Phil Gramm Owes America $2 Trillion

By GottaLaff

Imagine if you will, it's 1999 again. Are you imagining? Okay, good, because it would be pointless to continue if you weren't:

Lawmakers were falling all over themselves praising the passage of the landmark Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which effectively repealed much of the Glass-Steagall regulations on financial institutions coming out of The Great Depression.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), the main architect of the legislation, expressed fatherly pride in the bill in his floor speech at the time (recently brought to our attention by a BuzzFlash reader):

"The question is, 'How will it look 50 years from now when it has gone from infancy to maturity?' Obviously, after setting out a dramatic change in public policy, it is fair to set out a test for determining its success," Gramm said. "Ultimately, the final judge of the bill is history. Ultimately, as you look at the bill, you have to ask yourself, 'Will people in the future be trying to repeal it, as we are here today trying to repeal -- and hopefully repealing -- Glass-Steagall?' I think the answer will be no. I think it will be no because we are doing something very different from Glass-Steagall. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, thought government was the answer. In this period of economic growth and prosperity, we believe freedom is the answer."

Oy. That's all I can utter right now. Oy. Moving on:

It only took a decade for our financial industry to show the weakness of his extremist deregulation argument.

[A] New York Times article published when the act passed, [gave you] the idea that the people who were opposed to this legislation were just downers that didn't want banks to make money:

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''
^{*Emphasis mine}

Dorgan's comment here is remarkably prescient. What would have happened if we had better heeded his warning?

To be fair, another Democratic senator expressed worry over the act in that Times article: the late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. But, come on. That guy was always doom-and-gloom. He also predicted that the war in Iraq would lead to untold loss of life and resources, a rise in oil prices, al Qaeda's use of American aggression as a recruitment tool, and the weakening of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Shows what he knew. [...]

Gramm also tries to change history in his Wall Street Journal defense:

"Moreover, GLB didn't deregulate anything," Gramm wrote, arguing that Gramm-Leach-Bliley created more regulation. But that's not what he was saying at the time. Again, from that same floor speech at the time of the bill's passage:

This is a deregulatory bill. I believe that is going to be the wave of the future. Although this bill will be changed many times, and changed dramatically as we expand freedom and opportunity, I do not believe it will be repealed. It sets the foundation for the future, and that will be the test.

Gramm was right. Gramm-Leach-Bliley did set the foundation for the future: the future financial crisis. [...] The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed all kinds of institutions -- even insurance companies such as AIG -- to get into the risky investment game. How he can continue to keep his eyes squeezed shut during this financial meltdown, I'll never understand.

Even right-wing pundits are starting to open their eyes. [...]

Maybe if we had forced AIG to just insure stuff instead of heading off to the casino, things would be more stable right now. But perhaps instead of fantasy and nostalgia, I should be counting my blessings. Congress seems poised to pass legislation to better regulate the runaway financial industry.

And things could have been much worse. After all, had McCain won the presidency in November, it was widely speculated that he would have named Gramm as his treasury secretary. Now that's a scary thought.

Didn't I just say that? Great minds...

Now do yourself a favor and go read the whole BuzzFlash piece here. I chopped it up and did it no justice at all.

The ugly Bush stain: OSHA's "dismal inaction" edition

By GottaLaff

Once again, Bush leaves behind a malodorous, toxic stainy mess that has resulted in even more lost lives and further erosion of formerly high standards:

Current and former career officials at OSHA say that such sagas were a recurrent feature during the Bush administration, as political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.

The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during a similar period in President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.

White House officials have dismissed such tallies, emphasizing in recent regulatory overviews that their "objective is quality, not quantity," and that heavy restrictions on corporations harm economic performance. [...]

"The legacy of the Bush administration has been one of dismal inaction," said Robert Harrison, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the occupational health section of the American Public Health Association. It has been "like turning a ketchup bottle upside down, banging the bottom of the container, and nothing comes out. You shake and shake and nothing comes out," Harrison said.

More than two dozen current and former senior career officials further said in interviews that the agency's strategic choices were frequently made without input from its experienced hands. Political appointees "shut us out," a longtime senior career official said.

Among the regulations proposed by OSHA's staff but scuttled by political appointees was one meant to protect health workers from tuberculosis. Although OSHA concluded in 1997 that the regulation could avert as many as 32,700 infections and 190 deaths annually and save $115 million, it was blocked by opposition from large hospitals.

In the summer, the agency decided against moving further toward the regulation of crystalline silica, the tiny fibrous material in cement and stone dust that causes lung disease or cancer. OSHA promised a scientific peer review of the health risks by early 2005 and then by early 2007, but it never acted. Regulating silica exposures would have prevented an estimated 41 silicosis deaths and 20 to 40 lung cancers annually, according to OSHA.

In the spring, political appointees quietly scrapped work on another long-pending regulation of hazardous exposure to ionizing radiation in mailrooms, food warehouses, and hospitals and airports. It cited "resource constraints and other priorities" -- the same reason officials gave for withdrawing more than a dozen regulatory proposals in 2001.

With BushCo, economic considerations (their own and their cronies') always trump the physical well-being of the U.S. population (actually, that of the entire planet), the health of the U.S. economy, morale, and/or the environment.

What's so disturbing is that their filthy, self-serving, homicidal policies will have exponential repercussions, but of course, none of those will be legal ones. Those responsible will skate.

Many more details can be found here, if you can stomach them.

VIDEO: KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

By GottaLaff

VIDEO: Gramm-pa McCain's bailout plan: More deregulation

By GottaLaff

No words. Just watch the following 23 seconds:

H/t: AMERICABlog

The Bush economy fix, by Randi Rhodes

By GottaLaff

Randi Rhodes just now, on the rush to fix the economy their way (and yes, she compared it to the rush to invade Iraq, as we did here):

"They raped us and now they want us to pay for the rape kit."

Sounds almost Palinesque, doesn't it?

UPDATE, per Randi:

The plan is a "pre-emptive economic attack on the American people."

She goes on:

Decisions by the Secretary of the Treasury are non-reviewable and may not be reviewed by any court or any administrative agency.

Why? There is no defense for that. Period. One man in charge of our nation's financial destiny on every front, wtf? Any decision he makes, he makes alone and is not reviewable. Double wtf?

How many times are we going to do this? They are putting us out of business, taking money out of consumers' hands and into the hands of the Secretary. Just him alone.

I only just got home, so I'm catching up. I have no idea what the Democrats' response has been today. Anyone?