>>>
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/17/us_seizes_control_of_aig_with
>>>
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/17
>>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act
>>>
>>> ...NOMI PRINS: The bailout of AIG is an example of the government
>>> having to step in and clean up a mess. It is not so much that subprime
>>> mortgages fell and that caused some losses to AIG. AIG was acting not
>>> simply as an insurance company; it was acting as a speculative
>>> investment bank/hedge fund, as was Bear Stearns, as was Lehman
>>> Brothers, as is what will become Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. So you
>>> have a situation where it's bailing out not just the money, but taking
>>> on the risk of items it cannot even begin to understand, because if it
>>> had understood them, this would never have gotten to the point to
>>> which it has gotten.
>>>
>>> AMY GOODMAN: How did it get to this point? How did it go beyond
>>> insurance?
>>>
>>> NOMI PRINS: In AIG and in Lehman and with Merrill and every other
>>> company on Wall Street that has faltered or is faltering, it's about
>>> taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and
>>> borrowing again and borrowing again, twenty-five to thirty times the
>>> amount of capital, the amount of money that they had to basically back
>>> the borrowing that they were doing. Human regular borrowers cannot do
>>> this. This is something that is an item only of the banking industry.
>>>
>>> And not only was all that borrowing happening, but there was no
>>> transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who
>>> would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was
>>> being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime
>>> mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below
>>> a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that's what
>>> is bringing down the entire banking system.
The only people that wanted a repeal of Glass-Steagall were the thieves
that wanted to get very rich off of borrowed money. Many people tried to
stop it, but the Republican deregulation "government is the problem"
lying fascist pigs were in control of the government and the propaganda
machine. The only Democrat in the way was a Clinton that had been
destroyed by his own actions and by Ken Star.
http://banking.senate.gov/prel99/1105tme.htm ---------------
November 4, 1999 -- Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passes the Senate 90-8 and the
House 362-57.
-----------------------------------------------------
Can anybody spell "veto proof"?
> Many did, including me right here ..... no one was listening, and if
> they were they utterly ignored it. From the President down to you.
