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Gents Without Cents; or, How Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp Upheld The Market
TPMCafe —
... Picture Larry Summers trying to keep Phil Gramm from poking his eyes out. The Washington Post tells the story of the bipartisan quartet who thwarted attempts by Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chairman Chairperson Brooksley Born (pictured) to regulate derivatives: Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Arthur Levitt, and Phil Gramm. ...
Boom and boom
Belmont Club —
The search for the culprit in the current financial crisis continues. The Washington Post has an article which appears to put the blame on the Clinton Administration for failing to extend regulation into the burgeoning field of derivatives — but really puts the onus not on the Clintons but on financial industry lobbyists and the misguided spirit of a Republican deregulatory mania who led his administration astray. The basic storyline is that a lonely bureaucrat — Brooksley E. Born of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — wanted to regulate derivatives but was forced back ...
Naomi Klein Joins Anti-Summers Campaign
Open Left - Front Page —
As part of her campaign to stop the bailout profiteers, Naomi Klein has put our petition on her home page, joining 2800 of you who have signed up to protest Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary. It came out today that Larry Summers warmly embraced deregulation as Treasury Secretary, as Dean Baker notes. Summers fought aggressively against pro-regulatory elements within the Clinton administration to do the industry's bidding, so it's no surprise he's now a managing director at hedge fund and private equity group DE Shaw.
Kim ...
Summers at Treasury: What Would We Tell the Children?
TPMCafe —
... Silence was not Summers only contribution to the growth of the housing bubble. As Treasury Secretary, he had been a vigorous advocate of the one-sided financial deregulation (the Wall Street big boys all want the government security blanket of "too big to fail"). In particular, Summers had worked alongside Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan to prevent any regulation of credit default swaps, an instrument that helped provide the financial fuel of the housing bubble. ...
Dean Baker: Summers at Treasury: What Would We Tell the Children?
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... Silence was not Summers only contribution to the growth of the housing bubble. As Treasury Secretary, he had been a vigorous advocate of the one-sided financial deregulation (the Wall Street big boys all want the government security blanket of "too big to fail"). In particular, Summers had worked alongside Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan to prevent any regulation of credit default swaps, an instrument that helped provide the financial fuel of the housing bubble. ...
A Financial Sector Small Enough to Drown in a Bathtub
TPMCafe —
... The best example of politics thwarting effective regulation was when Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers prevented Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from regulating credit default swaps in 1998. However, there are many other instances coming to light in which political interference obstructed efforts to stem questionable practices by the financial industry. ...
It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s Meltdown
The Republic of T. —
... , and her treatment at the hands of the some of the big boys of finance when she sounded the alarm about the impending (now current) crisis. ...
Paul Blumenthal: How Congress Rushed a Bill that Helped Bring the Economy to Its Knees
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... , Alan Greenspan "acknowledges he'd been 'partially' wrong to oppose regulation of such instruments." Former SEC chairman Levitt stated that if given the chance for a do-over he "would have pushed for some way to give greater transparency to products which turned out to be injurious to our markets." ...
Glenn Greenwald needs a copy of Liberal Fascism
Patterico's Pontifications —
... encompasses a wide range of products. Had he done so, it might have occurred to him that casting doubt over the legality of trillions of dollars in existing contracts might have had an economic impact more immediately recognizable than what we see now with hindsight, which involved not only the burgeoning derivatives market (as Greenwald seems to believe), but easy money from both here and abroad, decades of policies pushing homeownership and lowering lending standards, etc. ...
