The Big Dog Digs Up Some Bones

The bones in this case being the remains of the Glass-Steagall Act that Clinton repealed ten years ago by signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law in its place.  Glass-Steagall was the firewall set up after the Great Depression between banks, insurance companies, and investment firms to stop them from getting into each others' realm of business.  Clinton's outgoing act as President was to bring down that firewall, creating the climate that led to the financial ruin that took place over the last decade.  Talking to Jake Tapper on Sunday, Clinton finally signaled he regretted doing that.  Crooks & Liars:

CLINTON: Well, I think on the derivatives – before the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, it had been breached. There was already a total merger practically of commercial and investment banking, and really the main thing that the Glass-Steagall Act did was to give us some power to regulate it – the repeal. And also to give old fashion traditional banks in all over America the right to take an investment interest if they wanted to forestall bankruptcy. Sadly none of them did that. Mostly it was just the continued blurring of the lines, but only about a third of all the money loaned today is loaned through traditional banking channels and that was well underway before that legislation was signed. So I don’t feel the same way about that.

I think what happened was the SEC and the whole regulatory apparatus after I left office was just let go. I think if Arthur Levitt had been on the job at the SEC, my last SEC commissioner, an enormous percentage of what we’ve been through in the last eight or nine years would not have happened. I feel very strongly about it. I think it’s important to have vigorous oversight.

Now, on derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take it because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency. The money they’re putting up guarantees them transparency. And the flaw in that argument was that first of all sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions and make it without transparency.

And secondly, the most important flaw was even if less than 1 percent of the total investment community is involved in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could affect a 100 percent of the investments, and indeed a 100 percent of the citizens in countries, not investors, and I was wrong about that. I’ve said that all along. Now, I think if I had tried to regulate them because the Republicans were the majority in the Congress, they would have stopped it. But I wish I should have been caught trying. I mean, that was a mistake I made.

While I'm glad to see Clinton finally admit he's partially to blame for the mess we're in now, it would have been nice if he'd resisted doing so when he could have.  On the other hand, Dubya would have certainly signed that legislation into law during his first year, so odds are excellent we'd still be in the exact same boat we're in now, Clinton or no.

Having said that, yeah Big Dog, you screwed up.  You screwed up big time.  I'm glad to see Obama correct this mistake...or try to anyway, if it wasn't for the GOP blocking the effort to try.

Wonder why that is?  Can't be the GOP wants to see the economy burn between now and 2012, right?  Naah...