Who does John McCain turn to when he needs economic advice? Why Phil Gramm, the guy who called America a nation of "whiners."
And what role does Gramm have in the current banking crisis? As David Corn reports today, when Gramm was the Republican chairman of the Senate banking committee, he was an anti-regulatory crusader whose actions blazed the trail for the sub-prime meltdown:
[E]ight years ago, Gramm, then a Republican senator chairing the Senate banking committee, slipped a 262-page bill into a gargantuan, must-pass spending measure. Gramm’s legislation, written with the help of financial industry lobbyists, essentially removed newfangled financial products called swaps from any regulation. Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies that cover the losses on investments, and they have been at the heart of the subprime meltdown because they have enabled large financial institutions to turn risky loans into risky securities that could be packaged and sold to other institutions.
As Bloomberg reports this morning, the unregulated market for swaps is at the heart of the Lehman failure.
Gramm was supposedly banished from McCain land, but he attended a meeting in Aspen last month of top McCain advisers that included Rick Davis, Steve Schmidt and Charlie Black.
Of course, John McCain himself pressured federal regulators to lay off investigating Charles Keating when his wife had money invested in Keating’s Lincoln Savings. The result was the bankruptcy of Lincoln, which cost the government $3 billion.
Small wonder McCain thinks the current financial crisis is all "psychological," and the fundamentals of our economy are "great" (YouTube).
Why Obama is not laying blame for the crisis at McCain’s feet is something of a mystery.
Related posts:
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- Suicide — Another Side-Effect of the Economic Crisis
- Get a Grip, Wingnuts: John McCain Obsessively Quotes Mao Zedong
- New “Pecora Commission” to be Named This Week? Who Would You Appoint?
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Unregulated part of AIG is what is responsible for its failure. That from Hank Greenberg, the horse’s mouth, on CNBC earlier.
Has the market dropped to the same point it was at before El Presidente’ Boosh took office yet?
-G
How did McShame vote on Gramm’s bills?
as is why obama does not attack the principles of the mccain doctrine, this is ABOUT principles, those that have proven success, (fdr) and those that have proven failure, (reagan, bush, bush, mccain)
that is NOT negative campaigning it is pointing out why we are where we are today and trying to prevent more of it with a candidate who guarantees more of it
even if it is higher, when bush took office the middle class were enjoying the rewards of the growing stock market, most everyone left that investment venue long ago and it was left for the wealthy and those of us who counted on it for retirement
EPU’d from downstairs:
This train wreck on Wall Street has been coming for a very long time. I was very suspect when quant jock PhDs were hired in the early 80s to formulate then simply mortgage backed securities models.
Then they came to derivatives. Am convinced that investment vehicles became so complicated (almost by inherent design), that regulation was virtually impossible.
Repealing Glass-Stegall (and Mr. Gramm’s sneaky swap proviso) made this debacle inevitable.
It’s as if everyone saw Michael Douglas say “greed is good” in “Wall Street” and made it their mantra. The greed and conspicuous consumption over these past twenty-five years has been appalling.
The McSame campaign is sticking to the line of ”I can’t WAIT to introduce Sarah to Washington.” I guess she has not met the campaign advisers.
I can’t WAIT for Obama to start talking about that.
in fact, we have been in depression, (not recession) for about two years, most local businesses are having to pay higher prices for raw material and charge less out the door
propaganda has tried to create a “self fulfilling prophesy” by making believe we are not even in a recession, the recession started somewhere around 5 years ago and digressed to depression for the last two
Are we talking about McCrazy’s likely *Secretary of the Treasury* Phil Gramm here?
McCrazy – Gramm. Re-regulate, De-regulate, Re-regulate, De-Regulate, repeat ad nauseum.
If Obama doesn’t, by the end of the day, publicly and loudly join McCrazy and Gramm at the hip, he’s not nearly the smart guy he claims to be.
former Senator DeConcini is commenting on McCain & Keating 5….. the quote here on the local radio news is …… McCain threw DeConcini under the bus during the Keating 5 investigation….. McCain will throw anyone under the bus…..
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which served to *reduce* government regulation of banking, insurance and brokerage activities:
Aye AZ McCain, John [R]
The PPT is peddling their ass off today. I said over three years ago (once I figured out their game), that as the final collapse draws near, the whip-saws will come fast and furious, with increasingly wilder swings in both directions, with increasing frequency, right up until the point that they break the system and shut it down.
Watch for monumental short squeezes followed by monumental sell-offs. They are merely fleecing all speculators on both sides of every trade, with massive stop-clearing moves, picking the pockets of everyone they can.
The FED and Treasury control the markets entirely. They control the price of oil and the value of the dollar, and the entire news cycle. They know what they will say and do, and when they will say and do it.
Where will the FED come up with the money to save AIG? They could just place a massive long position on it, then announce their bailout, sending the stock price soaring, and paying for the whole thing out of the profits gained by the short squeeze of their own creation.
They know exactly what they are going to do to enrich themselves and their friends (Goldman and JP Morgan/Chase).
This is NOT a “market.”
Obama does better to let the pot simmer. While people and the press get out ahead of him. Why should he have to use propaganda, if people can think for themselves – and then comes the ad – WHAM!
We will test the CDS market due to the Lehman bankruptcy.
The Bear Stearns bailout avoided having to settle these contracts, I believe (please correct me if I’m wrong), because it was “bought” and didn’t file.
The CDS market is HUGE $45 Trillion, compared to anything including the US Debt obligations ~$10 Trillion and the US Mortgage market ~12 Trillion.
T-
Would that bus be the Straight Talk Express? /s
I don’t necessarily disagree, but by the technical measure we are not. Can you reference a source or provide more justification?
I’m sure the positive GDP growth over the last few quarters will be revised downward at a point in the future.
Was this the same Phil Gramm who called up Ron Paul just a few days ago and tried to strongarm him into endorsing McCain?
First graph in a WSJ piece:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/…..ome-fixin/
I wonder if that quote was meant to give the blog’s readers a big case of the warm fuzzies wrt her qualifications as VP? ;-)
I believe that ever since Raygun we have seen segments of the economy in recession perhaps starting with steel. With the exception of the Clinton era the middle class haS
The AIG meltdown can’t help with Ike. . .have we drowned insurance coverage in the bathtub also?
The Goopers are Waking-Up to the Bush-McCain Nightmare of Un-Regulated Greed.
Keith Richards – Goin’ Down
here’s what the “deregulaters” don’t understand or refuse to acknowledge about regulations;
regulations did not manifest from whole cloth, they were (for the most part) put into place because an industry created issues they refused to address without those regulations
they refused to clean their bronchitis from my kids air, they refused to clean their cancer from my moms water, they refused to make cars that wouldn’t spontaneously explode, they refused to match bumpers with trucks so my daughter wouldn’t get decapitated from a 5 mile collision
they refused to pay their bills so the regulation is created to force them into it
sometimes regulations are counter productive but in almost every case they give a POSITIVE gain not a negative one
when a regulation might be counter productive we can revisit and possibly redesign THAT regulation but we do NOT remove regulation pall mall simply because an industry wants to make more profit
OT – it appears that the market, for the last hour or so, is fighting like hell to stay above, or t least close, to the 11,000 mark.
If that economic Maginot line fails, look for another 500 point loss today.
Krugman on Phil Gramm
yes, depression;
we have been in negative trade agreements and investment is overseas not here in the states
….Sarah Palin said the nation’s financial system “needs some shakin’ up and some fixin’” at a rally here today.
gawd, she’s deep – I will need some time to fully digest the brilliance of that statement.
ferchrissakes, who’s writing her material – the guys at RedState Update?
oops accidental post. the middle class has had declining prosperity. The american people have been duped since W to buy, buy , buy, Borrow to buy. Take out a second mortgage and buy. Put it on that credit card and buy. You need this shit. Meanwhile these dorks on wall street built a financial pyramid scheme. Game over!
As someone (I think it was Krugman) said last night on TV:
“Bernanke and Paulson are worried that one man could cause another Great Depression, and Phil Gramm is just the man to do it.”
And with this so called Tort reform….. where judgments are limited to $250,000 then they just put that in their expected loss column on the books….. Who cares if people are maimed or killed, loose their life savings, that their only choice is a red or gray shopping cart…… limit the loss and make sure nothing is regulated…
Let me clarify.
Lehman will test the CDS market because they were one of the largest counterparties in the credit default swap market.
These swaps are predicated on confidence of both parties being able to meet their obligations.
Since Lehman is no longer able to meet the potential obligation of a settlement, the other party to the swap no longer has a contract with Lehman.
That leaves the still-standing party with an asymetric risk position that they must address.
I think part of it is that Obamam and Biden are trying to play by ‘gentlemanly’ Senate rules in talking about McCain (and Palin).
They need to stop doing that, or else lay the ‘honorable colleague from the great state of Arizona’ on really thickly, so it’s obvious that they don’t believe he’s honorable. Right now, it confuses the low-information voters into thinking Obama and Biden actually think McCain would be a good president.
(I think Palin believe she’s starring in her own movie, one where McCain dies dramatically on the podium during the inauguration, and she bravely steps in and takes the oath. Following which, she rids the country of ‘islamofascist liberals’ and makes it safe for theocons. DO. NOT. WANT.)
actually, what I heard her say is she wants to “revam the entire regulatory system”
errr
republican speak, that means take away regulations not create new ones
we need regulations back to the level where industry pays their own bills and regulations so they stop exporting their bills to overseas labor force and international ecology
when an industry can’t produce something here because we force them to clean their own crap, they cannot be allowed to produce that product abroad simply because that country does not force them to clean that crap
and any country that imports product from an industry that doesn’t clean it’s own crap or from a labor force that does not get the basic needs like health coverage, healthy food and retirement, these products must face comenserate tariff
You know why Obama doesn’t need to say anything?
Because this is the last gasp of the smartest guys in the room, and they are doing the sales work for Obama.
Swaps are UGLY; those of you who’ve ever had to read the boilerplate on derivatives know what I mean. Frankly, most of the companies that got into them were over their heads; they thought because they had a passing knowledge while the market was up, that swaps were a great way to distribute risk, like an insurance policy.
I remember hearing George Soros say that he didn’t invest in them, that if he didn’t “get” them, he wasn’t putting money in them. And he was right, spot on. The people in them were possessed of the illusion that they “got” them, thinking they understood them well enough not to need the backstop of regulation.
And we can see now this was pure bullshit.
What Obama can do in a short period of time — not right now while they can’t see straight from panic — is point out that the reason America has been a great place to do business is that regulation ensured safety, if regulation is balanced between managing risk and the need for some degree of freedom to invest. Who’d want to invest here now, given this instability? We have to change that, and we’ll bring change that works.
he Dow when Bush took office (January 20, 2001) was 10,732.
The Dow closed today at 10,917.51, a gain of just 185.51 points (less than 2%) over the past seven and a half years. – yahoo
Americans want a ‘daddy’ figure for pres. I wish Obama and Biden would follow up any critique of this disaster with the words “But, let me reassure Americans” and then give an optomistic picture of how their policies will change events. Simplistic? Maybe, but I, for one, think Americans need a little reassurance right now.
there can be “tort reform” but not as a cap on settlement, possibly as a cap on individual monies but the settlement must be made anyway and those monies could go to the greater fund designed to address said issues
But the Lehman CEO still walks with his 22 million
Jeebus, toooo funny. CNBC hed for next segment: Is more regulation the answer?
Heh.
Oh, so McCain invented the Blackberry? How about the Internet — that comes through the Commerce, too — did Sen. “Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout computers’ invent that TOO?
“He(McCain) did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0908/HoltzEakin_McCain_helped_create_BlackBerry.html?showall
obama does noeed to say something, he has an uphill battle against bigots, he has to demonstrate to them he is the solution
let’s put it this way, here in new york mccain is polling only 5 points below obama
that means it’s a race in new york where they hate bush…obama needs to get in high gear and pronto
Question I wish I could ask:
“Gov. Palin, what do you think of the Gramm Doctrine?”
happened to catch Krugman on with Stephen Moore – apparently they never agree on anything – but both made the point on air that if there is “a villain” it is Greenspan – and spent the next 10 minutes fleshing that out – yeowza
I wish the democrats stopped calling it “regulation”, what they need to call it is something along the lines of “forcing them to pay their own bills”
of course that is too verbose but “regulation” is not the right angle
she’ll reply she likes the marshmallows flamed when she makes s’mores
palin, what do you think of the reagan tax increases?
Rayne @ 33
Great comment. Have always admired Soros and did not know he had made that comment.
I loved your line “regulation insured safety”. Given how this administration has strangled active regulating (much less the laws), it’s no wonder so many of us feel unsafe.
What do you mean by the Gramm Doctrine, Edward?
did Mr Holz-Eakin take any questions ? /s
long considered an ‘independent minded maverick’ his own self – been interesting to watch him cling to McCain as McCain has clung to Bush
Tort reform….. where judgments are limited to $250,000
actually applies to Federal employees:
5/9/2007–Introduced.
Federal Tort Claim Reform Act of 2007 – Amends the federal judicial code to exempt from coverage by the Federal Tort Claims Act any claim, based on an act or omission by a federal government employee relating to criminal conduct, that is made by a person who engaged in that conduct, except to the extent: (1) the act or omission consists of the purposeful infliction of serious bodily injury; and (2) the damages sought are actual losses (up to $250,000 in medical expenses, lost wages, property damage, and other tangible losses).
*snip*
if I’m the (private) head of Lehman Brothers, et al, I’d have already retained a boat-load of lawyers ready to defend class-action shareholder derivative suits…
Not just Obama, but the rest of his Party. There’s lots of prominent Democrats not saying anything these days.
Owning Their Failures *g*
On CSPAN 3, Waxman laid into FBI Director Mueller saying that Mueller’s opening statement addressed none of the questions that Waxman has been asking the FBI about for months. Waxman calls it another song and dance hearing.
The election’s over. McCain helped create the BlackBerry.
That is because a LOT of Dems (*cough* DLC Dems *cough*) were/are ALL FOR de-regulation. They are all for Wall Street running wild. They cannot say much because their signatures are all over this too.
the Gramm Doctrine?
de-regulation of the banking, insurance and brokerage industries – let the market take care of itself, and everybody (who counts) gets rich.
waxmanconyersThey cannot say much because their signatures are all over this too.
Biden vote *against* Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999….
Obama, of course, wasn’t there.
I kinda sorta think she might have been responsible for that one her own little self…….ain’t it enough to give you a coronary? No wonder they’re keeping her arse in a pig pen away from reporters, given the quality of that spew.
Boy, have I got a bad case of the mean nasties today! Gettin’ pisseder and pisseder by the minute. As Rachel would say, “Talk me down.”
At some level, everyone knew a crash was coming:
* Things that can’t go on forever don’t. Specifically, the average American can’t service ever more debt (measured in uninflated dollars).
* Unregulated competition is unstable. As anyone who has played monopoly knows, eventually someone owns everything. But, it’s not unusual to find some wild oscillations along the way. That’s what makes the game exciting and provokes anxiety in real life.
* Historically, imperialism is hard on the average citizen of the imperial nation. Chalmers Johnson explains how this applies to 21st century America:
– There are three broad aspects to our debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on “defense” projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States. Simultaneously, we are keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segments of the American population at strikingly low levels.
– Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — so-called “military Keynesianism,” which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. By military Keynesianism, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.
– Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of our country.
Yes, I know. I was just imagining our future VP in her hext interview.
That’s an economic plan the American people can understand.
Maybe McCain wants to put Todd Palin in charge of that.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – How They Voted – Senate
shakin’ and fixin’…wasn’t that the slogan for shake and bake chicken at one time?
All That Gooper Wealth – Gained By Gaming the System…
Dreams I’ll Never See – Molly Hatchet
In one sense derivatives are incomprehensible. And I always thought that one of the basics of investment was if you don’t understand it don’t invest in it.
But in a larger sense, derivatives are easy to understand. When an investment house is asked to deal with vast trillion dollar amounts, it should have run away from it as fast as possible. When the underlying assets for those instruments don’t pass even the simplest basic math tests, it should have run even faster and yelled like hell to the government and regulators. Instead driven by greed, they pocketed money from the credit default swaps and I don’t know either never looked down the road at the inevitable losses or thought the government would bail them out because the fallout would be too devastating to the financial system.
http://www.motherjones.com/moj…..gramm.html
I think that 62 Trillion is more money than we actually have? How does this work is Karl’s “the Math” involved is Reaganonmics involved? I’m not sure America Europe and Japan have 62 Trillion.
Too true and I’m not sure which is scarier, palin or the ones who “understand”.
Ooops, sorry thanks. I need to eat breakfast and get my brain thinking. *g*
looks to be pretty straight party line, huh?
still, it’s obviously the Democrats’ fault – for not being in the majority…
Does anyone have a plan to regulate or at least shrink the Credit swap market?
More McCrash goodiness via LAT:
As long as there was always a counterparty (greater fool) willing to take on the risk (and pass it on down the line to an even greater fool, the ponzi scheme worked.
When you run a media and FED-fueled ponzi scheme (mortgage backed securities and derivatives) on a global basis, you have three or four years before you run out of greater fools.
It’s the Democrats’ fault for not now making this clearly the Republics’ fault.
Professional Liar John McCain has introduced a new description to the “fundamentals of the economy” by claiming the fundamentals are “the American workers”.
So now when Obama says the fundamentals are weak, John McLiar will scream like a child: “Obama is attacking the workers of America”.
What a totally dishonorable scumbag.
-G
That’s an economic plan the republicans can understand.
Fixed it for you
You need to get an original artist version to get it correct.
Democrats have to acknowledge that Bill Clinton signed GLB99. But the deregulation impetus started with Reagan who was hell-bent on “unleasing the miracle of free enterprise” and has been pushed by the Republicans ever since.
That’s a nice description of our economy.
Yeah krugman hit him on that last night on Olbermann.
That’s growth we can believe in.
-G
Npe. It’s regulation, and the talking heads speaking to the monied base are damned well aware what that means without worrying about them getting scared off by the frame.
Right now they are clinging to the idea of regulation like a school kid regressing and clinging to their binky. Regulation is NOT a dirty word, and we’re not going to run from it.
Regulation means we, the people, act cooperatively and collaboratively to aggregate our power through government, providing government safeguards through oversight so that the marketplace is an open, level playing field for fair market business (not free market). Regulation means we trust ourselves to make good choices that impact markets, but we verify that we aren’t lying or cheating each other in the process.
It’s not about paying bills that got us into this mess; being forced to backstop with guarantees from the taxpayers is the result of the lying and cheating that went unchecked due to a lack of regulation.
McCain is playing Humpty Dumpty games:
new post
Does Gov. Palin Hate Rape Victims?
thank you for that, Rayne.
dakine01 – You are so right! Everything about that Allman Bros. original is better!
bingo;
“let’s stop calling these “regulations” they are “failure consolidation fees”
man, they would go nuts
What was the DOW that day? What is the DOW at the close of today? What was the American Dollar on Bush’s first day in office compared to the Euro? What is the Dollar to the Euroe today? Figure the drop in the Dollar’s value as a percent then apply that drop the the DOW at market close.
Or you could be real Mean and you could do the same thing only use how much gas a Dollar bought the day Bush took office and how much gas a Dollar buys today.
I prefer “greedy bastard oversight”
Still haven’t eaten breakfast yet so apologies in advance. The underlying issue is that derivative instruments are essentially about the mitigation of risk. The problem is that if you minimize or eliminate the moral hazard associated with bad or stupid decisions, you encourage those kinds of decisions. But yes, there are a lot of ways you can regulate these. You can set limits on how many of these a hedge fund can hold or an investment house guarantee. You can increase reserves that a company would have to hold to cover potential losses. This would increase their cost and discourage their holding. Transparency is also very important both in terms of what the value of the underlying asset is and what companies are holding what, and how much.
By McCain’s definition of “economic fundamentals” then, no matter what happens economically, the fundamentals are strong. Outright depression? S’OK because the American worker is strong (if only s/he had work)!
I’m worried about the size of this market if the market stays low well as Lehman shows us the banks don’t have the cash to redeem these credit swaps.
I agree about regulation but shouldn’t the first regulation be you have to have the money to back up your swaps if the market goes down?
That I think is the first problem here, well that and Phil Gramm.
A credit default swap works like this. You have say a bunch of mortgages (a tranch) which we agree has a certain value. You then agree to pay a fixed amount to me each month. For my part, if the value of that tranch of mortgages slips, I agree to pay you the difference between the current price and the original agreed upon price. In this, it looks and functions like an insurance policy.
Now the point here is that the money I might end up owing you isn’t fixed. So there isn’t a way to demand that I have the money to cover my potential liability because neither of us know what that is. But a regulator can set up rule of thumb mechanisms. He/she can say there are absolute limits to how many of these you can hold. And maybe you need too set aside reserves to cover a potential percent loss. They can also modify the terms of the derivative contracts. And again transparency, transparency, transparency.
Laura Flanders has another installment of GRITtv across the hall!
GRITtv Live at Noon: Vincent Bugliosi on the Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
Note: We stream live at 12 eastern with Bugliosi.
Man, am I sorry I missed this post.
Phil Gramm is a one man wrecking crew for the economy.
In addition to helping to cook up the sub-prime mortgage mess, he oversaw the end of Glass- Stegall which wisely separated investment houses, banks and insurance companies.
Throw in his role in enabling Enron to game the energy markets (just ask California about that), and he’s a toxic brew that should be kept as far away from our economy as humanly possible.
Instead, he’s got a 50/50 chance of becoming our next secy of the treasury. Horrors.
New Scarecrow upstairs!
McCain’s Incoherent Babbling On the Economy
Roy Blunt R, Mars, on MSNBC this a.m. to lay deregulation at the feet of Clinton and dems. barf.
i’m all for blaming gramm for everything he did. but this wasn’t all his doing – let’s get the story straight. here is just one example:
that would be the same rubin mentioned here:
the deregulation we’re rightly condemning – happened during the clinton administration and with clinton’s signature on it. this is not just a problem with one of the parties.
The de-regulation may have happened during the Clinton Administration with some help from Clinton.
But Clinton is not one of the major economic advisers to Senator McCain, and being pushed as a potential Secretary of the Treasury under McCain while Gramm is.
And since Clinton was having to make compromises with Republican controlled Congress to get ANYTHING progressive passed, the blame has to lean to the Congress on this.
As always, YMMV.
it wasn’t a compromise that clinton made – rubin, clinton’s tres. sec. pushed congress for that deregulation. and then he left to go to citibank, one of the prime beneficiaries of the deregulation.
and now obama has chosen, for his main economic advisor, a rubin guy. how does this not matter?
i’m only advocating that we try to look dispassionately at the facts.
Just the legislative aspects of the history of this debacle are quite huge, and to interpret them correctly requires that another huge problem —understanding what the hell happened in the first place— be solved. But here are a few preliminary guesses that I hope to be able to write up one day:
1) The swaps insertiion that Gramm made around the same time as the Glass-Steagle repeal (but in a different bill as I recall) played a much more important and immediate enabling role in the present crisis than did the G-S repeal itself; you could say that the swaps measure tipped the potential crisis, based on what was already occuring, from the scale of a mere repeat of the 1980s-90s crisis to the far more dangerous scale that is only now becoming evident in this one. Some hints to both parts of this point can be found in Muolo & Padilla’s Chain of Blame, which so far is the journalistic standard on the history of the subject, and also in Morris’s Trillion Dollar Meltdown. A debate proposition for those long winter nights upcoming: “That the Glass-Steagall repeal act was intended mainly as a cover for the commodities deregulation from which both European (e.g. UBS) and American investment bankers made enormous fee income.”
2) Bipartisan? Boy Howdy!! But a broader view of the last twenty-odd years of politico-finance is needed, or you’ll never see it.