Don't let them rewrite history by blaming Clinton for the meltdown.

[JohnnyRingo]

If, like me, when talking about the sad times we're in with righties, you have to be reminded that "Clinton made banks loan money to poor people", don't let them get away with it.

This conspiracy theory, like all conspiracies since the magic bullet, leaves out one important piece: In this case, it's millions of jobs. Propagators of this theory need us to believe the jobs were going to evaporate even if Clinton stayed in office.

If we were at Clinton employment levels, those people would still be in their homes making faithful payments and the banks, Fannie, and Freddie, would be fine.

I've yet to find a revisionist prepared to counter the argument.
It usually changes the subject.

[FLAprogressive]

1. They're half right. Like it or not Clinton was part of the problem.

He is partially to blame, but not for making "banks loan to poor people".

He *is* to blame for allowing the deregulation of the banking industry.

[Xipe Totec]

4. Which the pugs had 8 years to fix, and made it worse instead.

Let's not help them dodge responsibility.

[FLAprogressive]

6. well duh. But that doesn't change the fact that Clinton helped to create the problem.

[Skwmom]

5. A lot of those loans made to poor people were predatory loans.

Loans to poor people aren't the problem. It's letting scumbag, lowlife predatory lenders prey on the poor. That's the problem.

[FLAprogressive]

7. I never said that they were.....

[Skwmom]

10. Sorry.

It wasn't directed at you but at the whole concept of "bank loans to poor people" being the reason for this mess. I am so sick and tired of the greedy crooks and the Republicans blaming poor people. Why aren't the Democrats holding press conferences to highlight the poor people who have been preyed upon?

[FLAprogressive]

11. it's ok :)

[dkf]

17. The problem isn't bank loans to poor people, it was giving oversized loans to

people who couldn't afford them.

Giving a $600k loan to someone who should have qualified for $300k, or a $300k loan to someone who could only afford $150k, etc.

Also, interest only loans, and negative amortization loans.

[McCamy Taylor]

9. Clinton could not have envisioned the DELIBERATE Bush efforts to stop state and federal regulation

of lenders that is what really lead to the mortgage meltdown. This is what Eliot Spitzer tried to tell the country and this is why the DOJ lied about him to the public claiming he used public funds to buy hookers when he did not (even as bank CEOs used corporate funds to buy call girls with the full knowledge of the Bush DOJ).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

Had the Bush DOJ enforced the laws and had the states been allowed to enforce their laws, there is a strong likelihood that the worst of the mortgage crisis could have been avoided. Phil Gramm's legislation in itself was not toxic. It was the fact that Bush made it impossible for the states to keep lenders from engaging in predatory practices that doomed the country.

Anyone who tries to blame Clinton for what the Bush administration did to hamper regulation (as if somehow Clinton should have foreseen Bush criminality) is a Republican partisan wearing Democrat's clothes. Or else a confirmed Clinton basher.

[FLAprogressive]

12. Am I missing something here?

Glass-Steagall was repealed by the Republican and DLC parties under the Clinton administration, was it not?

Of course Bush fucked it up....but Clinton began the fuckups and Bush made em worse.

Anyone who denies this is a confirmed Clinton apologist plain and simple. newsflash -- not all Democrats think Bill Clinton was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[sandnsea]

2. It's the gambling with the mortgage profits

"What got us into this mess initially were banks taking exorbitant, wild risks with other people's monies based on shaky assets. And because of the enormous leverage where they had $1 worth of assets and they were betting $30 on that $1, what we had was a crisis in the financial system."

President Barack Obama Feb 9, 2009

That's what got us into this mess and that is all that got us into this mess. They knew they were going to jack the interest rates sky-high on people and were too fucking stupid to recognize that working people are on a budget and don't get automatic raises the way Congress does.

[Skwmom]

3. Clinton and the Republicans gave us the deregulation that led to this meltdown.

And it's not like they shouldn't have known better b/c deregulation led to the S&L crisis. In addition, Clinton also pushed free trade (i.e., trade free from any type of regulation or worker protection). So yeah, Clinton should be blamed.

Clinton's so called job creation was nothing but fake growth like we experienced under Bush. We've went from one phony economy to another.

The Democrats did vote for the bill after it went to conference but it was Clinton and the Republicans who joined forces to pass the initial bill. Of course, Feingold and a few others were smart enough to vote against the final bill. So of course they'll never play an important role in DC.

[KG]

8. NAFTA - major contributor to the exodus of jobs from this country.

[JohnnyRingo]

15. Here are two pix we don't see enough of

From the George HW Bush Presidential Library.
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/index.php







On December 17, 1992, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and U. S. President George Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), marking the end of a process that began on February 5, 1991, when the three leaders announced they would negotiate the trade accord. Following approval by the legislatures in each of the three countries, NAFTA entered into force January 1, 1994. Its implementation created a free-trade area in North America that was the largest of its kind in the world, with a combined 1994 gross domestic product (GDP) of $7.7 trillion and 368 million consumers. The objectives of the trade agreement, as detailed more specifically through its principles and rules, are to
eliminate barriers to trade in, and facilitate the cross-border movement of, goods and services between the territories of the three involved parties.

http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=2582

[Coexist]

13. Read this - most excellent back and forth:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/10/matt_taibbi_and_byron_york_but.html


B.Y.: I think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also major factors. And I believe that many of the problems in the mortgage area can be attributed to the confluence of Democratic and Republican priorities: the Democrats' desire to give mortgages to people, particularly minorities, who could not afford them, and the Republicans' desire to achieve an "ownership society," in part by giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. Again, I believe that if you are suggesting that the financial crisis is a Republican creation, or even more specifically a McCain creation, I think you're on pretty shaky ground.

M.T.: Oh, come on. Tell me you're not ashamed to put this gigantic international financial Krakatoa at the feet of a bunch of poor black people who missed their mortgage payments. The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That's like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it's all speculation by Wall Street traders. It's a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme. The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable.

B.Y.: I was struck by the recent Senate testimony of James Lockhart, who is head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, about the sheer recklessness of Fannie in recent years. Despite "repeated warnings about credit risk," Lockhart testified, Fannie became more reckless in 2006 and 2007 than they had been in the scandal-ridden tenure of Franklin Raines (who departed in 2004). In 2005, Lockhart said, 14 percent of Fannie's new business was in risky loans. In the first half of 2007, it was 33 percent. So something terribly wrong was going on there, and it became a significant part of the present problem.

M.T.: What a surprise that you mention Franklin Raines. Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work? Because I get the feeling you don't understand. Or do you actually think that it was a few tiny homeowner defaults that sank gigantic companies like AIG and Lehman and Bear Stearns? Explain to me how these default swaps work, I'm interested to hear.

Because what we're talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?

B.Y.: Are you suggesting that critics of Fannie and Freddie are talking about the default of a single homeowner?

M.T.: No. That is what you call a figure of speech. I'm saying that you're talking about individual homeowners defaulting. But these massive companies aren't going under because of individual homeowner defaults. They're going under because of the myriad derivatives trades that go on in connection with each piece of debt, whether it be a homeowner loan or a corporate bond. I'm still waiting to hear what your idea is of how these trades work. I'm guessing you've never even heard of them.

I mean really. You honestly think a company like AIG tanks because a bunch of minorities couldn't pay off their mortgages?

B.Y.: When you refer to "Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act," are you referring to S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson?

M.T.: In point of fact I'm talking about the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps.

Tick tick tick. Hilarious sitting here while you frantically search the Internet to learn about the cause of the financial crisis — in the middle of a live chat interview.

B.Y.: Look, you can keep trying to make this a specifically partisan and specifically Gramm-McCain thing, but it simply isn't. We've gone on for fifteen minutes longer than scheduled, and that's enough. Thanks.

M.T.: Thanks. Note, folks, that the esteemed representative of the New Republic has no idea what the hell a credit default swap is. But he sure knows what a minority homeowner looks like.

B.Y.: It's National Review.

[FLyellowdog]

14. We were living in a different economic time during Clinton's presidency.

We were experiencing a surplus of federal money, the budget was balanced, and there was money to be loaned. Deregulation led to those loans going to people who might ordinarily not get them. This was a good thing. President Clinton wanted to continue encouraging the economy to grow by allowing poor, but deserving people to own homes. He was helping those who had been locked out of home ownership. He provided the path by which this could happen.

It was the banks that screwed up. They should have known which loans would be at risk and which would not be and they should not have taken the chances they did. They after all are the professionals. Sadly, all they saw were easy dollars via interest to be collected. Too bad it didn't turn out that way.

Clinton did deregulate and for good reasons...but he had no control over the predatory bankers and the disastrous courses that they followed. If one wants to, one can backtrack and blame anyone for the outcome including but not limited to the U.S. Mint for printing the money people used for mortgages, the contractors/developers for building houses that people wanted, the couples who had children requiring larger homes, etc. etc. etc. The list is endless.

[MadHound]

16. Clinton does deserve some of the blame and responsibility for this

Namely for allowing massive deregulation of the financial sector, which paved the way for all these wonderfully insane investment schemes. He also helped along the loss of good paying jobs with outsourcing madness.

He doesn't deserve all or even most of the blame. But he does carry a share, as does Bush I and Reagan.

[PurityOfEssence]

18. Give 'em a break, it's just so hard to blame it all on the Carter Administration anymore

That's for your folks who remember the Reagan and Bush I years...

[JackRiddler]

19. Is it better to let you do it by absolving the Lite Republican?

In economic and in foreign policy there was a single administration from 1980-2009, and if it's going to be different now, it's because the Ponzi economy collapsed and there will be no alternative to doing things differently. The Clinton years fit almost seamlessly into the neoliberal progression of the era starting with Reagan (actually, a couple of years earlier - shhh!). Deregulation, wage suppression, corporate welfare, "free trade," the "Washington Consensus" to strangle third-world development, a roll-back in social spending, hyperpower arrogance, the primacy of the military-industrial complex as the nation's main industrial policy, humanitarian terror bombings of civilians, profits over ecology... the Clinton admin owned all of that, even if many aspects would have likely been worse under a second Bush Sr. or Dole tenure. Sorry, looking back today, "less murder" does not serve as an excuse. NAFTA, "welfare reform," and finally, in 1999, the Rubin-Gramm-Citigroup package of signals to the financial sector that announced: time to get away with any fraud you can. And who reappointed Greenspan? And who refused to go into the crimes of the first Bush regime, most relevantly the banking bust-outs overseen by Bush CIA cronies and successfully managed as an accidental "savings and loan crisis"? Clinton time was a fitting succession and prelude to the Bush nightmares that came before and after it.

[mmonk]

20. Clinton and many currently on the Obama team were partly responsible

as well as all Republicans. Republicans are putting their war on the poor spin to it as they always do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDvRfkfMpp8

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy