live in the Wild, Wild West ... until this country collapses.

Phase #1, Deregulate Investment Banking through a Presidential Fast Track Legislation Act that allows the US President to take Authority from the US Congress.

Phase #2, Expand Influence on Universities, Education, Politicians, the US Treasury, Washington DC Politics, Government Economist, and secure relationships with judges in the Court System. This is the capstone that we call "Crony Capitalism". We want everyone in the same bed.

Phase #3, Fill the Global Financial System with Fraudulent, Worthless, AAA Rated, Financial Instruments.

Phase #4, When the Economic Collapse hits must secure government bailouts by declaring a "National Emergency", this will be done by minimizing blame to low level players and a few bad eggs.

Phase #5, US President controls Department of Justice & the FBI through cabinet appointments and makes sure everyone knows that all American Institutions are linked to the Financial Risks ... and that all Financial Conventions must stay in place with minimal changes to private banking .... in order to keep the system moving, keep the system going, maintain the "Status Quo".... The message is that everyone can be happy and banks can continue to fund America's projects.

Phase #6, Few people really understand American Finance and how all States, banks & Businesses are linked and Corrupted by these Complex, Interlocking, Financial Schemes... So Media is not to dwell on the details or the Banks Involved. America must be kept dumb and in the dark to how networks & Crony Capitalism have set up critical relationships that enabled this financial take over. Media Reports will be reminded that they have a corporate career and must be followers and team players.

Phase #7, Whistleblowers must be discouraged through liberal bonus payments and promises of support for their career and references for their character. Since the Financiers of the World control "War & Peace", "Prosperity & Famine", ...no leaks will be tolerated and court systems will be used to keep whistleblowers in line and book writing will be termed "Career Ending". Military Whistleblowers will be treated accordingly.

Phase #8, We have the Wild, Wild, West of Financing in the USA which is characterized as higher and higher risk & Future Obligations for Tax Payers & Local Government ... & Lower Risk for Investment Bankers.

Phase #9, The USA Collapses from both Price Inflation & Deflation of the Dollar at the same time, The dollar ends up with half it's value just like the Mexican Peso in the 1980s. Rich people move out of country to foreign compounds if they like. Streets, bridges, & US Infrastructure all over the US fall apart except for where toll roads have been purchased by corporations.

Phase #10, Europe & third world countries actually seem to do better in the Depression ... since there infrastructure has already gone through Austerity, Depression, and other calamities.

Phase #11, now we know why we have DHS, Domestic Spying Operations, FEMA Camps, Militarization of our Culture & Our Police, and why Gun Control is more important than our "National Security in Finance and Financial Links through everything" and "No One is worried about the Loss in Federal Taxes and Payroll Taxes Due to Off Shore Corporations & Military Contractors".

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/04/12/north-carolina-house-passes-mandatory-background-checks-for-food-stamp-recipients/

[-] 1 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

Nature of Politics (reposting here)

Politicians are a Mouth Pieces, Right? He is a Lawyer he makes money 1st in Law saying stuff to win cases. 2nd he is a Politician he says stuff to attract money & Lobbies... and also to win for his side.

Why do we listen at all to Politicians? When politicians talk or Lawyers Talk we know they will Lie.

Capitalism Suppresses Information. Drug Companies Suppress Information. Corporations Suppress information and Lobby against the Release of Information. The US Fights war and suppresses information "Collection" on Civilian Deaths, Civilian Refugees, Refugees that are murdered, Refugees that are Raped, Houses Destroyed, Businesses Destroyed, Wealth Destroyed, Families torn apart, and allied military casualties and Deaths.

The US Won't even help to be transparent about our foreign allies death and injuries in our wars. (Disrespectful of our Allies and is Dishonorable)

Here is the Assault on SS:

http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2012/11/third-way-wall-street-on-potomac.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/third-way-wall-street_b_2121372.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five

The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators – Alan Cranston (Democrat of California), Dennis DeConcini (Democrat of Arizona), John Glenn (Democrat of Ohio), John McCain (Republican of Arizona), and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (Democrat of Michigan) – were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Trust_Corporation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_Act_of_1986#Fraudulent_dependents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Banking_Act

On January 4, 1995, the new Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Representative James A. Leach (R-IA), introduced a bill to repeal Glass–Steagall Sections 20 and 32.[178] After being confirmed as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced on February 28, 1995, that the Clinton Administration supported such Glass–Steagall repeal.[179] Repeating themes from the 1980s, Leach stated Glass–Steagall was “out of synch with reality”[180] and Rubin argued “it is now time for the laws to reflect changes in the world’s financial system.”[179]

1999 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act

Finance

The financial sector in the U.S. has evolved a great deal in recent decades, during which there have been some regulatory changes and the creation of new financial products such as the securitization of loan obligations of various sorts and credit default swaps. Among the most important of the regulatory changes was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which repealed the parts of the Glass–Steagall Act which had not already been repealed. This 1999 Act took down barriers to competition between traditional banks, investment banks, and insurance companies, in some cases allowing firms to participate in all three markets thus making distinctions between these categories less clear.[19]

Some believe that this deregulation contributed to the U.S. financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the Global financial crisis of 2008-2009.[20] However, others dispute this assertion, and a lively debate on the causes of financial crisis is still under way as of August, 2009.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation#United_States

Related legislation
1976 - Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act PL 94-435
1977 - Emergency Natural Gas Act PL 95-2
1978 - Airline Deregulation Act PL 95-50
1978 - National Gas Policy Act PL 95-621
1980 - Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act PL 96-221
1980 - Motor Carrier Act PL 96-296
1980 - Regulatory Flexibility Act PL 96-354
1980 - Staggers Rail Act PL 96-448
1982 - Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act PL 97-320
1982 - Bus Regulatory Reform Act PL 97-261
1989 - Natural Gas Wellhead Decontrol Act PL 101-60
1992 - National Energy Policy Act PL 102-486
1996 - Telecommunications Act PL 104-104
1999 - Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102

[-] 1 points by Middleaged (5140) 10 years ago

Text S. 685 TBTF Introduced by Sanders in the Senate ... 'Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act’.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s685/text (This one) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s685

‘Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act’.