* Republican Senator Phil Gramm from Texas (retired) was a UBS Vice President after leaving Congress and was the one who de-regulated our banks to begin with. Should UBS blame Phil Gramm? And Republicans want LESS regulation in the banking industry, and well as a repeal of the Frank-Dodd Act, and an elimination of the Consumer Protection Bureau. (Republican interests favor the banks over people.)
September 15, 2011 (AP) - Swiss banking giant UBS said Thursday that a rogue trader has caused it an estimated loss of $2 billion, stunning a beleaguered banking industry that has proven vulnerable to unauthorized trades. Switzerland's largest bank warned that it could report a loss for the entire third quarter as a result, sending its shares plummeting. The incident comes as UBS is struggling to restore its reputation after heavy
sub-prime losses during the financial crisis that resulted in a government bailout, and an embarrassing U.S. tax evasion case that blew a hole in Switzerland's storied tradition of banking secrecy. Republican Senator Phil Gramm (retired) was a senior vice president at UBS bank.
http://moneywatch.bnet.com/investing/news/rogue-trader-causes-2-billion-loss-at-ubs/6297766/
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis (Time Magazine) - As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Senator Phil Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He then went to become a senior vice president at UBS bank. Then
the credit-default swaps took down AIG, and the rest is history.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
April 17, 2011 (My blog) - Phil Gramm: From US Senator to UBS
Banker - As a Republican U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Phil Gramm introduced the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, deregulating banks in 1999. Three years later after leaving office in 2002 Senator Phil Gramm served as Vice Chairman and a member of the Swiss banking giant UBS. In May 2009 the company completed the acquisition of the bailed-out AIG Financial Products Corp., including AIG’s rights to the DJAIG Commodity index. Phil Gramm was also John McCain’s presidential senior economic adviser in 2008. Economist Paul Krugman named Phil Gramm as #2 man of the economic crisis. Alan Greenspan was
#1.
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/04/phil-gramm-from-us-senator-to-ubs.html
September 15, 2011 (Huffington Post) - One Betrayal Too Many
- The late 1990s, it should be noted, is when President Clinton, working with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through two critical pieces of legislation ending effective regulation of the banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act smashed the wall between high-flying Wall Street investment firms and the once staid commercial banks entrusted with the deposits and mortgages of America's innocent souls. The next year Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, banning any effective regulation of the rapidly expanded trade in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that have since haunted the world's economy.
The collapse of those toxic securities led to the housing crisis and resulted in 15.1 percent of Americans now living in
poverty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/one-betrayal-too-many_b_963478.html
September 14, 2011 (My blog) - Republicans Caused Mass Poverty
- The Republicans caused record poverty. Republican policies: The Bush tax cuts,
the unjustified war in Iraq, the de-regulation of the banks, and the mass
corporate outsourcing (free trade agreements with emerging markets) has caused
record poverty in the U.S. - and the Republicans want more of the same. But yet
they call Obama the Food Stamp King, and blame Obama for not fixing
George W. Bush's depression, saying "When does it become Obama's
economy?"
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/09/republicans-caused-mass-poverty.html
UPDATE SEPT. 21, 2011 - After Rick Perry announced his presidential bid, Phil Gramm quickly endorsed his former student.
ReplyDeleteMost Americans remember Gramm as the grumpy co-chair of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, who resigned over his controversial remark that America was "a nation of whiners" and claim that the country's economic woes were merely the product of a "mental recession." It was the very same Gramm, who, just hours before Congress recessed for the Christmas holiday in December 2000, slipped a measure into an 11,000-page bill that deregulated the commodity markets and helped transform Wall Street into a casino. The legacy of "Foreclosure Phil" helped lay the groundwork for the financial tsunami that torpedoed the American economy.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/rick-perry-phil-gramm-texas