Wednesday
Apr272016
Watch Bill Clinton Celebrate The Repeal Of Glass Steagal
SUMMERS DANCES LIKE A TRAINED MONKEY
BILL PHIL AND LARRY HAVE A WALL STREET PARTY
Larry Summers, Phil Gramm and Bill Clinton celebrate at the signing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1998, which repealed the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933. This bill led to the creation of mega-banks and financial service firms that quickly became too big to fail, and paved the way for the global financial crisis of 2008.
I set the clip to begin with Phil Gramm's comments. After him, you can skip to 14:00 when Summers introduces Clinton, unless of course you want to watch the monkey.
Reader Comments (5)
1) They sold this fucking thing as a consumer protection bill. In the clip, over and over, speaker after speaker kept talking about the great consumer protections built into the legislation. Well they forgot to include bailout protection for taxpayers. Stupid motherfuckers, every last one of them. Greenspan was in the audience as well, smiling and giving his approval.
2) This was a very controversial bill at the time (you certainly wouldn't know it from the White House ceremony). CNBC talked about it ad nauseum. There were reasonable voices warning of impending doom if the bill passed, but the Clinton camp along with Gramm were owned by Wall Street and the financial services lobbying machine, so in the end, all the warnings were ignored.
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Quoting Clinton as he tries to rewrite history in 2013: "The American people gave the Congress to a group of very conservative Republicans. When they passed bills with the veto proof majority with a lot of Democrats voting for it, that I couldn’t stop, all of a sudden we turn out to be maniacal deregulators. I mean, come on."
CJR's comment on Clinton's revisionism: "This is, to be kind, bullshit. Memory is a hazy thing, but I have a hard time believing Clinton doesn’t know full well he’s not telling the truth here (and with his record, he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt)."
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bill_clinton_the_republicans_m.php