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    George_1950's Avatar
    George_1950 Posts: 3,099, Reputation: 236
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    #21

    Mar 16, 2009, 04:02 PM

    Bwe he he:
    "In fact, it was a law approved by Congress in 2000 that allowed companies to place tens of trillions of dollars of these risky credit default swap bets.

    After the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a giant hedge fund that pioneered the use of derivatives, the Fed engineered a rescue to prevent the unwinding of risky bets from spreading to the larger financial system. That brought calls for tighter regulation of derivatives, including a push for greater derivatives regulation at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, led by a former Wall Street attorney named Brooksley Born.

    But strong opposition to the proposal from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and senior Clinton administration officials sank the idea. On Dec. 21, 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which further eased restrictions on derivatives like credit default swaps."
    Congress played major role in AIG mess - Economy in Turmoil- msnbc.com
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #22

    Mar 31, 2009, 02:43 PM
    Further proof that responsibility for the meltdown began long before Bush... and now the guy is tapped for no. 2 at Treasury. Comforting isn't it?

    Hmmm. This isn’t exactly confidence inspiring.

    Tim Geithner’s new nominee for number two at the Treasury Department, Neal Wolin, played a key role in drafting legislation in the late 1990s deregulating the banking system, a former Treasury Department official confirms to us.

    The law that Wolin helped draft has been blamed by some critics, many of them Democrats, for easing up regulatory pressure on huge financial institutions, tangentially helping create today’s mess — and his role drafting it could come under questioning at his upcoming confirmation hearings.

    Our reporter, Ryan Derousseau, came across Wolin’s role in researching our big profile of Wolin at WhoRunsGov.com. Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, confirmed that as Treasury’s general counsel at the time, Wolin “provided the technical and legal drafting” for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

    As Ryan writes, the Act hasn’t been directly blamed for today’s meltdown. But it did pave the way for the birth of huge financial companies like Citigroup that were deemed “too big to fail” when their mortgage bets went belly-up and the credit market evaporated. The government, of course, had to bail out these institutions with billions in taxpayer dollars.

    Wolin — who was picked after several other candidates passed on the slot — did the legal work under then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who is now Obama’s head of the National Economic Council. The difference here is that Summers’ post, unlike Wolin’s, is a non-confirmable one, so he hasn’t been pressed publicly on Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The question now is whether Wolin will come under sharp questioning over his role in creating it.
    That isn't the only concern about Wolin, either.

    President Barack Obama on Wednesday named a politically connected top executive of a financial services company that’s seeking federal bailout money to be his chief legal counsel on the economy, a move raising ethical concerns with watchdog organizations and casting a shadow on Obama’s campaign theme of change.

    In a statement on Wednesday morning, Obama said he appointed Neal Wolin, division president of The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. to become his deputy White House counsel for economic affairs. That makes Wolin the top legal adviser on economic issues.

    The Hartford in mid-November purchased a Sanford, Fla. thrift — Federal Trust Bank — a move that allowed it to seek as much as $3.4 billion in Wall Street bailout money. On Nov. 14, it applied to become a thrift holding company entitled to between $1.1 billion and $3.4 billion in funds under the much-maligned Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
    All right Obamanoids, spin this guy. Maybe you can give the Dems some pointers in defending his work on Gramm-Leach-Bliley during his confirmation hearings, since that is what they claimed was responsible for the meltdown.
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #23

    Apr 3, 2009, 05:39 AM
    Again, for all you folks who think Bush broke it...

    As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short
    Before Timothy Geithner became Treasury chief, he regulated major U.S. banks. Now he says: "We're having a major financial crisis in part because of failures of supervision."... Yet as Geithner and the New York Fed worked to solve narrow mechanical issues in the derivatives market, they missed clear signs of a catastrophe in the making. When the housing market collapsed, derivatives stoked the fires that ignited inside some of the biggest banking companies. The firms' failure to assess an array of risks they were taking has emerged as a key element in the multitrillion-dollar meltdown of the global financial system.

    Although Geithner repeatedly raised concerns about the failure of banks to understand their risks, including those taken through derivatives, he and the Federal Reserve system did not act with enough force to blunt the troubles that ensued. That was largely because he and other regulators relied too much on assurances from senior banking executives that their firms were safe and sound, according to interviews and a review of documents by The Washington Post and the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica.

    A confidential review ordered by Geithner in 2006 found that banking companies could not properly assess their exposure to a severe economic downturn and were relying on the "intuition" of banking executives rather than hard quantitative analysis, according to interviews with Fed officials and a little-noticed audit by the Government Accountability Office. The Fed did not use key enforcement tools until later, after the credit crisis erupted, according to its records and interviews.
    Your Treasury chief is admitting that HE didn't do enough to prevent a meltdown. But go ahead, blame Bush some more.
    excon's Avatar
    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
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    #24

    Apr 3, 2009, 05:50 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by speechlesstx View Post
    Again, for all you folks who think Bush broke it... Your Treasury chief is admitting that HE didn't do enough to prevent a meltdown. But go ahead, blame Bush some more.
    Hello Steve:

    BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT.

    Ok, Geitner was working for Bush. If Bush didn't like what he was doing, he could have fired him. But, he didn't...

    Yup, the dufus is responsible for the financial meltdown, just like he's responsible for the legal meldtown at Justice, cause of the jerk he put in there.

    excon
    tomder55's Avatar
    tomder55 Posts: 1,742, Reputation: 346
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    #25

    Apr 3, 2009, 05:55 AM
    Yesterday it was announced that the accounting rules called Mark to Market ;that were introduced into the finance industry in 2007 ,have been relaxed. Not being an accountant ;I am not sure of the total impact. Economic experts I listen to have been asking for the change for months and yesterday Wall Street reacted favorable to the news. There was also a bipartisan support for the change in Congress.
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #26

    Apr 3, 2009, 06:32 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by excon View Post
    BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT.

    Ok, Geitner was working for Bush. If Bush didn't like what he was doing, he coulda fired him. But, he didn't...

    Yup, the dufus is responsible for the financial meltdown, just like he's responsible for the legal meldtown at Justice, cause of the jerk he put in there.
    I'll grant that the buck stopped with Bush, always have, but these Dems that have feigned all that outrage at Bush knew, just like Geithner knew. At least Geithner admits he didn’t do enough, while the Democrat morons in Congress that swore everything was OK at Fannie and Freddie, were apoplectic at the thought of more oversight of the two, demanded that banks loan money to people who weren’t credit worthy and complained that no one warned them even though Bush did don’t have the backbone to do the same.
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #27

    Apr 8, 2009, 06:28 AM
    The buck obviously didn't stop anywhere near Barney Frank.

    WFXT-TV: It all started with a question: "How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?"

    Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and a conservative Harvard law student debated over how Frank should have handled his role as the House Chairman of the Financial Services Committee. Frank was at Harvard University for a speech at the Kennedy School of Government.

    Frank said the student wasn't backing up his claims, invoking some laughter from the crowd, and the student told Frank he wasn't answering his question.
    tomder55's Avatar
    tomder55 Posts: 1,742, Reputation: 346
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    #28

    Jun 25, 2009, 07:06 AM

    Speaking of Barney Frank . He and Rep. Anthony Weiner (I won't go there... but you can't make it up ) are asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to AGAIN relax tightened standards for mortgages .Together they wrote a letter to the CEO's of Freddie and Fannie, warning them their lending restrictions are too harsh . They are concerned that condos are not being sold because of tighter lending rules.

    If I didn't know better I'd swear they want to reinflate the housing bubble.
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #29

    Jun 25, 2009, 08:05 AM

    Are you kidding me?
    tomder55's Avatar
    tomder55 Posts: 1,742, Reputation: 346
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    #30

    Jun 25, 2009, 08:09 AM

    Sad but true according to the WSJ
    Opinion NewsReel - WSJ.com
    excon's Avatar
    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
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    #31

    Jun 25, 2009, 08:28 AM

    Hello again:

    Those wascally Democwats! Darn them!

    excon
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #32

    Jun 25, 2009, 09:53 AM
    I love this from the letter:

    "While the underlying goal may be to reduce taxpayer exposure relating to the current conservatorship of the GSEs [government sponsored entities], such a goal would not have such an effect if it merely results in a shifting of loans from the GSEs to the FHA." Tougher lending standards will merely shift market share from one government program to another, so what's the point in being cautious?"
    What's the point in being cautious? Duh, I don't know, maybe to prevent another freakin' meltdown?
    ETWolverine's Avatar
    ETWolverine Posts: 934, Reputation: 275
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    #33

    Jun 25, 2009, 10:13 AM

    My first credit trainer used to say that the best loan was the one he DIDN'T make.

    He was saying that loan standards are the key to being repaid and keeping business happily chugging along.

    To throw caution to the wind and not require tough lending standards is to essentially say "take my money, don't bother paying it back".

    That letter is written in a fool's paradise.

    Elliot
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #34

    Jun 25, 2009, 10:16 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by ETWolverine View Post
    loan standards are the key to being repaid and keeping business happily chugging along
    If only more people realized that. Problem is I don't think a lot of Democrats give a rip about keeping business chugging happily along.
    Skell's Avatar
    Skell Posts: 1,863, Reputation: 514
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    #35

    Jun 25, 2009, 07:40 PM

    So you agree with tighter banking regulations Elliot?

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