The 1000lb. Gorilla in Washington, D.C.
and on Wall Street
There is a large dark matter hanging over the White House, the
Congress, the Judiciary, Wall Street and Big Banking which no one wants to
acknowledge is there. It is the decision arrived at in 1998 to overthrow the
Glass-Steagall Act which became law in 1933 as a protection against the crash
of 1929 ever recurring.
In 1980, President Ronald Reagan under the influence of his
financial advisors began to push for the overthrow of “regulations” which
restricted stock markets from taking a new direction which would spur business
and make everyone invested much, much richer. This belief was approved by
President Reagan’s economic advisors such as Alan Greenspan, Robert Ruben, Larry
Summer, Arthur Leavitt and others.
They didn’t really succeed for 18 years until a huge
bipartisan support for their goal was reached in Congress. The desires of
Reagan, Bush I, and the Clinton Administration with the large majority of their
economic advisors succeeded when in May of 1998, Democratic senators voted
against overthrow by a vote of 46-1. By
November of that year, the Democratic
vote had shrunk to 38-7 in favor of the overthrow. In the Senate as a whole,
the vote to overthrow Glass-Steagall was 90-8, with bipartisan support of such
a mix as Senators Gramm, Baucus, Biden, Chafee, Collins(ME), Dodd, Durbin,
Hatch, Kennedy, Kerry(NB), McConnell, Reid, Sessions, Snow, and 76 others.
The only outspoken opponent to overthrow was Brooksley Born,
economic advisor to President Clinton for which she was ridiculed and drummed
out of the advisors, but for which she eventually came out of retirement in
Maine to receive the JFK Profiles in Courage Award. None of those who opposed
her have ever admitted their error or publicly apologized to her, and to the
country for the devastation to so many and the loss of their savings,
retirement annuities, homes and jobs. Meanwhile Wall Street in large measure
was bailed out and now is in full flight.
Now, as Hillary Clinton leads in the polls as the Democratic
candidate for president, many refuse to bring back, or even bring up in
discussion the Glass-Steagall Act and its tragic overthrow.
On July 14th of this year, Robert Reich talked
about it.
So has senator Bernie Sanders: http://feed.hypervocal.com/frame/6979379
I believe that he should talk more publicly about it in
conjunction with his these described. It would certainly
stir up the electorate and make Robert Reich and Bernie Sanders look like a
team for 2016.
Nobody seems willing to bring up this subject. My question to
you is: “Are you?”.
