Politics

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Making Sense of the G-20

OK.  All the leaders of all these countries got together in London.   Before the meeting it looked like the bad boy from Dick Cheney’s “old Europe”, Mr. Sarkozy of France, would walk out, leave the meeting in a huff.  Never happened.  Instead, President Obama, the new kid, got France and China to agree on some critical language on tax havens.  The world seemed astonished that a president of the United States of America could actually walk and chew gum. 

I first saw this in Friday’s print addition of the New York Times (yes, I still love that newsprint and reading without staring into a lit screen.) and after some searching found the online link and it turns out it is actually a blog turned into print.  Go figure.  Anyway, this story was titled “On a Scale of 1-10, G-20 scores a 7.” 

For someone like me who is struggling to understand the details of the economic crisis it helped decode the G-20 meeting by lisiting the 10 issues which needed to be addressed and how they did in addressing them.   The authors are Edward Hadas and Christopher Hughes.

The G-20 deserves a mark of seven out of 10. The London summit meeting, which concluded Thursday, hasn’t solved everything. But it has made important strides in both battling the current crisis and preventing future ones.

The score comes by grading the world’s leaders on the top 10 issues the G-20 faced. Each issue was scored with a zero, half a point or a whole point. But note that this is not a finely calibrated exercise. Zero doesn’t mean the G-20 achieved absolutely nothing; equally, a whole point doesn’t mean perfection.

The high scores went to fiscal stimulus, trade finance, preventing financial crisis, tax havens and confidence.  I think this last one is important because the part of the global fiscal crisis is created by uncertainty and fear.

The zero went to trade imbalances, while the rest got half points: making banks healthy, fighting protectionism, increasing the International Monetary Fund, and exit strategy.

In his Friday column about China and the dollar, Paul Krugman ended with this

The bottom line is that China hasn’t yet faced up to the wrenching changes that will be needed to deal with this global crisis. The same could, of course, be said of the Japanese, the Europeans — and us.

And that failure to face up to new realities is the main reason that, despite some glimmers of good news — the G-20 summit accomplished more than I thought it would — this crisis probably still has years to run.

I think the sticking point is that pesky financial regulation issue never mind stimulus money.  Jordan Stancil put it this way in the Nation

Abelshauser [Werner Abelshauser, an economic historian at the University of Bielefeld in Germany and a leading expert on differences in transatlantic economic cultures] argued that it’s hard to change these deeply rooted practices; therefore, Europe can’t succeed under deregulated finance, since it destroys the stability on which Europe’s economy relies. Abelshauser thought a positive outcome of the crisis would be that Europe would return to its proven model of finance.

This is an important point, because it underscores the extent to which the crisis for Europeans is fundamentally about re-establishing a financial system they think serves their interests. Thus the Euro- American debate isn’t really about whether to do stimulus or regulation first–it’s about whether the United States is going to do regulation at all.

America lacks credibility on this count, partly because Obama has not taken a strong stand against the power of finance in the United States. On the contrary, he plans to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize purchases of “toxic assets”–now renamed “legacy assets.” Against that background, the newly stern rhetoric of erstwhile deregulators like Larry Summers is not convincing because it’s clear that the Obama administration is not using the collapse to reorganize American banking along healthier lines. Instead, the US position calls to mind a line from Rousseau’s Confessions: “I pretended to reproach myself for what I had done, in order to excuse what I was going to do.”

The significance of this has not been missed in Europe. Jacques Attali, a key economic wise man in France who has advised both Socialist and conservative governments, told a business daily, “The bankers [in the United States] are going to accept a minimum of regulation. Not more. We see this clearly with the Geithner plan, which reinforces the mechanisms that led to the crisis…. Besides, do you think it’s normal to have taxpayers loaning money to investors so the investors can make profits?” According to Attali, there will be no fundamental change in US behavior on questions like leverage, securitization and debt because “the Anglo-Saxon world lives off that.”

I think this is the big problem.  Will the Obama administration listen only to people like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner who believe in the  American Capitalism free for all or will we move on to a more regulated system that protects the middle class and creates more equality?  Or will he also isten to France and Germany and Paul Krugman?  I thought a hallmark of the Obama administration was to be the ability to listen to opposing points of view before making a decision.

The compromise between France and China on tax havens negotiated by President Obama shows that we could compromise also.  Regulation in the United States could land closer to Europe without us becoming, to the horror of Republicans, just like Europe.  I’m not sure this is an either or situation, but we do need more regulation of the financial industry.  Congress and the President just need to act soon.

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Iowa Joins the Marriage Equality States

With today’s unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court made Iowa the third state to approve of same sex marriage joining Massachusetts and Connecticut.  According to the story in the Washington Post

The decision will be considered final in 21 days unless a rehearing is formally requested. The county that challenged the lower court’s ruling indicated today that it would not file such a request, meaning that same-sex couples likely will be able to obtain marriage licenses in Iowa in three weeks, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.

So what do the defense of marriage folks do now?  Richard Kim has a long post on The Nation.com in which he outlines the options and discusses some of the larger political implications. 

So now that the Iowa Supreme Court has essentially legalized gay marriage, what’s next? Some right-wingers (like Iowa Congressman Steve King and William Duncan of the Marriage Law Foundation) are already promising to put a defense of marriage amendment in front of Iowa voters. But they have a long road ahead of them. Iowa law says that a constitutional ammendment must pass TWO consecutive sessions of the state legislature before it appears on a ballot. So the earliest one could see a DOMA on the ballot is 2011, but with Democrats in control of both houses and with both the House speaker and the Senate majority leader on record supporting the decision–there’s virtually no chance that such an amendment would even come up for a vote this session.

That leaves the right-wing with a daunting task: defeat enough Democrats to take control of both houses (Dems currently enjoy a 56-44 and 32-18 advantage), replace them with Christian right Republicans who are willing to champion a marriage amendement and peel off enough remaining Democrats (to offset any moderate GOP defectors) to squeeze through four rounds of yes votes. Only then will they even have the chance to put the issue in front of voters–sometime in 2013 or 2014 if all the stars align. Then, they still have to win that campaign in a political climate in which increasing numbers of voters support gay rights. Oh yeah, and the vote will take place after Iowans have witnessed 5-6 years of ho-hum same-sex nuptials of which the most radical, earth-shaking element is that one of the grooms is a 50-year old church organist named Otter Dreaming (one of the named appellees in the Iowa decision). As Ari Berman points out, Iowa isn’t exactly the hotbed of culture war antagonism–despite being square one for GOP presidential wrangling–so my strong hunch is that Mr. Dreaming’s marriage will endure at least any legal and political challenges.

It doesn’t seem very likely that Iowa will amend it’s Constitution.  Here in Massachusetts it didn’t take long for gay marriage to just become marriage.  Just read Andrew Sullivans story about his Massachusetts wedding.

Born in a different era, I reached that conclusion through more pain and fear and self-loathing than my 20-something fellow homosexuals do today. But it was always clear to me nonetheless. It just never fully came home to me until I too got married.

It happened first when we told our families and friends of our intentions. Suddenly, they had a vocabulary to describe and understand our relationship. I was no longer my partner’s “friend” or “boyfriend”; I was his fiancé. Suddenly, everyone involved themselves in our love. They asked how I had proposed; they inquired when the wedding would be; my straight friends made jokes about marriage that simply included me as one of them. At that first post-engagement Christmas with my in-laws, I felt something shift. They had always been welcoming and supportive. But now I was family. I felt an end—a sudden, fateful end—to an emotional displacement I had experienced since childhood.

The wedding occurred last August in Massachusetts in front of a small group of family and close friends. And in that group, I suddenly realized, it was the heterosexuals who knew what to do, who guided the gay couple and our friends into the rituals and rites of family. Ours was not, we realized, a different institution, after all, and we were not different kinds of people. In the doing of it, it was the same as my sister’s wedding and we were the same as my sister and brother-in-law. The strange, bewildering emotions of the moment, the cake and reception, the distracted children and weeping mothers, the morning’s butterflies and the night’s drunkenness: this was not a gay marriage; it was a marriage.

And our families instantly and for the first time since our early childhood became not just institutions in which we were included, but institutions that we too owned and perpetuated. My sister spoke of her marriage as if it were interchangeable with my own, and my niece and nephew had no qualms in referring to my husband as their new uncle. The embossed invitations and the floral bouquets and the fear of fluffing our vows: in these tiny, bonding gestures of integration, we all came to see an alienating distinction become a unifying difference.

It was a moment that shifted a sense of our own identity within our psyches and even our souls. Once this happens, the law eventually follows. In California this spring, it did.

So I think Richard Kim is right.  Iowans are soon going to find gay marriages just as ordinary as straight ones.  So what is left for the opposition?  Here’s Richard Kim again

So, here’s my guess as to what the right can and will do. They’ll move to amend Iowa’s marriage law so that it requires in-state residency. Currently, Iowa (like California and unlike Massachusetts) does not have any such restriction (prompting claims that Iowa will become the Mecca of gay marriage). Of course, because of the court’s equal protection ruling, any such change will have to apply to both gay and straight couples, but the collateral benefit for the right would be in limiting the number of gay couples who can marry in Iowa and then sue in other states. But after thousands of out-of-state couples got married in CA and will likely stay married no matter how the CA Supreme Court rules on Prop 8’s broader legality–there’s not much use in raising this hurdle.

So, Iowa, Massachusetts welcomes you to the club.  I don’t think it will be too long before there are more than three members.

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Touching the Queen

Did Michelle Obama make a major diplomatic mistake when she touched the Queen?  (This is much more interesting to think about than the economic agreements that came out of the G-20.)  Everyone is writing about it and talking about it.

 We start with Mika Brzezinski saying ” you don’t touch the Queen” and then today’s stories including this also from MSNBC

Mrs. Obama clearly made an impression with the 82-year-old monarch — so much that the smiling queen strayed slightly from protocol and briefly wrapped her arm around the first lady in a rare public show of affection.

It was the first time Mrs. Obama — who is nearly a foot taller — had met the queen. The first lady also wrapped her arm around the monarch’s shoulder and back.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman who asked not to be identified because of palace policy said he could not remember the last time the queen had displayed such public affection with a first lady or dignitary.

“It was a mutual and spontaneous display of affection,” he said. “We don’t issue instructions on not touching the queen.”

It was the first time Mrs. Obama — who is nearly a foot taller — had met the queen. The first lady also wrapped her arm around the monarch’s shoulder and back.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman who asked not to be identified because of palace policy said he could not remember the last time the queen had displayed such public affection with a first lady or dignitary.

“It was a mutual and spontaneous display of affection,” he said. “We don’t issue instructions on not touching the queen.”

Then the Guardian weighed in with the headline Michelle Obama’s G20 faux pas brings out Queen’s touchy-feely side.  The story continued

Whoever briefed Michelle Obama on the things one does and doesn’t do with one’s hands when one meets the Queen must be wondering what went wrong.

 

Within minutes of their first encounter at Buckingham Palace yesterday, America’s first lady broke royal protocol by doing the unthinkable: she gave the Queen a hug. The monarch, for her part, responded with equally flagrant disregard for convention by returning the gesture.

 

Proceedings had begun innocuously enough following the Obamas’ arrival at the palace – polite handshakes, a curtsey and chit chat with the Duke of Edinburgh, who asked the president how he’d managed to stay awake all day.

Then, at the “getting to know you drink”, there was an exchange of dialogue between Michelle Obama and the Queen (they seemed to compliment each other on their shoes). At this stage, with everything going so swimmingly, the first lady put her arm around the Queen. The monarch appeared awkward at first, but after this initial surprise and hesitation, she seemed to respond positively by putting her arm round Obama’s waist.

 

So it was not quite a major diplomatic incident. And does it reflect a softening of the royal protocol that forbids physical contact with the Queen beyond handshakes? The Queen is widely regarded as formal but close observers point out that a number of traditional rules for dealing with the monarch have been relaxed in recent times. Bowing, for example, is no longer required.

And the picture is priceless

Michelle Obama with her arm around the Queen during a reception at Buckingham Palace

The Queen who is tiny – around my size – and the tall Michelle.  I think Michelle was being herself and the Queen clearly appreciated her.

 

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Republican April Fool

Last week the Repbulicans released a budget with no numbers .   Today, April First, they released one with numbers.  Who stages their events and didn’t they know what day it is?

The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomary wrote

After getting blasted last week for presenting a budget plan light on details, House Republicans today unveiled a more complete proposal that would cut taxes for business and the wealthy, freeze most government spending for five years, halt spending approved in the economic stimulus package and slash federal health programs for the poor and elderly.

This seems to be back to the future.  Didn’t we already try this?  Representative Paul Ryan who presented the alternative said it offers “lower spending, lower deficits, lower debt and more jobs.”  The argument is always that lower taxes for businesses (repeat the mantra “the United States has the highest corporate tax rates in the world.”) will create jobs.  I guess that after Boehner and Cantor, the party needed to try a new face.

Here is Dan Gross on 1600 Pensylvania Avenue with David Gregory.

The White House Reaction

“If you expected a GOP alternative to the failed policies of the past that got our country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, then I have two words for you: April Fool’s,” said Kenneth Baer, communications director for the Office of Management and Budget.

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Latest on Al Franken’s Election

TPM has posted a summary of the latest ruling by the Minnesota elections court. 

The Minnesota election court has just handed down a much-awaited ruling, laying out which previously-rejected ballots might just be counted yet — and though it’s unclear right now whose votes are whose, it doesn’t look all that good for Norm Coleman.

It looks as if, after a very thorough review, the Court is going to look at only 400 ballots to determine if they should be counted. 

Both campaigns submitted lists of ballots that they said they’d proven were legal and ought to be counted — and here’s what the court thought of them:

“Upon the Court’s initial review, it became apparent that the parties’ spreadsheets identifying the relevant exhibits were inadequate and unreliable. This required the Court to complete an exhaustive review of all the records and documents submitted by either party throughout the course of the entire trial.”

The court thus reviewed:

“…19,181 pages of filings, including pleadings, motions and legal memoranda from the parties; 1,717 individual exhibits admitted into evidence; and testimony from 142 witness examinations, including election officials from 38 Minnesota counties and cities and 69 voters who appeared and testified in defense of their ballots. The trial evidence comprised exhibits offered in three-ring binders that, when stacked, equaled over 21 feet of paper copies.”

Don’t think they’re just complaining about the length — not that anybody would blame them. The court is clearly establishing the level of diligence they went to in order to decide the questions at hand — thus guarding themselves against any appeal on procedural grounds.

As I understand the process, the ballots will be reviewed  by the Secretary of Stae to make sure they are complete and can be counted and however many of the 400 ballots pass muster will then be counted.  So I think one can assume that not all of the 400 will be counted and not all of the ballots that are counted will go to Norm Coleman.  Therefore this is bad news for Norm given that Al Franken has at least a 225 vote lead.

One of the commentators to TPM wrote

If all 400 ballots were counted, Coleman would need a 313-87 split to overtake Franken. There’d be about a 1 in a million chance of the votes breaking in Coleman’s favor like that. Ans since not all 400 ballots will be counted, so I think it’s safe to say that Coleman is finished.

If all this is true, Al Franken may be (finally!) just a few days from being Senator Al.

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More on the Party of Zero

In case you haven’t been reading fivethirtyeight.com since the Presidental election, you really should check in once in a while.  There is Nate Silver’s advance look at the the details to be released later.

Eric Cantor is said to want to eliminate North Dakota rather than Idaho, while Thaddeus McCotter has suggested using the balance of TARP funds to purchase scratch-off tickets

You have to see the diagram to get the rest.

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From the Party of “No” to the Party of “Zero”?

What’s up with the Republican House leadership anyway?  After being criticized by all stripes of poltical commentators and just ordinary citizens for not offering any alternative to the President’s proposed budget, they released an eighteen page booklet with no numbers.  I repeat, no numbers.

According to David Gregory on MSNBC’s First Read,

Dude, where’s my budget? Let’s be honest: Yesterday’s House Republican budget rollout was a P.R. disaster for the GOP. “Here it is, Mr. President” was the title of the GOP Leader blog touting that they had answered Obama’s dare to produce a budget. The problem — their budget rollout didn’t contain any hard budget numbers or deficit projections. They say those hard numbers will come out next week. But now we learn that Reps. Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan objected to unveiling yesterday’s “blueprint,” but were overruled by Reps. John Boehner and Mike Pence. But bigger than any internal disagreements or any criticism about a lack of details is the fact that yesterday’s GOP non-announcement moved the attention away from the Obama-vs.-congressional Democrat storyline to the GOP’s lack of a budget. In fact, after yesterday, the White House and congressional Democrats can agree on one thing: The GOP — at least until next week — is the “Party of No.” What’s more, it puts more pressure on Ryan to truly put out a comprehensive budget alternative; Also, this episode could end up creating a rift in the GOP over how to combat the Obama White House. After all, Senate Republicans wanted nothing to do with an alternative, and now Mitch McConnell, et al are either laughing at their House GOP colleagues, furious at them, or both.

As proof that the Democrats are refocusing on the Republicans rather than each other is the new Democratic Party video.  Kate Phillips writes in the New York Times Caucus

As the House and Senate head toward a heavy budget battle next week, Republicans have been facing criticism from the White House and from Democrats over whether they have offered a real alternative when it comes to the proposals on the table.

In the Senate, what Republican leaders are promising is a lot of amendments. But in the House, Republicans held a news conference yesterday to announce that, despite President Obama’s remarks to the contrary, they did have a plan of their own.

Carl Hulse, chief congressional correspondent of The New York Times, reported that Representative John A. Boehner, the minority leader, was grilled by reporters on Capitol Hill because the blue 18-page “recovery” pamphlet that the Republican leadership released was short on figures, spending or revenue details.

Next week’s budget debate will be interesting.  The Democratic Blue Dogs have their own ideas and the Republicans are split.  The look of the final budget may depend on which party can come together sooner.

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Obama’s Press Conference at 60+ days and other Presidential Matters

How’s he doing?  I thought the press conference last night showed a more subdued President Obama.   David Biespiel said on Politico’s Arena

Overall: Professor in chief. I saw the news conference on CNN from my hotel room. Will cable TV present every Obama news conference as if it’s the last night of Yalta? I disagree with the interpretation that these night time press conferences should be for dramatic events only. Meeting with the press monthly on prime time is good for democracy–whether the climate is dramatic or not. 

I tend to agree with him.  I don’t think the President is at his best with press conferences – he seems to do better with town hall meetings – but they are informative.  Maybe he should think about a prime time town hall meeting.

Thomas Mann from Brookings said on Politico’s Arena

What struck me about last night’s press conference was how the President managed both to maintain his signature leadership style — cool, intelligent, knowledgeable, and reasonable — and to forcefully advocate his position that his economic recovery program and his budget are inextricably linked. He also signaled clearly, especially in his closing remarks, that he fully understands the obstacles he faces and that some of his priorities will take years to accomplish. It appears he will continue to aim high with an ambitious agenda in spite of the clamor of critics for cutting back on his objectives. In a world in which an exclusive focus on short-term gains has dominated behavior in government and in the private sector, Obama is planning an eight-year program of governance that aspires to grapple seriously with long-term challenges.

Which leads me to talk about the Republican opposition.  Several Republicans posted on the Arena their disappointment that there was no real opposition agenda.  I believe that the President has also pointed out that there is no alternative budget so there can be a real discussion.

Eugene Robinson wrote in today’s Washington Post

Some listeners thought they heard flexibility or even retreat on the president’s ambitious agenda of health care, energy and education. I heard the opposite — a single-minded focus on these three initiatives, which Obama maintains are vital if the economy is to be put on sound footing. His strategy is to let Congress work out the details, but he was clear that he expects all of the Big Three to be reflected in the budget. One thing we’ll learn about him, the president said, is that he’s persistent. I’m going to take him at his word.

If you recall, Barack Obama stuck to a consistant message throughout his campaign.  He never let himself get sidetracked to drawn into debates he didn’t want to have.  I think last night showed he is still the same person, that what we saw during the campaign is what we got as a President.

One negative note to my evaluation of his first 60 days.  I am still worried about some of his appointments, particularly in the economic area.  As I have said before I am very very skeptical about Larry Summers in particular.  Christopher Hayes gave this piece of advice back in January and I think it is still relevant.

But as the Obama administration continues to fill thousands of government positions, they’d do well to heed the words of a wise man who once said that “tallying up your years in Washington is no substitute for judgment.” That was President Obama, whose primary campaign was largely predicated on the principle that having gotten something crucial, like the Iraq War, right when other people got it wrong was of such overwhelming importance that voters should elevate someone who’d been a state senator just a few years earlier to the highest office in the land over a competitor with years in Washington under her belt.

The voters agreed, and I continue to think they got it right. Maybe the president should go back and read some of his old speeches the next time there’s an opening in his administration.

And not to beat a maybe dead horse:  where is a job for Howard Dean?

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Paul Krugman v. Tim Geithner

It is no secret that I’m not an economist.  I have long depended on Paul Krugman to help me understand what was going on.  And given the current state of the world, I seem to be blogging about economics a lot.

So is the Tim Geithner toxic assets plan viable or not?    Larry Summers (against whom I have a grudge because of what he did to Cornel West while president of Harvard) took at slap at Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece saying “I wish he waited for the plan to be announced before he wrote his column.” 

What exactly did Paul write?

And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing.

It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street. And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.

Let’s talk for a moment about the economics of the situation.

Right now, our economy is being dragged down by our dysfunctional financial system, which has been crippled by huge losses on mortgage-backed securities and other assets.

As economic historians can tell you, this is an old story, not that different from dozens of similar crises over the centuries. And there’s a time-honored procedure for dealing with the aftermath of widespread financial failure. It goes like this: the government secures confidence in the system by guaranteeing many (though not necessarily all) bank debts. At the same time, it takes temporary control of truly insolvent banks, in order to clean up their books.

If I understand him correctly, what Krugman is worried about is 1) should we have just gone ahead and nationalized the banks temporarily and gotten it over with and 2) if the plan doesn’t work does it will Congress vote more money to nationalize.

I think Krugman is a great economist, but he maybe underestimating the larger political situation.  I think President Obama believes that health care reform and, to a less extent, eduational reform are additional keys to turning the economy around.  Obama is already hearing the footsteps of those in Congress who are looking at the deficit and wanting to put the breaks on.  Obama wants to pass his budget. Therefore he didn’t want to pick my option 1 and nationalize the banks.  If the plan doesn’t work, option 2 is an unknown.

One thing I do know is that while the market did go up today and that Tim Geithner did do marginally better that his first disasterous press conference, I love Jonathan Mann of Rock Bottom Cookie’s new song, “Hey Paul Krugman”.  Mann extoles Krugman while putting Geithner down.  Great catchy song.  Listen to the song and sing along with the refrain.” When I listen to you it seems to make sense, when I listen to him [Geithner] all I hear is blah, blah, blah.”

At this point all we can do is hope that the Geithner gamble works out.  I’m sure that Paul Krugman will be the first to be happy if it does.

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AIG Backstory: The Gramm Leach Bliley Act

Today (May 11, 2012) JP Morgan Chase appears to have engaged in the same kind of behavior that lead to the 2008 meltdown and people are talking about reviving the Glass-Steagall Act.  I thought I should repost this from March 2009.

Yesterday one of my Random Thoughts was to ask if anyone remember when banks were banks and stock brokers were stock brokers.  A few hours later, Rachel Maddow had a piece on the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA) of 1999. According to the summary of the bill the first provision is

TITLE I — FACILITATING AFFILIATION AMONG BANKS, SECURITIES FIRMS, AND INSURANCE COMPANIES

 Repeals the restrictions on banks affiliating with securities firms contained in sections 20 and 32 of the Glass-Steagall Act.

(The GLBA also did some good things like require lending in poor neighborhoods which began to end redlining, but that’s a whole different story and discussion. It also required ATM’s to post fees for use. And I need to confess that  in 1999, Representative Bliliey was my Congressman.)  

At the signing, by President Clinton, of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act Senator Phil Gramm said

“In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

“We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

So it has taken about ten years to figure out Phil Gramm was wrong.  We did not “..promote stability by having competition and freedom.”

The GLBA was what allowed AIG to go from insurance company to a financial behemoth “too big to fail”.  It let CitiBank purchase Traveler’s Insurance and become CitiGroup. 

Circling back to Rachel Maddow, her guest David Cay Johnson compared the lack of Wall Street regulation which was supposed to save tax payers money with deciding that we no longer needed the expense of traffic lights, speed limits and stop signs because drivers will regulate themselves. 

My bottom line?  We need to get back to some sensible regulations with proper funding of regulators.  But will Phil Gramm’s sucessors – Eric Cantor and the other Republicans – understand that their essentially unregulated free market because government is bad mantra is what helped get us into trouble and brought us to the place where we are spending trillions to bailout the very companies that Gramm Leach Bliley helped to create.