Remember McCain's financial adviser Phil Gramm? He was they guy show said America was "a nation of whiners" when the economy started to get really bad.

He was one of the writers of the "Enron Loophole." Which critics attribute to allowing speculation on skyrocketing oil prices. Perhaps attributing to our current fuel crisis.

Gramm is a fundamental de-regulator. He is also famous for deregulating banks... now we're in a financial collapse, which critics attribute to deregulation. Basically, speculative trading and increasingly risky moves were made to chase down profits... Now three of five largest U.S. investment banks failed within six months, including Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

If there are any economic experts on this board, I'd love to hear your views on this subject of regulation vs de-regulation. Does deregulation work in theory or in practice?

Does deregulation run the risk of allowing massively greedy moves by financial giants that lead to a collapse and government bail-out... in effect rewarding them for their bad business practices?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Gr...ortgage_Crisis

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If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
-Albert Einstein

Your reason is right here.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...06370789279709

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Carolina Politics Online

LOL please cite a credible resource

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You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
-Malcolm X-

Change is in the results, not the people doing the work. A team of engineers can do brilliant things under the right leader, or crash and burn with code that won't even compile under the wrong leader.
-Unknown-

ad hominem

You're free to provide your own source showing that Investor's Business Daily is not a credible publication and that the Community Redevelopment Act is not a major player in this problem. Otherwise, don't waste my time.

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Carolina Politics Online

Here's another piece of the pie.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-bud...d-Yet-in-Sight

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Carolina Politics Online

Never have heard of this newspaper,and absolutely no mention of The Future Commodities Modernization Act,that was slyly slipped into another bill by Gramm in 2000,so in order for this to be a credible unbiased opinion page by a newspaper it has to tell the whole story.Just asked my husband,who is in the newspaper business for 27 years if he ever heard of IBD,answer No.

YES AND NO! It was regulating that the lenders make high risk loans to people who couldent afford them. It was deregulating that led the lenders to use the down payments of loans to invest in stocks and securities. BOTH EVENTS HAPPENED UNDER CLINTON! Both Bush and McCain have tried to reverse this disaster under democratic disapproval.

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Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

John Adams

http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html

In the world of Glass-Steagall, the Community Reinvesment Act made perfectly good sense. In the world of Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Commodities and Futures Modernization Act, it was folly.

Under Glass-Steagall, there were firewalls in place that prevented the deregulated industries from packaging the sub-prime loans made under CRA and selling them as investment opportunities, and it prevented the investment firms from buying them and marketing them as investment opportunities.

We are witnessing a perfect storm - an economic Katrina, if you will - where everything that could go wrong is going wrong. A whole litany of little failures and several REALLYREALLY big ones are tag-teaming the financial sector in ways that nobody saw coming. In hindsight, it all makes perfectly good sense why we are seeing what we are seeing. But nobody knew that the people running the banks, investment houses and insurance companies all attended the P.T. Barnum School of Business, where a sucker is born every minute.

In reality, this economic crisis can be likened to 25 people putting together a 500 piece puzzle, never at the same time. None of them really knew what the picture would turn out to be, but they kept putting the pieces together nonetheless. IMO, the person that put the most pieces in place was Phil Gramm and it troubles me greatly that he has had such an influence over McCain's economic thought process.

So to answer your question about deregulation, yes...partially. It wasn't the only reason, but without it the current situation could not have arisen.

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Tax & Spend > Borrow & Spend any day.

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

C2H5OH - the cause of and remedy to all problems.