Tornado Alley (PROG)

[ForReal]

Thanks to Dubya and the GOP congress all we were left with was a penny.

Really? Oh how soon we forget who instituted the deregulations that lead to excesses in the banking industry. Especially in the real estate lending markets, as well as the exemptions from credit default swaps.

President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877322,00.html

Easy to forget that Dubya inherited the rules that lead to the credit defaults and the stock market crash. Of course, I would not expect a liberal to admit to these things, as their greatest attribute is denial.