I spoke to my friend James North today on the phone and he made the following points about the financial crisis that I think are worth hearing. I'm paraphrasing, except where I quote:
There's a famous joke that leftwing economists have predicted 7 of the last 2 recessions. Well this time it's the big one we've been predicting. This may be a more important event than 9/11, which is turning out not to be that big. The chickens are coming home to roost. There will be "epochal change" and likely even a levelling of society.
Some of the most interesting changes will be cultural. "Financial types purchased a cultural environment that surrounded them and glorified them and made them out to be masters of the universe. And this environment made them overweening and arrogant. They really thought that they understood the economy and the way the world works. Well that's over. Now that cultural environment will end, and they'll be back to being dull people on Wall Street."
When you and I were in college in the 70s, finance was considered boring. That soon changed. A recent Harvard magazine said that from 1970 to 1990 the number of graduates who would go on to finance nearly doubled, to 38 percent– and that last year, of the 3/4 of male Harvard college graduates who were going right to work, close to 60 percent were going into finance or consulting, and 20 percent of them into investment banks.
Those figures reflect the fact that it's been fun to be in finance for a very long time. The run in the market really began at the end of the Reagan recession in '83 and hasn't stopped since. They managed to keep the bubble going in 2000 during the dotcom crash but they couldn't keep it going now.
One of the reasons that kids go into investment banks is it's interesting and glamorous. It's where the action is. Well, it really was interesting when the market is going up and up and up to go into finance. You feel like a worldbeater. That's over. Christopher Caldwell in FT agrees:
Even Tom Friedman will be affected. His books have boosted globalization and the markets thoughtlessly, and he's been a tremendous bestseller. To his credit, David Brooks has been more thoughtful about the transformation of our society and said that we're a class-ridden society; and his books haven't been as big. Because the upper middle class, which buys books, doesn't want to hear that, doesn't want to think about levelling. Now it will have to.
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{ 29 comments }
I agree that the time period from 15 Sept to 7 Oct of this year will in the long distant future likely be regarded as an epochal tipping point for the US economy, society, politics, and culture, but I think the transition to a new order will involve grotesquely ugly, brutal conflicts between classes as the lower ones finally resolve to oppose the lying, self-serving cabal at the top. Most likely, at the end of a transition, the new order will resemble more closely a Bolshevik regime than a democracy, giving lip service to universal health care, education, and freedom from want, but co-opted to serve an even more effectively hidden regime that will less ostentatiously display its power and wealth than the current ruling group. In the future we won't know about the skimming done by corporate execs through bonuses, stock options, golden parachutes, etc — the word "corporation" may even disappear. Disparities of wealth and incomes among economic groups will be suppressed from all knowledge bases, totally.
–
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego
I'm not sure if this is "the biggest news", historically.
The stock market is down in the 30% range over a year and a half. In the prior year and a half it went up 30%.
In the three years following 911, the stock valuations declined more precipitously, in the 40% range.
You weren't watching is all.
Frankly, it should be worse, much worse. Houses, securities are still overvalued relative to the fundamentals that you learn in finance 101, still a large bubble.
And, the lifestyle that exists in much of urban areas largely, is so out of line with necessities and comfort extending to luxury as a "norm", that there is a LONG way down still, before the decision-makers experience the information that allows them to learn and decide differently.
Definitely, the kings of the hill are changing now. OIL money is again king.
The Saudis are interesting. At one point they acted as if their investments in financial and other assets had come to be more important to them than their assets in oil. I think that has leveled with oil still at $100/barrel.
They and other holders of US debt and other securities will do what they can to stabilize the markets, but they won't put themselves at fundamental risk.
The Iraq wars were fought for Saudi (and related) interests, NOT Israeli. I'm amazed that you still have blinders to that weight. (Maybe its 90-10, but nowhere close to 50-50, or predominately for Israel. The only equation that I can see that is valid is that the neo-conservatives might have considered a strong commercial Saudi Arabia as providing support for a strong commercial Israel – the COMMERCE being the common denominator).
What are your assets?
Money only?
How about comprehensive property, skills, time, enthusiasm?
Where do you now put your assets? What do you put to work?
Sustainability, simplicity, reduction of fixed costs, confidently securing needs (shelter, fuel, clothing, food, health information/care)
Cooperation in work, skill-sharing, asset-sharing, socializing, mutual aid commitment.
A radical shift from funding speculation and conspicuous consumption to funding exchange in widely experienced needs and amenities (not luxuries).
Read the text of the bailout bill, which is posted at various news outlets. It gives Hank Paulson $700 billion to spend on mortgage-related securities. But get this:
"Sec. 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
Historian John Steele Gordon described it as a "temporary period of financial dictatorship."
It would be the greatest Rape of the Middle Class of our lifetimes, not to mention the destruction of the rule of law. It would create a lasting class-based fault line in American politics, which will polarize Americans for decades, just as the New Deal did. The effect on the employment prospects of Harvard's graduating class is of trivial significance by comparison.
Read the financially-oriented blogs. Feel the rage. Politicians who missed the chance to condemn Bush's invasion of Iraq on false pretenses can redeeem themselves now, by blasting this reverse-Robin Hood ripoff as the Crime of the Century.
If Congress can appropriate $700 billion which they don't have by next week, they also can impeach Bush, Cheney and Paulson tomorrow morning. I advocate the "Four-I" policy for the lot of 'em:
- Impeach
- Indict
- Incriminate
- Incarcerate
It's time to torch these bastards, as well as close down the Federal Reserve. This nation is headed for serious social chaos, soon.
I choose to be more optimistic. I think those of us who are well educated but have pursued humbler occupations and the bohemian edge, where our children go to public school and mix with all kinds of people, rich and poor – and we keep our overhead low, live relatively modestly given our professions and education – I think we're going to do okay in this environment. We are adaptable. We know our children won't be contaminated by mixing with other classes. We will have our noses to the changing winds and we won't be so crushed when things don't go perfectly. Lack of tropical vacations won't bother us. We know how to have a good time right in our front yards or our local cities; we create interesting culture and we know how to make vivid lives with materials at hand. We don't mind working "regular" jobs because we've had to all along to support our artistic inclinations. If our kids decide to become car mechanics or urban farmers we won't have conniptions, we'll just enjoy the ride, and give them books for Christmas.
The decline of the snot-nosed paper-traders won't bother me one bit. Creativity will out. Come here to the West Coast and visit us, Phil, our energy is focused on tech – low and high, knowledge, culture, spirit, and the environment. While the masters of the universe are trembling at the possible dimming of the lights on their indoor shopping malls, we are plotting to retrofit our cities for a sustainable future.
Yes things might change. Things need to change. The way we've organized our society is unsustainable. Let's do something else now. Consuming less will make traditionally configured balance sheets look bad, but guess what, traditional balance sheets don't include a lot of vital information, including environmental impact. The larger balance sheet of the planet might benefit from an economic slowdown. Our quality of life might benefit too. Quality of life is not about amount of junk acquired. Look at the Italians, the Japanese. I would rather live like a middle-class Italian of 1968 than a similar Atlantan of 2008.
Richard W posted while I did – I agree with his more succinct remarks about sustainability and community.
Calitics posted this on Green jobs for the economy:
http://www.calitics.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=0D4D7AE1C59EE014B4ED030888FC853B?diaryId=6989
in line with my argument (or "impressions" – not sure my rant qualifies as an argument)
Well, it ought to initiate a transformation, but I think you all are projecting your wishes onto a complex and unpredictable future. By all accounts, we aren't through the woods yet. Many banks remain at risk and even money market funds were at risk of a run, but those major risks have been stopped by the $700B bailout. There are still untold numbers of hedge funds, intertwined throughout the financial industry and the rest of the economy, whose balance sheets are as impenetrably indecipherable as they are unavailable for review. No one knows their scope and so no one can assess the risk they pose. But people may try to withdraw all their money from them, and they will collapse, with unknown effect. There is the potential inflationary risk of printing another $700B. There is the risk the rest of the world will stop buying US debt.
While I don't know how it is going to turn out, I see two scenarios: best case, Paulsen, Bernanke & Co. work magic, and we survive largely unscathed. This is what the markets were predicting Thursday and Friday. In this case, I doubt the reforms will be effective. Sarbannes Oxley imposed massive reforms on all public corporations to document everything over extensively, so extensive as to drive new IPOs to foreign markets, giving political vent to the urge to prevent another Enron, but the Enron-type creative, leveraged manipulation of markets, futures, derivatives, swaps, off-balance sheet debt, special purpose entities to trade back and forth with, simply accelerated its growth in the hidden world of private hedge-funds, where nine figure compensation came at capital gain tax rates. McCain has already blamed SEC Chief Cox, even though he doesn't have any jurisdiction over the unregulated hedge funds, and McCain and his ilk would likely again impose new controls on the non-lobbying innocents, while the guilty bastards lawyer up and lobby up, and secure exemptions for themselves from the next round of heavy-handed regulations. Guys other than Ruben, Paulsen, and a few others, cannot come close to understanding the situation, lobbyists will be all over everything, and the likelihood of wise regulation emerging is minimal, let alone, appropriate accountability.
Worst case, the latest $700B fails to stop the panic, and there is a run on all US assets, leading to a shut down of many many financial institutions and/or hyper-inflation. This would be the end of the economic world as we know it, and "the best [would] lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." I hope for our sake Bush avoids this legacy, even though he richly deserves it.
What comes out of that is anybody's guess, but I doubt it will be couched in Marxist terms of classism or Bolshevism, which also richly deserved its own earlier failure.
Doppler
i think phil knows less about capitalism than even Commentary. David Brooks and Tom Freidman aren't economists, they write brain dead pop culture tripe for the oprah fied masses. people with tons of money will always be exciting.
have you read "the middle mind"? you know you have
James North adds: Phil accurately summarizes my comments with one exception; I don't think I told him there will be necessarily a great "leveling." Much depends on outcome of the tremendous conflict over the coming months and years, over who will pay for the disaster, and over how strong the new regulations will be to prevent another one. If no Roosevelt or New Deal comes along, Americans could turn more to the right to blame someone for the prolonged recession we are almost certainly headed into.
I agree that I'm projecting my wishes onto a complex future. However, so is everybody else, expert or amateur. Some of the experts project their negative wishes – things they think are horrible but might or will come to pass. I am simply projecting things I think are positive that might also come to pass.
Projection – we're all doing it…
James,
You're wrong about the leveling without actual reforms.
What is happening now is a shifting of chairs. Different players can buy in to power, or different ranges of power.
For example, there really are short-sellers that made literally billions on the same borrowed money (before short-selling was closed out temporarily).
Also, any entity that was holding cash made out in the firesale. JP Morgan for example, that bought Bear Stearns good assets, were forgiven on their bad, and for a song.
Its not unlike political conflict in which the name of the power game is to weaken, then steal.
Wars are the same as this. For example, in 1948, the intention of the Arab armies was to weaken and hopefully eliminate Israel. And like this weak, the status of boiling wars change fast.
Cash and minerals are king now. The Saudis, Iranians, Kuwaitis, UAE, Venezuela, Nigeria, Indonesia have raked in trillions to their very very private royalty funds, which are the name of the game of the shadow economy.
To miss that, is to miss the present.
the dichotomy, two false choices.
achtung you must choose?
the bill of rights.
the non security security state.
et al. but who are the people to have a say in the matter.
ah, vive la democratique!
'Investment Bankers Paid for a Culture That Glorified Them'
No, we paid for it and will continue to do so for years to come. The value of their portfolios is down, but how many are in negative territory?
'Those figures reflect the fact that it's been fun to be in finance for a very long time.'
Well, fun it may have been, but they didn't do it for fun. John Robb at Global Guerillas thinks it's been 'fun' since about 1974. Worth quoting at length:
'The 20th Century's central struggle was between the ideological systems that advocated governmental control of the economy and those that relied on market control. The market-based systems won. Why? In short, market-based systems made better investments, over the long term, than government managed systems. The lesson: systems with large numbers of decision makers, each with capital to invest, make better decisions.
As is often the case, the emerging victory of the market-based system created yet another problem/struggle. Specifically: is it better to trust that individuals empowered with growing salaries/wages will make the best investments for future economic success — or — is it better to grow corporate profits (at the expense of wages/salaries) and let capital markets invest the excess?
Between WW2 and 1974, while still engaged in a bitter struggle with Communism, the US hedged its bets on that question. Both individuals and the capital markets received an equal share of the benefits of productivity growth. Incomes rose mightily and we became broadly wealthy, mirrored by generous growth in the capital markets, relative to the start of the century. As a result of this shared decision-making system, smart investments in infrastructure, industry, education, and much more made America the economic powerhouse of the world. In short, we prospered.
However, the shared decision making system ended. From 1974 onwards, the rewards of productivity growth (economic expansion) went exclusively to the capital markets and not into income growth for individuals. This was likely done, although the mechanism is unclear, under the assumption that the discipline of capital markets produced better investment decisions than individuals. Regardless of the motive or the specific mechanism, where the flow of capital from American economic activity went, couldn't be clearer:
Median per capita incomes in the US are the same as they were in 1974 — there hasn't been any income growth at all.
In contrast, we have seen torrential capital accumulation / concentration and the capital markets have enjoyed a nearly 30 year run of unbridled expansion.
So, what was the result of this concentration/narrowing of decision making power in the hands of the capital markets? How did they invest thirty-four years of American productivity growth for the future?
As of this year, the final results of this American experiment in financial decision making are in. The allocation of this capacity exclusively to capital markets, rather than sharing that decision making with hundreds of millions of Americans, has produced a horrible result. Instead of investing the accumulated wealth of America in productive assets that yielded long term benefits, the money was invested in derivatives (illusory financial products) that yielded nothing of tangible value. In short, the narrow group of actors that operate within the capital markets made the decision to forgo the long and difficult process of growing investments in the tangible world in favor of the outsized returns available through investments in virtual products. That investment is now evaporating…
Would we have been better off if the benefits of massive productivity growth over the last three decades had been shared with hundreds of millions of Americans? Of course. In fact, it is hard to see any other way, other than an open decision making process, which would be able to deal with the growing complexity of the modern world — from globalization to technological change to growing instability.
Can this be error be corrected? Probably not. Most Americans have fallen deeply into debt (mirrored by the US government) in an attempt to maintain lifestyles (or an illusion of progress). They don't have the financial resources for any meaningful decision making power left and worse, there isn't any recognition that a concentration of decision making was even a problem in the first place. In fact, given that most of the last 30 years of American economic investment is now vapor, it's hard to imagine us avoiding economic catastrophe.'
I would only quibble with 'although the mechanism is unclear' – the mechanism was elite greed and the corruption that fed and enabled it.
'It would be the greatest Rape of the Middle Class of our lifetimes, not to mention the destruction of the rule of law.'
It is this last point that may militate against recovery, which requires trust in regulatory and oversight processes. A link from one of the threads here yesterday took me to 'London Banker', an industry pro who says:
'Along with much of the world, I have watched with increasing disquiet as the United States of America morphed under President Bush into a lawless soft dictatorship more like the USSR than the USA. Under his theory of the "unitary executive" the laws that Congress enacted were disapplied by signing statements and secret legal opinions. The protections of the Constitution were eroded and marginalized by police powers and warrantless surveillance. International treaties governing the protection of sovereignty, rules of war and the universal rights of man were distorted by unilateral interpretation and willfully hidden misconduct. Court rulings and judicial review were avoided, and where forced, were ignored or overridden or negated by executive pardon. Transparency and audit became a joke with refusals to cooperate with tribunals or to comply with supeonas or produce evidence. This lawlessness has not made the world or the United States or its allies safer in the age of terrorism as it has degraded and confused what we might have hoped to defend.
Just as we here in the rest of the world hoped we might breathe easy with the end of the Bush administration in sight, and several creditable candidates for president coming forward, the lawless unitary executive has expanded to embrace the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, debasing and contaminating the financial markets globally with its spread to our own central banks and market authorities and destabilizing our banks and investment markets. Once again in the name of crisis and expediency the laws are ignored, decisions are taken in secret, extra-judicial reapportionment of property and contract is mandated by executive fiat, and legislative review and judicial intervention are impossible. Over the past year every financial crisis has been met with lawless and Enron-esque innovation by the Federal Reserve and Treasury, and this week was arguably more extreme.
After this week's secret and unaccountable and extra-legal moves by the US financial authorities, I will not be holding any assets in the United States. I do not understand the rules. I doubt any rules will be applied fairly to all the players. I cannot be sure who the umpire works for, or what principles the umpire thinks they should uphold. I will not play the game.*'
That was yesterday; today he echoes Jim Haygood:
'The text of the proposed emergency markets legislation is now available. Just as expected, it will contain a provision to provide immunity from any review by any court or executive agency. Either get with the collaborationists or get with the insurgents. There is no other choice. The USA doesn’t exist as we once knew it.'
You might think 'he's just one less than gruntled investor' but as Jim says the anger out there is palpable, and global. Read Nouriel Roubini's blog and the comment threads.
'I think you all are projecting your wishes onto a complex and unpredictable future. By all accounts, we aren't through the woods yet.'
Not by a long shot. I read last week that the total value of the world economy aproximates 49 trillion US dollars. The value of the paper in the shadow economy? Perhaps 84 trillion. Still a ways to go.
Me, I hope and pray that Leila is right, and that a modest and productive, if not prosperous existence, will still be possible. In the last few months I have read both Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the most pessimistic book in history, and James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand, which is roughly Leila's idyll in a chastened world, maybe thirty years on. I know which I prefer, but I don't know which I'll get.
witty says,
"Wars are the same as this. For example, in 1948, the intention of the Arab armies was to weaken and hopefully eliminate Israel. And like this weak, the status of boiling wars change fast."
but why for so long?
rancour and guilt will never be the solution unless,
peace and brotherhood is sought over interests.
the choice belongs to that community, they live there every day.
brotherhood over interest is part of the solution, but the legal state out of control cannot be fair when interests are considered over brotherhood.
fair, what is fair?
truth, what is truth?
i hope the financial hokus pokus works, but the fact that it may not ought to shed some light on the luminaries that concocted strong wampum. They are the same guys who have the solution.
common sense is never a bad idea.
Liberalism is good in that way.
Sorry, can't resist adding Bill Greider's 2c:
'If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public–all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics–exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.'
the "shadow economy" if there is such a thing, is velocity and momentum of money. otherwise it wouldnt be a shadow.
cause velocity and momentum can be simulated.
some things can only be simulated.
I've been wondering when Phil would write about the financial crisis!
I think now is a time for astute and/or lucky people with some extra cash to make a handsome profit in the markets.
As one who has lived in and followed Latin America for decades, I know that these crises may seem like the end of the world – and they are, for some sectors of the populace – but things always bounce back in some manner, and occasionally they bounce back with a vengeance.
Carlos Hank Slim began buying assets in Mexico during the '80's debt crisis with the philosophy that "countries don't go bankrupt." He's now the richest man in the world.
This latest "crisis", which economists have known was coming for years due to blatant Wall Street and financial sector chicanery, is being used by the Washington regime in the same way 9/11 was used to usher in “the Patriot Act” and the ongoing “war on terror”-related war-profiteering: as a trojan horse. It’s all a pretext to undertake yet another massive transfer of wealth and power from average Americans to the corrupt elite.
What does the financial “rescue” amount to? A transfer of bad debt off of the books of Wall Street hustlers (most of them cronies of Washington hustlers) onto the backs of U.S. taxpayers and their children. The Wall Street hustlers have already banked their profits from all of the packages of bad debt they’ve produced, but don't want to get caught holding the bag when all of the suckers they sold it to come calling, (which would mean nasty lawsuits that, heaven forbid, might even be able to tap into the hustlers’ ill gotten gains) so…Washington is arranging for the bag to be handed to the American taxpayers.
These soulless Wall Street/Washington sharpies are on the cusp of selling the next two to three generations of Americans down the river on behalf of their own temporal comfort and greed. This all is totally consistent with their Zionist moral compass. I hope they enjoy their gold-plated toilets.
Haygoods 4I policy is not as good as my old FTHT formula. I quote myself:
"Give Bush a Fair Trial and Hang him from the nearest Tree."
And his friends of course as well. But of course it is a pipe dream. They are still in charge. The worst possibility in store for them is to abscond to Switzerland where their money is.
They will still have fun Phil. Money + Power = Fun + Hos. Especially when no one else has any.
Capitalism is defunct. Next at bat is National Socialism, tho I guess they cant call it that. And we will be only a colony owned by the Ruling Class of China and Arabia.
We can only hope that they cant make it stick. But we dont have a clear alternative. Better start to talk about it. Surruptitiously.
But me I think I will move to Brazil. I like the ladies there.
Phil
Does anyone doubt that the proportion of Jews among those who made out like bandits from the greatest rip-off in history probably is as great as their percentage among the neo-cons?
Financial recklessness and profiteering at home, and empire building abroad under the rubric of the so-called" war on terror" are just two sides of the same corrupt and evil Zionist coin.
Hopefully the financial crisis will bring the super-rich Israel lobby down a peg or two — perhaps opening the way for a more even handed US policy in the Mideast.
I am bound to admit that I seem to have been entirely wrong. I thought that the rapid collapse of the capitalist political/economic system would lead to a chaotic breathing space. But the Ruling Class response has been deft beyond all my expectations. In a dazzling jui jitsu like move, it is using the momentum of the collapse to effect a seamless transition to fascism. And we are like sheep frozen in the headlights.
They saw this coming and they had a contingency plan.
I was complacent. The Ruling Class is way beyond Bushco. They can still plan two moves ahead.
But there will be a fatefull contradiction between the ideology of national socialism and the reality of extranational ownership. Hot times are coming. Many will fall in the struggle. I want to get out of the kitchen.
Political activism is not my bag. I am a scientist. Theoretical, not experimental.
This just in.
Kristof reports in the hottimes that 30% of voters think Obama is or may be a Moslim.
So I guess that at least a third will be happy with Fascism, and more than that (like me) will not want to tangle with it.
Resistence is futile. Is Obama the last best hope? If youre not ready to leave, youd better at least pack your bags.
Glenn,
Your quote from Robb is interesting, but I believe it oversimplifies and confuses in assuming someone either gives decisionmaking to the many or to the few capitalists, and somehow the switch got pulled in 1974 in favor of the latter. Free markets are better than central authority in making decisions, because of many decisionmakers, but be careful how you define free market. I don't think they're free unless you have many buyers and many sellers, all with access to good information.
Much if not most of the abuses have arisen through various ploys to create cartels (too few sellers), and/or off balance sheet transactions, or incomprehensible transactions, that the financial wizards who think them up glorify as "making markets more efficient," but which have the opposite effect (lack of good information). They're not unlike Communist central planners who take authority "for the good of the proletariat," but end up enjoying their Dahkas on the Crimean Sea.
One class or tribe stoning another isn't the solution: it's just recognizing that markets aren't free and efficient unless there are many buyers and many sellers all with good information. Wise government should protect free markets from government, and protect society from rigged markets. What we usually get, however, is unwise regulation burdening free markets, while providing a smoke screen for manipulation. Look over what Phill Gramm has done from that perspective and tell me I'm wrong.
Doppler
yes, Robb's take is probably too reductive, but a useful sideways perspective. He is heavily influenced by Nassim Taleb's ideas re black swans and the notion that more deciders make better decisions.
'assuming someone either gives decisionmaking to the many or to the few capitalists, and somehow the switch got pulled in 1974 in favor of the latter.'
It's reductive in the sense that such a movement doesn't need a 'mechanism', let alone a person to accomplish it. It is the sort of thing that happens incrementally, insitutionally, as part of the changing environment of government, the economy, etc, and with the general agreement of relevant stakeholders. Robb makes it sound like a sinister black op, but those (thousands of) people who contributed to it would I'm sure be surprised to see it characterised as anything other than a series of decisons based on the best available info at the time, guided by the dominant investment theories of the day.
I'm an Australian BTW, and only vaguely recognise Phil Gramm as a GOP Senator or Congressman.
Correction above:
Carlos Slim Helu.
Glenn,
Phil Gramm was a senator from Texas who led the repeal of Glass-Steagal, the Depression era laws that required commercial banks to stay out of investment banking. He also led the dereg that provided the opportunity for Enron to manipulate energy trading markets. Having left the Senate, he is raking in millions as a lobbyist for oil interests, and foreign banking interests, for whom he secured exemptions from anti-terrorists laws designed to require banks to report on their clients. He is McCain's senior economic advisor, and famously said we are only suffering a "mental recession" and Americans have become a "nation of whiners." To me he personfies a portion of the Republican party that believes being conservative means having a lot of money and being greedy about it.
Thanks Doppler
by coincidence, I just noticed at HuffPo that 'McCain refuses to rule out Gramm as Treasury Secretary'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/21/mccain-campaign-cantwontr_n_128098.html
Nice to see the tradition of foxes being appointed to henhouses still has legs…
McCain/Gramm is a disaster already happening.
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