[In Clyde Prestowitz’s 2010 The Betrayal of American Prosperity, he] notes how in 1989 and 1993, financial instruments that later played a central role in the meltdown of 2008–9 were exempted from government oversight. For instance, Greenspan was adamant about getting the government out of the way. “In fact, Greenspan largely halted the Fed’s active oversight of the banking industry.” Joined by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers, “ the three mounted an aggressive campaign to halt any efforts to regulate trading of new derivative instruments.”Even now, are toxic derivatives just unregulated?When measures to impose constraints on these risky trades were being considered, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers pointedly blocked them. Also, when Brooksley Born, Chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission attempted to do her job, Summers aggressively attacked her actions. Right on cue, Greenspan, Rubin and Arthur Levitt of the Securities and Exchange Commission pressured Congress to straightjacket Born.[1]
You have to have a strong stomach to delve into the world of high finance. And good luck researching any of this to try to develop something more than a skin-deep understanding of our financial and monetary recklessness.
Notes
[1] "The Big Short: Film and Book." By Edmund Connelly, Ph. D., The Occidental Observer, 5/26/16 (emphasis added).
History will judge these thieves, should any live to write it or read it. If and when they do, the question will be "why weren't they hanged for their malfeasance?"
ReplyDeleteActually, the same question many of us have today. If, as has been noted, the financial shenanigans and subsequent meltdown(s); are "the greatest theft ever perpetrated on the American people" - why has no one (yet, anyway) done the "perp walk"?
A reckoning is coming...
It is indeed coming. The details of monetary, fiscal, and trade policy are very difficult to understand but collapse is in the wind and a lot of people won't have trouble understanding that. Whether the real culprits can be reliably identified is an open question but no question that life is going to get a lot simpler after the geniuses and grifters lose their grip.
ReplyDeleteWow, those surnames all have a peculiar common denominator.
ReplyDeleteDoyle, you may be on to something. :-)
ReplyDelete