FDR ; Hillary talking to US about how her husband followed in his footsteps

[RiverLover]

53. I wish Clinton hadn't repealed Glass-Steagall~

How FDR Saved Capitalism And How Bill Clinton Destroyed It

...From the 1940′s till the 1980′s financial bubbles were rare occurrences because of the well-designed regulatory framework put into place by Franklin Roosevelt during The New Deal. The dismantling of that carefully-constructed framework took more than the limited capabilities of a blind ideologue like Ronald Reagan, or a simpleton like George W. Bush; it needed the political savvy of a brilliant but misguided man like Bill Clinton.

The two critical financial deregulation measures enacted under the Clinton administration were the Reigle Neale Interstate Banking and Branching Act of 1994 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999), the bill that repealed Glass-Steagall. Reigle-Neale accelerated the concentration of financial assets and the creation of "too big to fail" firms by allowing interstate mergers between "adequately capitalized and managed banks". Five years later the Financial Services Modernization Act allowed for banking, securities, and insurance companies to act as one entity while also enabling banks to continue to be active participants in the derivatives business for all credit and equity swaps.

Before those two laws were enacted, the six largest U.S. banks had assets equal to 17 percent of our GDP. Today the six largest U.S. banks have assets equal to more than 60 percent of our GDP.

In addition to the consolidation of the financial marketplace, those two laws aided the creation of a 600 trillion dollar derivatives market (a figure 10 times the size of the entire global economy), where a mistake of microscopic percentage points can lead to a global economic meltdown.

All of this was accomplished by Wall Street executives and their lobbyists in the name of massive short-term profits at the expense of long-term sustainability. But why did Wall Street succeed in these victories under a Democrat like Clinton after they failed under Republicans like Reagan?

Well as Scheer so eloquently puts it:

Clinton, being a smart person and an astute politician, did not use old ideological arguments to do away with New Deal restrictions on the banking system, which had been in place ever since the Great Depression threatened the survival of capitalism. His were the words of technocrats, arguing that modern technology, globalization, and the increased sophistication of traders meant the old concerns and restrictions were outdated. By "modernizing" the economy, so the promise went, we would free powerful creative energies and create new wealth for a broad spectrum of Americans — not to mention boosting the Democratic Party enormously, both politically and financially.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/09/15/902259/-How-FDR-Saved-Capitalism-And-How-Bill-Clinton-Destroyed-It