DC,

It seems like McCain isn't even serious about running. He and those from his camp have been all over the map on nearly ever issue. When will the M$M take notice?

(I think they are out getting donuts with sprinkles for the maverick as we speak)

Wendy Gramm was rewarded with a Enron Board Membership for exempting Enron from reporting its Energy Trades. Calif. Bust!
Phil Gramm kicks the last of Glass Steagall for a 'Modern' Golden Fleece for savings banks, brokerages, and invest.banks who can use all of 'other people's money,' hiding their trades in derivatives, swaps, speculations, manipulations, in the commodities that our lives depend upon (commons) and drive the taxpayers into the ground as it is 'their' money used to bail out those in 'organized crimes.' Ah, yes, the (Gas/Oil Party) has established a Corporate America where:
PROFITS ARE PRIVATIZED
RISKS ARE SOCIALIZED.
Kevin Phillips said that.
Now, the Federal Reserve (a Private Bank Holding Co) is asking for more authority to regulate our Treasury. All this before the GOP leaves the US gasping for air before 1-09!
John Yoo, author of Patriot Act, says "In America, you can write your Congressman, if you wish to protest!" Imagine, the Congressmen reading our epistles!

David Corn writes: It was Gramm who used a sly legislative maneuver in late 2000, when he chaired the Senate banking committee, to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act--to which practically no one but financial industry lobbyists were paying attention in Washington. This bill prohibited federal agencies from regulating financial products called swaps, which have been used to back up the mortgaged-based securities that caused the subprime crisis. Michael Greenberger, who directed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's division of trading and markets in the 1990s, says these unregulated swaps have been at "the heart of the subprime meltdown." He and others point to Gramm as being chiefly culpable for their deregulation.

Heaven Forbid that we do any smart journalism, and look beyond what we had set out to find.
To go beyond, and look into a problem that some have been warning about for years..., like the government created agencies called Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae.
Some have been trying to tell us that they were going to be at the heart of just this sort of problem, and many are concluding that those unheeded warnings were right.

An article from 8 years ago points out:
Fannie and Freddie were originally government agencies but were "privatized" when they were permitted to sell shares to the public. Today, both companies are among the largest and most profitable financial institutions in the world, with their securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Their apparent success, however, obscures an inherent contradiction. They are shareholder-owned companies, with managers who have a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits, but they are also government-chartered and empowered agencies with a public mission. It should be obvious that they cannot achieve both objectives. If they maximize profits, they will fail to perform their government mission to their full potential. If they perform their government mission fully, they will fail to maximize profits.

Because of their unique structure, Fannie and Freddie are able to determine the size of their own subsidies: There is no effective restriction on their issuance of debt, and since every bond or note they issue reflects the subsidy they receive, they can increase their subsidy without a vote of Congress. Although their subsidy was estimated at $6.5 billion in 1995, it is now probably in the range of $10 billion, and it will grow larger as they continue to borrow money in the capital markets and increase the size of their portfolios. Moreover, their fiduciary obligations to their shareholders require them to exploit their subsidy to the fullest extent possible.

Because Fannie and Freddie are not on-budget agencies—which is to say, Congress does not appropriate funds for their activities—Congress and the executive branch have no effective control over their growth, and hence no control over the risks they create for the taxpayers.
...
In Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (AEI Press, 2000; ...), a study I did with Bert Ely, we concluded that by 2003 Fannie and Freddie would own or bear the risk of over 90 percent of all conventional conforming mortgages and almost half of all mortgages in the United States. Since Fannie and Freddie must grow in order to remain profitable, that trend will continue. At some point, in theory, they will bear the credit risk of all mortgages, which could amount to an $8 trillion liability.
...
But there is more. The ability of Fannie and Freddie to acquire all of the mortgages in the United States points to their threat to the private sector. It should be obvious that they are not going to let themselves run out of mortgages to buy. They are going to seek new assets to acquire, and hence new businesses to enter. We are seeing this now with their purchase of their own mortgage-backed securities (MBSs). Holding these allows them to earn more profit by taking more risk. When they were only guaranteeing mortgage-backed securities, they were taking only credit risk; the holders of the MBSs were taking the interest-rate risk. By buying back their own MBSs, Fannie and Freddie can also take interest-rate risk, and hence be more profitable. It is not clear, however, how buying back MBSs advances the mission of helping homebuyers.
There's much more to be had here:
www.aei.org/publications/pubID.12235/pub_detail.asp

That's a warning from 2000.
And just today:
WASHINGTON: Fears that the government will be forced to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Shares of the government-chartered mortgage finance giants plummeted Thursday and are trading at levels last seen in the early 1990s. If the prices don't recover, it will be harder for the two companies to raise more money through stock sales to compensate for losses from the housing bust. Investors are afraid their stakes will vanish if the government is forced to rescue the companies.

"The government has to step in and do something," said Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Paul Miller.

Freddie Mac shares fell $2.26 or 22 percent, to $8, after sinking as low as $6.75 earlier in the day. Shares of Fannie Mae fell $2.11, or 13.8 percent, to $13.20, after earlier falling to $11.70.

Today the companies hold or guarantee around $5.3 trillion in home-loan debt, though under a 1992 law they are required to hold only a fraction of what is mandated for commercial banks as a financial cushion against risk.

Some say those capital requirements should be far higher, and believe Congress should mandate bank-like standards. "These guys were skating on such thin ice that, when the stress came, we're starting to see some cracks" said Johns Hopkins University fellow Thomas Stanton.

While the government isn't obligated to assist Fannie or Freddie in a financial emergency, there is a widespread perception that they would be bailed out in the event of a collapse. The idea they are "too big to fail" enables the two companies to borrow relatively cheaply on global markets by issuing top-rated mortgage-backed securities.
www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/10/america/Fannie-Freddie-Capital-Concerns.php

But hey..., getting to the real root of our problems doesn't seem to be the prime motivation around here.
That would best be described as finding some minutiae that allows us to pin the blame on Republicans and the Private Sector.

C'mon DemoPublicans One And All!

You should know that we aren't going to buy any ridiculous idea like past government policies contributing to today's financial mess.

Everyone Knows it's Always Greedy Bankers, CEOs and Investors we'll call "Speculators" who are to blame, and that's the ONLY thing we're here to discuss.

McCain and Gramm. Perfect together. Two arrogant conservative Rethugnican clowns who don't give a hoot about the average American. Go back to producing porno with your brother, Phil, and see if you can pass Cheney's record of five deferments while you're at it.

The Republicans hold most of the blame but they couldn't have done much of their evil without the complicity of Democrats. It's time to make some real changes in this country and evict the corporate Demopublican/Republicrat Party from Washington DC and every statehouse.

"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today. We have benefited greatly"

A very good illustration of the use of the Imperial "We."

Hey, Gramm, "We" are not amused.

Maybe we need a revolution...

Elections are crooked and the elected are just as crooked. We need to get all these robber barons out of government.

Kudos to David Corn and Sara and Megan for scooping Tha Washington Post.

McInsane is losing it. Lapses of memory, flip-flopping, distortion of facts, disregard and neglect of Senate seat, total disregard and knowledge of prices for food and gasoline, fixation on drilling, contempt and disregard for constitution and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, war mongoring, blinking excessively, developing hump on back, refuses and fears large crowds, exhibits poor judgement in chosing his goons

Why is anyone listening to Fiorina. She was fired by HP for almost destroying the company with her "financial expertise". She is a joke. She and McShame are meant for each other.

All members of congress are responsible for allowing this bill (Commodity Futures Modernization) to pass. Can they read?

Deregulation is great if all concerned are ethical, but when you have $ involved you can throw ethics out. We all must remember that money is the root of all evil!

Not quite, Ricky Lucas.

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10

wrong quote...money is not the root of all evil...love of money is the root of all evil...