Republicans
Out of context: Reply #56
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- monolith0
Related to that video so you can understand why Republicans have never EVER been pro-american, patriotic, working in the interest of the people in this country but for the interest of the richest, financial institutions and basically propping up their own pockets and why "deregulation" rhetoric has been proven over and over again that it doesn't work.
It all starts with 93rd Congress (1973-1975) where democrats had the majority.
They created Commodity Futures Trading Commission who's task was to protect market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices related to the sale of commodity and financial futures and options, and to foster open, competitive, and financially sound futures and option markets
This was very clear.. Democrats knew that you needed regulation over these things. Actually in 1998 Brooksley E. Born (democrat who was chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that oversaw the futures and commodity options markets) issued a first call for her regulatory commission to have power to oversee financial derivatives.
While previous legislative attempts had been made earlier, her efforts were the most direct and threatening to the financial industry. She said, with full right btw, that an unregulated derivatives market could "pose grave dangers to our economy.". No sh**!
Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan gave a recommendation against her proposal stopping her in her tracks. in Congress, Republicans were still up-in-arms over Born's attempts to regulate the financial derivatives market and began working to pass their own set of deregulatory language. That's where the real fun began.
Come 1999-2000, leading the charge in Republican majority held Congress were Sens. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Rep. Thomas Ewing (R-IL). In May of 2000, Rep. Ewing introduced his Commodity Futures Modernization Act. While Ewing's bill sailed quickly through the House, it stalled in the Senate, as Sen. Gramm desired stricter deregulatory language be inserted into the bill. Gramm opposed any language that could provide the SEC or the CFTC with any hope of authority in regulating or oversight of financial derivatives and swaps. Gramm's opposition held the bill in limbo until Congress went into recess for the 2000 election.
So, they stalled it because they wanted to see whether or not Bush will win so they can pass it easier and they disagreed on the fact whether there wasn't enough deregulation in it! Talk about insane.
During a lame-duck December session, while the media was focused on the recounts and court cases, Gramm and Ewing sought to strike a compromise on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gov. Bush, December 14, Ewing introduced a new version of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. On December 15, with little warning or fanfare--aside from the overshadowed discussions on the floors of Congress--the new, compromise version was included as a rider to the Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY 2001, an 11,000 page appropriations conference report.
This is how they managed to get Clinton to sign for the Consolidated Appropriations Act before leaving the office, basically stuffing the 262-page Commodity Futures Modernization Act deregulation in it. This is WHAT really started the whole thing.
Btw, The final language, which the public was hardly aware of, contained some new sections not in the original Ewing bill that, for all intents and purposes, exempted swaps and derivatives from regulation by both the CFTC and the SEC. Also, hidden within the bill was an exemption for energy derivative trading, which would later become known as the Enron loophole- this loophole would provide the impetus for Enron's nose dive into full blown corporate corruption.
These unregulated derivatives, especially the credit default swap, would be at the heart of the financial and housing crisis of 2008 and directly responsible for the things you that happened. Complete deregulation and basically banks and investment corporations doing predatory lending practices without any control.