The Best and the Brightest

I’d like a simple explanation.  I’d like to be able to hang it all around Phil Gramm’s neck.   But, as is so often the case, it’s a lot more complicated:

Citigroup insiders and analysts say that Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin played pivotal roles in the bank’s current woes, by drafting and blessing a strategy that involved taking greater trading risks to expand its business and reap higher profits. Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin both declined to comment for this article.

When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

But wait - there’s more!

In the summer of 2003, leaders of the four federal agencies that oversee the banking industry gathered to highlight the Bush administration’s commitment to reducing regulation. They posed for photographers behind a stack of papers wrapped in red tape. The others held garden shears. [Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision James] Gilleran … hefted a chain saw.

Wasn’t the OTS supposed to protect us from another banking meltdown like the one in the '80s? Not under the Unitary Executive!

This photo from 2003 shows two regulators: John Reich (then Vice Chairman of the FDIC and later at the OTS) and James Gilleran of the Office of Thrift Supervision (with the chainsaw) and representatives of three banker trade associations: James McLaughlin of the American Bankers Association, Harry Doherty of America’s Community Bankers, and Ken Guenther of the Independent Community Bankers of America.

I think Home Depot is having a sale on pitchforks.  The rest of you get some torches, and I’ll meet you in Annapolis.  From there, we sail up the Potomac and find these fuckwits.  No quarter.

Comments

[mandt]

If you want to see Rubin and Summers lying through their manipulating teeth catch the Charlie Rose interview a couple weeks back: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9251

[MarkGL]

красиво, сделал! Благодарю!!!

[Grace Nearing]

Look at the picture very, very closely. That's not red tape being cut, it's red ribbon wrapped around a giant gift.

[VJBinCT]

Lowes has split rail fencing; Linens and Things is having a going-out-of-business sale on feather pillows; the price of roofing tar is coming down by the minute. Let's roll! (Sorry about that allusion, but it oddly seems appropriate here).

[Shredder]

Maybe they'll offer a special deal on credit for pitchforks. 30-year fixed?