This post outlines how Bill Clinton helped dergulate the banking system and promoted the very same housing policies (based on direction of policy) that led to the financial crisis.
Lets begin. Here's an article PROVING that Bill Clinton is lying about his role in the events that led to the financial crisis of 2008:
Columbia Journalism Review: Bill Clinton on deregulation: ‘The Republicans made me do it!’ The ex-president seriously mischaracterizes his record
What happened? The American people gave the Congress to a group of very conservative Republicans. When they passed bills with the veto proof majority with a lot of Democrats voting for it, that I couldn’t stop, all of a sudden we turn out to be maniacal deregulators. I mean, come on. I know Senator Warren said the other day, admitted when she introduced a bill to reinstate the division between commercial and investment banks, she admitted that the repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause one single solitary financial institution to fail.
This is, to be kind, bullshit. Memory is a hazy thing, but I have a hard time believing Clinton doesn’t know full well he’s not telling the truth here (and with his record, he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt).
Let’s go to the tape. Clinton installed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the Treasury, which resulted in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild West (not to mention a disastrousstrong dollar policy that was a critical and underrated factor in the bubble). He also reappointed Ayn Rand-acolyte Alan Greenspan, who has as much responsibility as anyone for creating the crisis, as Fed chairman—twice.
Now it’s true that Clinton faced an extremely hostile Republican Congress for the last six years of his presidency. But his administration actively encouraged the big deregulatory legislation, and squashed its own dissenters, like Brooksley Born, who saw disaster ahead.
Clinton would have you believe that he signed those bills because his administration was forced to by a GOP that was beholden as usual to Big Business, but then what about the deregulatory legislation he signed in 1994, before Gingrich & Co. took Congress?
More...
Add President Clinton to the long list of people who deserve a share of the blame for the housing bubble and bust. A recently re-exposed document shows that his administration went to ridiculous lengths to increase the national homeownership rate. It promoted paper-thin downpayments and pushed for ways to get lenders to give mortgage loans to first-time buyers with shaky financing and incomes. It’s clear now that the erosion of lending standards pushed prices up by increasing demand, and later led to waves of defaults by people who never should have bought a home in the first place. President Bush continued the practices because they dovetailed with his Ownership Society goals, and of course Congress was strongly behind the push. But Clinton and his administration must shoulder some of the blame.
Video: George Bush Explains The Reasoning Behind The Housing Bubble
Unsolved Mystery;
Going Deeper:
We had a nation of laws for everyone till the Republicans started following a fiction writer called Ayn Rand and decided to make policy based on the ideas of a fiction writer with no degrees or knowledge of anything. Alan Greenspan, specifically, decided (for an unknown reason) that throwing out decades of economic history & science and adopting the idealized 'wars between rich people' view of a fiction writer that spent the last days of her life on government support after escaping communist Russia, was the way to go. It's clear Ayn Rand believed rich rulers was a fine idea but that these rulers should be businessmen. I can see how this would appeal to someone who is rich and a businessman with hands in the government. Despite Alan Greenspan being wrong about Ayn Rand's fictional economic ideas, none of his rich buddies got hurt by the financial collapse of 2008... which was a miracle in and of itself.
First, a debunking of the fictional economics ideas of Ayn Rand (shouldn't be necessary for anyone with any education);
Next, the look at the madness that fueled the bad decision made by Alan Greenspan and Bill Clinton by enabling the GOP to destroy the economy and many citizens lives. What was thier logic? Business men are honest! Clearly, they didn't think laws have anything to do with business decisions. This belief despite the fact that millions died in slavery and people were treated awfully.
PBS: The Warning: Long before the meltdown, one woman tried to warn about a threat to the financial system;
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