Hillary Clinton Will Need to Face Facts: Her Husband ALLOWED Wall Street to Run Wild

[Segami]

Bill Clinton oversaw the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which played a key role in the 2008 fiasco.

"...It's going to have to be litigated within the Democratic primaries, which is to say between Bernie Sanders—and, to a lesser extent, Martin O'Malley—and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has more baggage on this one than just about anyone else in the field. It may be an uncomfortable debate, but it's a more than necessary one...."

The country would have been infinitely better off had the most influential economics reporter over the last three decades been Bill Greider, and not Jim Cramer, or Erin Burnett, or the Bob Bartley Memorial Home For The Economically Infirm at the Wall Street Journal. Greider has been on top of the slow march toward corporate oligarchy for longer than just about anyone else. And now, he has a few questions he'd like to ask Hillary Rodham Clinton about what went on back when her husband was president.

Yet Hillary Clinton asserts in her Times op-ed that repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with it. She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks. Her argument amounts to facile evasion that ignores the interconnected exposures. The Federal Reserve spent $180 billion bailing out AIG so AIG could pay back Goldman Sachs and other banks. If the Fed hadn't acted and had allowed AIG to fail, the banks would have gone down too.

http://billmoyers.com/story/hillary-clinton-is-whitewashing-the-financial-catastrophe/

Greider goes on to quote a former Citigroup CEO named John Reed, who makes an interesting point about what happened within the culture of banking after the walls of Glass-Steagall were removed.

"Mixing incompatible cultures is a problem all by itself," Reed wrote. "It makes the entire finance industry more fragile…. As is now clear, traditional banking attracts one kind of talent, which is entirely different from the kinds drawn towards investment banking and trading. Traditional bankers tend to be extroverts, sociable people who are focused on longer term relationships. They are, in many important respects, risk averse. Investment bankers and their traders are more short termist. They are comfortable with, and many even seek out, risk and are more focused on immediate reward." Reed concludes, "As I have reflected about the years since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall and its repeal suggest that the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that."

http://billmoyers.com/story/hillary-clinton-is-whitewashing-the-financial-catastrophe/

cont'

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a40482/hillary-clinton-wall-street-deregulation/

[Scuba]

1. Not to worry. She told them to "cut it out." There, problem solved.

[Segami]

2. Bernie should ask her at the next debate...

'Cut-It-Out'?....How'd that work out for you Hillary?

[JaneyVee]

3. Wasn't GS repeal veto-proof?

And only parts of it were repealed.

[Betty Karlson]

4. Only because Bill Clinton campaigned for it among the senators.

But thanks for that tired argument redux: "the president can't help it: he has to scr*w you over because congress doesn't allow him to do otherwise."

After all the hamstringing that Obama did for the Fast Track, we all know better now.

[JaneyVee]

6. It's fun how "progressives" constantly let Repubs off the hook.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/19/bill-clinton/bill-clinton-glass-steagall-had-nothing-do-financi/

Republicans destroyed the economy. Bill created 25 million jobs, the longest stretch of peace time, and lowest AA unemployment in US history. And left a budget surplus that would have wiped out national debt in 2012.

[Betty Karlson]

9. What does that have to do with his repeal of GS?

Your argument seems obscure; did that veto-proof majority come with help from Democratic senators or not?

Did that help come at the behest of Bill Clinton or not?

[hollowdweller]

5. Hillary is not Bill. This is not the late 90's early 2000's.

To me what Bill Clinton did does not affect what Hillary might do.

I DO dislike that she seems to think just asking the 1% to act better will work, but she may come to her senses on that.

[Segami]

7. When can we...

expect the revelation for her to "come to her senses on that"?............during or after primaries?

[JustAnotherGen]

8. Not her job

Not her problem.

[Snotcicles]

10. Lets not forget Media too, with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. nt

[99th_Monkey]

11. K&R - No more Wall St.-friendly Clintons in the WH please. -nt-