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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 09:58 AM Jun 2016

Great Moments in Bi-Partisanship: The Signing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999



The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 repealed Glass-Steagall and the New Deal firewall protecting US taxpayer insured-deposits from Wall Street predation.
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Great Moments in Bi-Partisanship: The Signing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (Original Post) Octafish Jun 2016 OP
OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!111!!! betsuni Jun 2016 #1
Apart from the Truth? Octafish Jun 2016 #2
No, unfortunately, it doesn't. SMC22307 Jun 2016 #5
Do you think this is a goddamn joke, or something? DerekG Jun 2016 #13
+1 leeroysphitz Jun 2016 #21
+1000 senz Jun 2016 #34
+1000 nt Live and Learn Jun 2016 #35
Your needle seems to be stuck... ljm2002 Jun 2016 #19
nice catch!!! (and slap down) AntiBank Jun 2016 #42
It does for those that care about policy over personality. n/t leeroysphitz Jun 2016 #20
As "good" as lobbying for Gramm Leach Blilely was, lobbying for merrily Jun 2016 #3
What did that one do for the mineral extraction industries, merrily? Octafish Jun 2016 #4
What it did for crap mortgage derivatives allowed Wall Street to bring down the economies of merrily Jun 2016 #9
My New Democratic Friend George Herbert Walker Bush, a really great guy, did a really great thing... Octafish Jun 2016 #14
Oh! The DERIVATIVES! Octafish Jun 2016 #7
The wiki on this is well worth reading. merrily Jun 2016 #12
What would Goldman think about putting taxpayers on the hook for the trillions bet at the casino? Octafish Jun 2016 #16
Brooksley Born <<< HERO!!!!!!!!!! AntiBank Jun 2016 #39
You mean the one that Bernie voted for? Lord Magus Jun 2016 #43
Yawn. He didn't lobby for it or tie it to other bills and to a shut down of government when merrily Jun 2016 #44
Oh, so he didn't LOBBY for it, that's supposed to excuse his vote? Lord Magus Jun 2016 #45
Missed the point. Guess building that straw man distracted you. merrily Jun 2016 #46
You have a typo in your headline! hootinholler Jun 2016 #6
Ouch! merrily Jun 2016 #10
Like a hidden meany. Octafish Jun 2016 #11
This act destroyed my retirement fund. 99Forever Jun 2016 #8
No questions. Octafish Jun 2016 #15
Voting for "Her" is actually voting for HIM, and another opportunity to do more 2banon Jun 2016 #18
I like what St George said about it Hydra Jun 2016 #17
Yep. nt LWolf Jun 2016 #22
Crosses the aisle. Octafish Jun 2016 #23
There it is. K&R bobthedrummer Jun 2016 #26
Two days of anger left... brooklynite Jun 2016 #24
Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism Octafish Jun 2016 #28
valid criticism of these HORRIFIC passed bills will never been banned on here AntiBank Jun 2016 #41
Kicked and recommended. Uncle Joe Jun 2016 #25
"Dollar Bill Phil" Gramm + Larry Summers, Protector of Plutocracy Octafish Jun 2016 #27
K&R. Big reason I don't want HRC consulting WJC on the economy. Need to dump the TPP. Overseas Jun 2016 #29
You know who else ''helped'' with the NAFTA? Dr. Henry Kissinger Octafish Jun 2016 #30
And now you've hit on another big reason I voted for Bernie. War weary. War criminal advisors Overseas Jun 2016 #31
News Blackout: The Chicago-Chile Connection... Octafish Jun 2016 #32
Tough to see it all right there... We'll have to keep fighting to preserve our social security. Overseas Jun 2016 #33
The Chicago Boys in Chile: Economic Freedom's Awful Toll Octafish Jun 2016 #37
K&R, for what's left of this place. senz Jun 2016 #36
This message was self-deleted by its author AntiBank Jun 2016 #38
Dont forget ex Goldman Sachs executive rat fuck Gary Gensler is Hillary's chief econ advisor AntiBank Jun 2016 #40

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
2. Apart from the Truth?
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:03 AM
Jun 2016

The repeal led to the Bankster Bailout of 2008, fall-out from which means Austerity for the 99-percent.

Of course, the Welfare for the Wealthy continues.

SMC22307

(8,088 posts)
5. No, unfortunately, it doesn't.
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:12 AM
Jun 2016

I'm OK financially, but there are a helluva lot of lower-class and clinging-to-middle-class Americans who aren't. Oh, wait... our gal Hillary to the rescue!

DerekG

(2,935 posts)
13. Do you think this is a goddamn joke, or something?
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:31 AM
Jun 2016

Millions of lives were destroyed due to the predations of the neoliberals. They lost their savings, even their homes. Do you think it's hysterical to see families living in their cars?

Bill and Hillary Clinton can rot in Hell.

ljm2002

(10,751 posts)
19. Your needle seems to be stuck...
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 11:36 AM
Jun 2016

...and one clip is repeating itself over and over and over again:

Reply OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!111!! betsuni 7:05 AM General Discussion: Primaries
Reply OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!111!!! betsuni 7:02 AM General Discussion: Primaries
Reply OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!111!!! betsuni 7:00 AM General Discussion: Primaries
Reply OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!1111!!!!! betsuni 6:58 AM General Discussion: Primaries
Reply OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!!1111!!!! betsuni 6:56 AM General Discussion: Primaries

merrily

(45,251 posts)
3. As "good" as lobbying for Gramm Leach Blilely was, lobbying for
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:03 AM
Jun 2016

the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and shoving it through was more damaging.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
4. What did that one do for the mineral extraction industries, merrily?
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:04 AM
Jun 2016

Inquiring minds want to know while there's still time.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
14. My New Democratic Friend George Herbert Walker Bush, a really great guy, did a really great thing...
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:32 AM
Jun 2016

...in his last days in office for the Mineral Extraction industries -- energy and all that comes down tubes and wires, CFTC tech stuff. Anyway Poppy Bush did a major for Barrick Gold, one of his favorite charities.



For talking about it, Greg Palast and The Guardian had to get a lawyer. Their "crime"? Telling the truth about using the powers of government to help the connected cronies make a mint.



Poppy Strikes Gold

Sunday, April 27, 2008
Originally Posted July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast

EXCERPT...

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997–2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.

The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. [font color="green"]In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka![/font color]

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.(1) There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/poppy-strikes-gold/



Wow. So his flock of supporters in the media and elsewhere wanted it known: George Herbert Walker Bush did do something nice when he was President. It just happened to be that it was for a rich, powerful corporation.

The story continues, in which Mr. Palast details how said gold mining company employed fascist tactics to take over the mine, part of which involved bulldozing the miners homes and mines, some with the miners still inside. Let that, uh, sink in. For his trouble in reporting the story, Barrick threatened to sue.



The Truth Buried Alive

—By Greg Palast, From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)

Source: UTNE Reader
April 2003 Issue

EXCERPT...

Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, [font color="red"]I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who can’t otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.(1)[/font color]

Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia. (Caramba!)

The Goldfingers didn’t stop there. [font color="green"]Barrick’s lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights.[/font color] Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.

And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.

I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nation’s president asking for an investigation–instead, Lissu’s law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissu’s sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims’ families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the “Ralph Nader of Canada”, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference–and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national paper.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mapcruzin.com/palast-2.htm



So. Greg Palast did something very bad from the uh Bush perspective: He told the truth, including the bits about the buried alive gold miners, as it happens. So, the Big Corporation sued and sued and sued. With their deep pockets, they can buy justice, judges, prime ministers, presidents and whoever and whatever else they need to turn a buck.

Gee. It's getting harder and harder for a man without a corporation to be heard these days. One day soon, no one will wonder why so few people remember democracy.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
7. Oh! The DERIVATIVES!
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:18 AM
Jun 2016
The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) Brooksley Born issued a first call for her regulatory commission to have power to oversee financial derivatives. While previous legislative attempts had been made earlier, Born’s efforts were the most direct and threatening to the financial industry. During an April 1998 meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (and later Secretary Larry Summers), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Arthur Levitt opposed Born’s efforts and attempted to derail her.

(A)n unregulated derivatives market ... could “pose grave dangers to our economy.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-blumenthal/how-congress-rushed-a-bil_b_181926.html


As if!

merrily

(45,251 posts)
12. The wiki on this is well worth reading.
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:29 AM
Jun 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000

"Veto proof majority" What did the Clinton White House lobby Democrats hard to get for this Act and Gramm Leach Bliley, Alex?

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
16. What would Goldman think about putting taxpayers on the hook for the trillions bet at the casino?
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:59 AM
Jun 2016
"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was (former Assistant Treasury Secretary) Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-warning-brooksley-borns-battle-with-alan-greenspan-robert-rubin-and-larry-summers-2009-10


Mirabile dictu.

merrily

(45,251 posts)
44. Yawn. He didn't lobby for it or tie it to other bills and to a shut down of government when
Mon Jun 20, 2016, 03:56 AM
Jun 2016

shutting down government was still unthinkable. Read the wiki or google DU or the internet.

Example. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-wall-street_us_5617f634e4b0dbb8000e5a58

Half truths are easy, but facts are stubborn.



Posting as though this is "gotcha" news is amusing. This has all already been discussed on DU and elsewhere ad infinitum.

But, if straw men and attempts at deflection are your only responses to Bubba's bringing down the economy of several nations, including the US with repeal of Glass Steagall, deregulation of mortgage derivatives and trade agreements, may as well give it all you've got, amirite?

Lord Magus

(1,999 posts)
45. Oh, so he didn't LOBBY for it, that's supposed to excuse his vote?
Mon Jun 20, 2016, 11:15 AM
Jun 2016

Who cares if it would've shut down the government? It passed overwhelmingly so he could've safely registered his protest by voting no. If he actually opposed it.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
11. Like a hidden meany.
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:23 AM
Jun 2016
The Aspens



Like Scooter Libby reminded Judy Miller, then an imprisoned NYT reporter, they're all connected underground.

"Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning," Mr. Libby wrote. "They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

Scooter got a pardon. Judy got a new job. How's Gov. Siegelman doing these days?

Those with real power -- cash on hand and politicians in pocket -- won't give up power or let Bernie anywhere near the levers of power unless forced by law and light of day.

As we've learned since the Powell Memorandum, if Hillary is the nominee, the only way she will succeed if We the People are behind her. That means We ALL stand up with her for democracy. Otherwise, she won't have a chance of getting anything done.

99Forever

(14,524 posts)
8. This act destroyed my retirement fund.
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:19 AM
Jun 2016

I went from looking at a reasonably comfortable retirement in 2 years from now, to working until I'm 70, 7 years from now, to retire with barely enough to survive.

Any questions as to why I won't be browbeat or fearmongered into voting to put another Clinton in the WH?

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
15. No questions.
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 10:43 AM
Jun 2016

You are not alone, 99Forever. Here in Detroit, nearly all my family and friends are in the same boat. Our 401(k)s became 40K PDQ. While customer service isn't bad, personally, I think they treated me better when I worked for the corporation.

While there has been some discussion of the issues involved on DU, there has been very little of substance discussed in the halls of power or on the television news. Never discussed is how the men and women we've elected to serve us, have largely served themselves.

 

2banon

(7,321 posts)
18. Voting for "Her" is actually voting for HIM, and another opportunity to do more
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 11:14 AM
Jun 2016

fill in the blanks... ymmv

As for me, I'm living on under $800 a month, SS retirement.

Wonder how much of that will shrink, or will be devalued vis a vis the next crash when they get back in office.


I'm feeling pretty much like I did when the other B/C took over.. I may have to migrate to other shores, just to get by..

Hydra

(14,459 posts)
17. I like what St George said about it
Sat Jun 18, 2016, 11:12 AM
Jun 2016

Carlin, that is:

“The word 'bipartisan' means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
28. Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism
Sun Jun 19, 2016, 11:56 AM
Jun 2016

One nation, under Mammon:



Milton Friedman and the Rise of Monetary Fascism

The Dark Age of Money

by JAMES C. KENNEDY
CounterPunch Oct. 24, 2012

EXCERPT...

Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Knowing that the term ’Fascism’ was universally unpopular; Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics masquerade these works as ‘Capitalism’ and ’Free Market’ economics.

SNIP...

The fundamental difference between Adam Smith’s free market capitalism and Friedman’s ‘free market capitalism’ is that Friedman’s is a hyper extractive model, the kind that creates and maintains Third-World-Countries and Banana-Republics, without geo-political borders.

If you say that this is nothing new, you miss the point. Friedman does not differentiate between some third world country and his own. The ultimate difference is that Friedman has created a model that sanctions and promotes the exploitation of his own country, in fact every country, for the benefit of the investor, money the uber-wealthy. He dressed up this noxious ideology as ‘free market capitalism’ and then convinced most of the world to embrace it as their economic salvation.

SNIP...

[font color="green"]Monetary Fascism, as conceived by Friedman, uses the powers of the state to put the interest of money and the financial class above and beyond all other forms of industry (and other stake holders) and the state itself.[/font color]

SNIP...

Money has become the state and the traditional state is forced to serve money’s interests. Everywhere the Financial Class is openly lording over sovereign nations. Ireland, Greece and Spain are subject to ultimatums and remember Hank Paulson’s $700 billion extortion from the U.S. Congress. The $700 billion was just the wedge. Thanks to unlimited access to the Discount Window, Quantitative Easing and other taxpayer funded debt-swap bailouts the total transfers to the financial industry exceeded $16 trillion as of July 2010 according to a Federal Reserve Audit. All of this was dumped on the taxpayer and it is still growing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/24/the-dark-age-of-money/



You have nothing to worry about.
 

AntiBank

(1,339 posts)
41. valid criticism of these HORRIFIC passed bills will never been banned on here
Mon Jun 20, 2016, 02:28 AM
Jun 2016

so your "2 days" poutrage is not germane

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
27. "Dollar Bill Phil" Gramm + Larry Summers, Protector of Plutocracy
Sun Jun 19, 2016, 11:01 AM
Jun 2016


Dollar Bill Phil Gramm

"Dollar Bill Phil" Gramm, The senator who's raising bundles of cash from Wall Street in his bid to be the Republican presidential nominee, likes to tell audiences how tough he is on those who commit "crime in the streets." But when it comes to "crime in the suites," ol' Phil turns into a bleeding heart, knee-jerk defender of corporate muggers.


By Jim Hightower / Alternet, April 25, 2000

"Dollar Bill Phil" Gramm, The senator who's raising bundles of cash from Wall Street in his bid to be the Republican presidential nominee, likes to tell audiences how tough he is on those who commit "crime in the streets." But when it comes to "crime in the suites," ol' Phil turns into a bleeding heart, knee-jerk defender of corporate muggers. These thieves can be more brutal than any thug who grabs your purse on the street. Ask the victims of Prudential-Bache -- a blue chip mugger who ripped-off not a purse, but the life savings of trusting retirees all across the country who had invested in a fraudulent securities scheme Prudential peddled to them in the eighties. Not to worry though -- Ol' Phil Gramm to the rescue! The rescue of Prudential and other white-collar criminals, that is. While he's been raising money from Wall Street firms, he's been using his Senate position to protect them from you small investors. Last year he single-handedly choked to death two bills: one that would have made investment advisors more accountable to their customers, and another that would have made it easier for you to fix mistakes they make on your credit reports. This year Gramm is even trying to strangle the tiny "office of Investor Education and Assistance" -- the consumer agency that tries to inform you investors of your rights and help you get your money back when some high-powered stockbroker steals from you. And now "Dollar Bill Phil" has managed to weasel his way onto the Senate finance committee -- which oversees the securities industry -- giving him even more power to be a willing accessory to Wall Street's "crime in the suites" -- and making it harder for you victims to do anything about those crimes. So when you hear Phil Gramm going on and on about how he's going to "free the marketplace," grab your wallets -- It means he's turning loose his corporate contributors to mug you.

SOURCE: http://www.alternet.org/story/8198/hightower%3A_dollar_bill_phil_gramm


To demonstrate DU's new spirit of Buy Partisanship, I present Larry Summers:



Evidence of an American Plutocracy: The Larry Summers Story

By Matthew Skomarovsky
LilSis.org
Jan 10, 2011 at 19:31 EST

EXCERPT...

Another new business model Rubin and Summers made possible was Enron. Rubin had known Enron well through Goldman Sachs’s financing of the company, and recused himself from matters relating to Enron in his first year on the Clinton team. He and Summers went on to craft policies at Treasury that were essential to Enron’s lucrative energy trading business, and they were in touch with Enron executives and lobbyists all the while. Enron meanwhile won $2.4 billion in foreign development deals from Clinton’s Export-Import Bank, then run by Kenneth Brody, a former protege of Rubin’s at Goldman Sachs.

Soon after Rubin joined Citigroup, its investment banking division picked up Enron as a client, and Citigroup went on to become Enron’s largest creditor, loaning almost $1 billion to the company. As revelations of massive accounting fraud and market manipulation emerged over the next years and threatened to bring down the energy company, Rubin and Summers intervened. While Enron’s rigged electricity prices in California were causing unprecedented blackouts, Summers urged Governor Gray Davis to avoid criticizing Enron and recommended further deregulatory measures. Rubin was an official advisor to Gov. Davis on energy market issues at the time, while Citigroup was heavily invested in Enron’s fraudulent California business, and he too likely put pressure on the Governor to lay off Enron. Rubin also pulled strings at Bush’s Treasury Department in late 2001, calling a former employee to see if Treasury could ask the major rating agencies not to downgrade Enron, and Rubin also lobbied the rating agencies directly. (In all likelihood he made similar attempts in behalf of Citigroup during the recent financial crisis.) Their efforts ultimately failed, Enron went bust, thousands of jobs and pensions were destroyed, and its top executives went to jail. It’s hard to believe, but there was some white-collar justice back then.

SNIP...

Summers also starting showing up around the Hamilton Project, which Rubin had just founded with hedge fund manager Roger Altman. Altman was another Clinton official who had come from Wall Street, following billionaire Peter Peterson from Lehman Brothers to Blackstone Group, and he left Washington to found a major hedge fund in 1996. The Hamilton Project is housed in the Brookings Institution, a prestigious corporate-funded policy discussion center that serves as a sort of staging ground for Democratic elites in transition between government, academic, and business positions. The Hamilton Project would go on to host, more specifically, past and future Democratic Party officials friendly to the financial industry, and to produce a stream of similarly minded policy papers. Then-Senator Obama was the featured political speaker at Hamilton’s inaugural event in April 2006.

Summers joined major banking and political elites on Hamilton’s Advisory Council and appeared at many Hamilton events. During a discussion of the financial crisis in 2008, Summers was asked about his role in repealing Glass-Stegall, the law that forbade commercial and investment banking mergers like Citigroup. “I think it was the right thing to do,” he responded, noting that the repeal of Glass-Stegall made possible a wave of similar mergers during the recent financial crisis, such as Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch. He was arguing, in effect, that financial deregulation did not cause the financial crisis, it actually solved it. “We need a regulatory system as modern as the markets,” said Summers — quoting Rubin, who was in the room. “We need a hen house as modern as the food chain,” said the fox.

CONTINUED...

http://blog.littlesis.org/2011/01/10/evidence-of-an-american-plutocracy-the-larry-summers-story/



Lil Sis is the antidote to Big Brother.

PS and most importantly: You are most welcome Uncle Joe!

Overseas

(12,121 posts)
29. K&R. Big reason I don't want HRC consulting WJC on the economy. Need to dump the TPP.
Sun Jun 19, 2016, 12:47 PM
Jun 2016

The TPP will only worsen income inequality and endanger the environment and give the already too powerful corporations even more power.

No thank you to more Republican-friendly policies. They have been disastrous for this country.

She needs to rebuild good government and reinstate Glass-Steagall or something close to it.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
30. You know who else ''helped'' with the NAFTA? Dr. Henry Kissinger
Sun Jun 19, 2016, 03:07 PM
Jun 2016

Like a friendly bridge between Poppy and Bill.



Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace

Last night, Clinton once again praised a man with a lot of blood on his hands.


By Greg Grandin
The Nation,FEBRUARY 5, 2016

EXCERPT...

 Then in the early 1990s, Hillary Rodham Clinton would again be caught up in events related to Kissinger’s actions. Her husband, Bill Clinton, embraced Kissinger, which began Kissinger’s apotheosis into his current incarnation as a bipartisan elder statesman, invoked by politicians who want to appear “serious.”

As first lady, Hillary Clinton spent the early months of her husband’s administration drafting healthcare-reform legislation, only to see it put on the back burner by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Kissinger, in his role as a global consultant, had played a critical role in bringing the various parties who would write that trade treaty together during the previous George H.W. Bush administration. Kissinger continued his NAFTA advocacy with Bill Clinton. As Jeff Faux writes in his excellent The Global Class War, Kissinger was “the perfect tutor” for Clinton, who was “trying to convince Republicans and their business allies that they could count on him to champion Reagan’s vision.”

By September 1993, Hillary’s healthcare bill was ready to be presented to the public and to Congress. But so was NAFTA. All of Kissinger’s allies in the White House, including Mack McLarty, who would soon join Kissinger Associates, pushed Clinton to prioritize NAFTA over healthcare. Clinton did. It was Kissinger who came up with the idea of having past presidents stand behind Clinton as he signed the treaty. Reagan was sick and Nixon still non grata, but “flanked by former presidents Bush, Carter and Ford at a White House ceremony, Mr. Clinton delivers an impassioned speech,” The Wall Street Journal reported. No such presidential backdrop was assembled to help support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal. By August 1994, healthcare was dead.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/article/henry-kissinger-hillary-clintons-tutor-in-war-and-peace/



Too bad about all those jobs. Hey, whatever happened to the middle class, Overseas?

Overseas

(12,121 posts)
31. And now you've hit on another big reason I voted for Bernie. War weary. War criminal advisors
Sun Jun 19, 2016, 06:22 PM
Jun 2016

are not a great indication... Seeing HRC being so friendly with HK added to my alienation...

But as usual, your excerpt showed me something new. I didn't realize HK helped push NAFTA and prolong the suffering of millions without healthcare for twenty more years...

How cruel of them to push NAFTA and brush aside national health insurance that would've helped the hundreds of thousands of workers who'd lose their jobs due to NAFTA.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
32. News Blackout: The Chicago-Chile Connection...
Sun Jun 19, 2016, 09:02 PM
Jun 2016

Which goes back to the your observation, Overseas: The nice Doctor and his friends discovered the benefits of piratization and privation post-Democracy in 1973.

The author helped implement the privatization scam for Nixon, Pinochet, CIA and the globalist crowd. They want to do it here, of course:



President Clinton and the Chilean Model.

By José Piñera

Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?'” recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.

I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.

That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the world’s superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.

Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:

[font color="green"]Dick,

Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.

Best,

Bill.[/font color]


Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).

I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clinton’s attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chile’s Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clinton’s campaign.

“The mother of all reforms”

While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with America’s unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.

So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was “the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.”

But while de Tocqueville’s 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that “the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] “an Entitlement State,”[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.

[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm



Democratic solutions work because they are Democratic, not capitalist. Capitalist solutions work to concentrate money and power.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
37. The Chicago Boys in Chile: Economic Freedom's Awful Toll
Mon Jun 20, 2016, 02:00 AM
Jun 2016

Operating on behalf of Nixon and Wall Street, the CIA and Milton Friedman & Friends perfected the art of turning the screws through austerity in Chile.



Too bad, so sad about all the little people who didn't go along with the big plan. Oh well. "Progress."



"The Chicago Boys in Chile: Economic Freedom's Awful Toll"

Orlando Letelier
August 28, 1976

EXCERPT...

The Economic Prescription and Chile's Reality

SNIP...

These are the basic principles of the economic model offered by Friedman and his followers and adopted by the Chilean junta: that the only possible framework for economic development is one within which the private sector can freely operate; that private enterprise is the most efficient form of economic organization and that, therefore, the private sector should be the predominant factor in the economy. Prices should fluctuate freely in accordance with the laws of competition. Inflation, the worst enemy of economic progress, is the direct result of monetary expansion and can be eliminated only by a drastic reduction of government spending.

Except in present-day Chile, no government in the world gives private enterprise an absolutely free hand. That is so because every economist (except Friedman and his followers) has known for decades that, in the real life of capitalism, there is no such thing as the perfect competition described by classical liberal economists. In March 1975, in Santiago, a newsman dared suggest to Friedman that even in more advanced capitalist countries, as for example the United States, the government applies various types of controls on the economy. Mr. Friedman answered: I have always been against it, I don't approve of them. I believe we should not apply them. I am against economic intervention by the government, in my own country, as well as in Chile or anywhere else (Que Pasa, Chilean weekly, April 3, 1975).

SNIP...

A Rationale tor Power

SNIP...

Until September 11, 1973, the date of the coup, Chilean society had been characterized by the increasing participation of the working class and its political parties in economic and social decision making. Since about 1900, employing the mechanisms of representative democracy, workers had steadily gained new economic, social and political power. The election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile was the culmination of this process. For the first time in history a society attempted to build socialism by peaceful means. During Allende's time in office, there was a marked improvement in the conditions of employment, health, housing, land tenure and education of the masses. And as this occurred, the privileged domestic groups and the dominant foreign interests perceived themselves to be seriously threatened.

Despite strong financial and political pressure from abroad and efforts to manipulate the attitudes of the middle class by propaganda, popular support for the Allende government increased significantly between 1970 and 1973. In March 1973, only five months before the military coup, there were Congressional elections in Chile. The political parties of the Popular Unity increased their share of the votes by more than 7 percentage points over their totals in the Presidential election of 1970. This was the first time in Chilean history that the political parties supporting the administration in power gained votes during a midterm election. The trend convinced the national bourgeoisie and its foreign supporters that they would be unable to recoup their privileges through the democratic process. That is why they resolved to destroy the democratic system and the institutions of the state, and, through an alliance with the military, to seize power by force.

In such a context, concentration of wealth is no accident, but a rule; it is not the marginal outcome of a difficult situation -- as they would like the world to believe -- but the base for a social project; it is not an economic liability but a temporary political success. Their real failure is not their apparent inability to redistribute wealth or to generate a more even path of development (these are not their priorities) but their inability to convince the majority of Chileans that their policies are reasonable and necessary. In short, they have failed to destroy the consciousness of the Chilean people. The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years, the closing of trade unions and neighbourhood organizations, and the prohibition of all political activities and all forms of free expression.

While the Chicago boys have provided an appearance of technical respectability to the laissez-faire dreams and political greed of the old landowning oligarchy and upper bourgeoisie of monopolists and financial speculators, the military has applied the brutal force required to achieve those goals. Repression for the majorities and economic freedom for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ditext.com/letelier/chicago.html



Three weeks after this was published in The Nation (Aug. 28, 1976), Orlando Letelier was assassinated by a car bomb in Washington, D.C.





FWIW: Then-CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush knew all about Operation Condor and didn't stop them from killing Orlando Letelier and his American companion, Ronni Moffit.



DCI Bush even told then-Congressman Ed Koch (D-NY), threatened anonymously for his work uncovering Operation Condor and its associated evil at the time, "Nothing I can do."

Why does this matter today? What the CIA and Big Money Boys did in Chile in 1973, they're doing to Greece and Detroit and Puerto Rico now.

Something else: They know if We the People are sufficiently worried about keeping a roof over the family and food on the table, We won't have much time to worry about little stuff like Democracy.

More on the subject: from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Response to Octafish (Original post)

 

AntiBank

(1,339 posts)
40. Dont forget ex Goldman Sachs executive rat fuck Gary Gensler is Hillary's chief econ advisor
Mon Jun 20, 2016, 02:23 AM
Jun 2016
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hillary_blames_bernie_for_an_old_clintonite_hustle_rotten_shame_20160119


Hillary knows that the disastrous legislation, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), had nothing to do with Sanders and everything to do with then-President Bill Clinton, who devoted his presidency to sucking up to Wall Street. Clinton signed this bill into law as a lame-duck president, ensuring his wife would have massive Wall Street contributions for her Senate run.

Sanders, like the rest of Congress, was blackmailed into voting for the bill because it was tucked into omnibus legislation needed to keep the government operating. Only libertarian Ron Paul and three other House members had the guts to cast a nay vote. The measure freeing Wall Street firms from regulation was inserted at the last moment in a deal between President Clinton and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who had failed in an earlier attempt to get the measure enacted. Clinton signed it into law a month before leaving office.


Sanders soon figured out that he and almost all other Congress members had been tricked into providing a blank check for the marketing of bogus collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps made legal by the legislation, of which a key author was Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs partner recruited by Clinton to be undersecretary of the treasury.

Eight years later, when President Obama nominated Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, it was Sanders who put a temporary hold on the nomination, stating: “Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and [former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman] Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.”

Today, Gensler is the top economic adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And the CFMA—key legislation that was “one of the main causes of the collapse in ’08,” enabling the great recession—is an enormous embarrassment that her husband on occasion reluctantly has conceded was drafted by his top aides and signed into law by him with great enthusiasm.
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