TruthDigg: Clinton Democrats Fostered the 2008 Economic Crisis

[amborin]

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_great_american_stickup_is_bush_really_20100916

snip

....consumer borrowers would be scapegoated for the crash....

snip

Of the leaders responsible, five names come prominently to mind: Alan Greenspan, the longtime head of the Federal Reserve; Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; Lawrence Summers, who succeeded him in that capacity; and the two top Republicans in Congress back in the 1990s dealing with finance, Phil Gramm and James Leach.

Arrayed most prominently against them, far, far down the DC power ladder, were two female regulators, Born and Sheila Bair (an appointee of Bush I and II and retained as FDIC chair by Obama). They never had a chance, though; they were facing a juggernaut: The combined power of the Wall Street lobbyists allied with popular President Clinton, who staked his legacy on reassuring the titans of finance a Democrat could serve their interests better than any Republican.

Clinton’s role was decisive in turning Ronald Reagan’s obsession with an unfettered free market into law. Reagan, that fading actor recast so effectively as great propagandist for the unregulated market—“get government off our backs” was his patented rallying cry—was far more successful at deregulating smokestack industries than the financial markets. It would take a new breed of “triangulating” technocrat Democrats to really dismantle the carefully built net designed, after the last Great Depression, to restrain Wall Street from its pattern of periodic self-immolations. ...

Clinton betrayed the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms that capitalism needed to be saved from its own excess in order to survive, that the free market would remain free only if it was properly regulated in the public interest. The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse. The guardians of capitalism’s survival are thus not the self-proclaimed free-marketers, who, in defiance of the pragmatic Adam Smith himself, want to chop away at all government restraints on corporate actions, but rather liberals, at least those in the mode of FDR, who seek to harness its awesome power while keeping its workings palatable to a civilized and progressive society.

Government regulation of the market economy arose during the New Deal out of a desire to save capitalism rather than destroy it. Whether it was child labor in dark coal mines, the exploitation of racially segregated human beings to pick cotton, or the unfathomable devastation of the Great Depression, the brutal creativity of the pure profit motive has always posed a stark challenge to our belief that we are moral creatures. The modern bureaucratic governments of the developed world were built, unconsciously, as a bulwark, something big enough to occasionally stand up to the power of uncontrolled market forces, much as a referee must show the yellow card to a young headstrong athlete. ...

[NNadir]

1. Thanks for telling us Donald. I'm still voting for the Democratic nominee, Ms. Clinton, and not...

...for you.

[insta8er]

2. I don't think his name is Donald, maybe you could do some more research on the item he just posted.

Hillary wants to put her husband in charge of the economy, we all have seen where his de-regulation led us. I don't think that you or anyone else would like a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. Maybe it is time to read some more on things like commodity futures and how the de regulation of those futures are directly impacting your grocery bills. While most of this stuff is foreign to the majority of the people visiting this board, they are impacted by it every day..in their wallets.

[guillaumeb]

3. Excellent response. eom

[vintx]

5. Wasted though it was.

None so blind...


Years ago most people on this board were on the same page about triangulation and the consequences of the DLC third way bullshit.

Nowadays people cheer for this shit, seemingly blissfully ignorant of how horribly those policies have affected this country and the world.

[NNadir]

4. Well, if it quacks like a Donald, waddles like a Donald, and offers conspiracy theories like a...

...Donald, it's probably a Donald.

I can't tell which set of conspiracy theorists are more delusional, Donald "Obama's a Kenyan" Trump, or Donald "The Clintons caused the 2008 crash" Berump.

It doesn't matter to me which, actually. I hope they both become historical footnotes as quickly as is possible.

As for "checking out" conspiracy theories at the suggestion of the theorists, I don't go there. I'm what's called a "grown up."

[Demsrule86]

6. You don't say?

Why St Bernie voted in favor of credit default swaps...which in my opinion had much to do with 2008...I am sure the Bushies will love that you now absolve George W...seriously? Clinton had been out of office about eight years...Bush had completely stopped any sort of meaningful regulation...is there anyone, you won't attack for St. Bernie? I blame Bush and the Republicans.

[amborin]

9. now that is totally false and a David Brock smear

[emulatorloo]

7. Must protect Baby Bush at all costs.

Poor George, he is so mistreated.

<sarcasm>

[insta8er]

8. Here is a little video....

[amborin]

10. that's a great video, thanks for posting!

[insta8er]

11. Your welcome, Robert Reich has a lot of these on different subjects

But all of them are related to the economy.

[AzDar]

12. K & R