Read More of Part 3 Deregualtation by Danny Hammond
So, now you had Windows 95 email running at 186,000 miles per second, all kinds of pent up greed on Wall Street and the ability to fake financial instruments and send them across the entire nation in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. No need to send legitimate original signatures by US Mail.
They were ready. But, Glass-Steagall would not have allowed it. With Glass-Steagall on the job there were plenty of rules (regulations) and plenty of referees in place so that if the Wall Street Scoundrels tried to cheat and lie and steal with all of these new technologies, Glass-Steagall would have put another 1,000 bankers mid-level and higher in jail in a heartbeat. That made good sense in any world or any industry. So, the only logical thing to do was to leave things as they were.
For about a day. All of this time the rich families and stockbrokers and Ponzi scheme specialists had been griping and moaning and giving lobbying money to everybody in US government and screaming that we could really get an economy moving if ....only we would deregulate the finance industry and let them go wild, because they were the smartest guys in town and the fact that they were rich proved it. Well, I can't say why what happens next did happen next.
But, that lobbying money spent on our good neighbors from our town who we sent to Washington DC to advocate for us, that lobbying money I say was bribe money. No one with one ounce of ethics in their DNA would have done what came next unless they were offered too much money to say no to. Reader, you know this is true, but you don't believe there is anything you can do about it. You are little and they are big. There is no time for someone who has a car and a house and kids who will go to college one day.
Well anyway, what happened next is that while we were still all in 1999, the Democrat President and the Republican Congress agreed on something (Oh No!). Working together they REPEALED THE GLASS-STEAGALL ACT OF 1933. In whole. With careful thought and a show of hands they repealed the law that had held America together for more than six decades and then they applauded each other and they left the building dragging The Glass Steagall Act of 1934 out behind the congress building and shot in the head, so it could never be passed again.
They left town to go Vegas next, but on their way out they intentionally did not replace the Act with something else. They left the financial industry with no regulation (rules) and no regulators (referees). The UETA laws were not repealed because no one (good guys or bad guys) ever thought of them again. The original signature law has been broken tens of millions of times since its enactment in 1999.
What would happen if the NFL ruled that there would be no need for referees anymore because they had already ruled that there were to be no more rules?
The next Sunday the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders would trot out onto the field and begin to play the game with no rules and no referees.
What would that game look like? Just try to imagine it. I kind of envision it would be similar to, just for some kind of deregulation test, the city of New York in New York state passed a rule deregulating all driving rules in the city. No laws at all. This would be great if you own a Lamborghini, or a bulldozer, or even a World of Outlaws winged Sprint Car. But, folks that would be no way to run a city. It would be like post-1999.
It would actually look like what our financial industry did look like from 1999 until 2007 when it imploded. It screamed like a great beast and simply tipped over and died.
The Glass-Steagall Act of 1934 with its simple regulations (rules) and its directive for regulators (referees) had kept our financial system and therefore the citizens of the United States safe for 65 years. The fools in our government repealed this Act and brought down upon our heads Armageddon only eight years after our government finding that Americans had no more need for Glass-Steagall.
Safe for 65 years and "all blowed up" in eight years. The federal reserve printed money to buy back all the bad products that had been sold by Wall Street so the banks could be rescued, but it was dumped on the backs of the American taxpayers who were never informed that the term "Quantitative Easing" was just two unrelated words that sounded like a big plan. Look up those two words in the dictionary and tell how you would fit them together in a sentence.
Oh here, I'll do it for everyone: [QUANTITATIVE-- quan·ti·ta·tive /ˈkwän(t)əˌtādiv/ adjective relating to, measuring, or measured by the quantity of something rather than its quality. "quantitative analysis" and
EASING ease /ēz/ verb gerund or present participle: easing 1. make (something unpleasant, painful, or intense) less serious or severe." a huge road-building program to ease congestion" 2. move carefully, gradually, or gently. "I eased down the slope with care"
Oh here, I'll do it for everyone: [QUANTITATIVE-- quan·ti·ta·tive /ˈkwän(t)əˌtādiv/ adjective relating to, measuring, or measured by the quantity of something rather than its quality. "quantitative analysis" and
EASING ease /ēz/ verb gerund or present participle: easing 1. make (something unpleasant, painful, or intense) less serious or severe." a huge road-building program to ease congestion" 2. move carefully, gradually, or gently. "I eased down the slope with care"
My guess is that the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve (which is not a real part of our government) got us out of the Great Recession by measuring all the broke banks by quantity and not quality as they "eased down the slope with care". Hell, I should have thought of that!
When the smoke seemed like it had cleared, Congress and presidents began to fix the most broken stuff in the history of the world although they were not qualified for the task. That job would have been for guys more like say, Allen Shephard, A.J. Foyt, and Evel Knievel.
I don't even know where to begin on Obama and his Attorney General. This to me says it all "In the worst eight years of recovery I never heard either of those two even use the words mortgage fraud". Just let your mind go from there.
They invented a new pretender Glass-Steagall called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which was enacted in 2010 and was all crickety and it leaked. But, at least it was something. However, as it stumbled and wabbled through Congress it was stabbed and gutted by everyone who a knife or a gutting tool. The only thing that was still useful was a very good idea called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
The CFPB was a stand-alone agency that was doing a great job all by itself from its inception in 2010 for 8 years collecting billions of fines from banks, servicers and other nasty things and actually helping consumers.
But, in late 2018, "the President who would be King", Donald Trump sent the worst slimeball of this whole mess, ( and I have been fighting against the worst of the worst of these sewer rats) Mick Mulvaney one time crooked congressman to take over the independent agency CFPB with orders to shut it down. Which once again left the United States with no practical regulation whatsoever.
Mick arrived on a Monday morning and learned that PNC Bank had agreed to pay a $190,000,000 fine on Wednesday for cheating and stealing from Americans. On Tuesday morning Mick declared that PNC Bank did not owe any money and just to keep their money.
This eliminated that last federal watchdog left in the United States that was actively hunting down and making pay any offender of the still existing laws protecting Borrowers. My regular readers will understand that the only laws left are in the constitution. The constitution is also under siege, but it is still very, very powerful and it is so easy to read and understand that we are not yet beaten or even out of the game.
This was the most brazen and transparent governmental action to kill enforcement of consumer protection laws that I have seen and I have seen them all.
AMERICA YOU ARE GETTING SCREWED BY YOUR OWN EMPLOYEES - THE JUDICIARY - CONGRESS - AND YOUR PRESIDENTS. THIS WAS NOT DONE BY DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN BAD GUYS. IT WAS DONE BY JUST BAD GUYS.
From 1988 to 1994 1000 bankers from mid-level up were put in jail. From 1999 until today only one broker or lender has gone to jail. He was the founder of Taylor, Bean, and Whitaker and he got 30 years. But, not for cheating Borrowers. Mr. Farkis cheated Ginnie Mae. Fanny, Freddy, and Ginnie Mae are the worst offenders of all. They can be bad because they are protected from you by your own government.
