Thursday, February 16, 2012
Bush (43), The Great Financial Deregulator?
"The Bush Administration's eight long years of failed deregulation policies have resulted in our nation's largest bailout ever, leaving the American taxpayers on the hook potentially for billions of dollars." This, folks, is what former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said in 2009...........................................................................................Hm, kind of matches up nicely with conventional wisdom, doesn't it; a big, bad Republican President laying the hammer down, bringing the country down with him? The only problem, of course, is that it's total bullshit. Yep, folks, you can blame President Bush for a whole litany of things (2 unnecessary wars, out of control discretionary spending, burgeoning deficits, etc.) but deregulation flat-out just isn't one of them...........................................................................................a) The main pieces of deregulation most frequently cited; the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, were both passed and signed into law before Mr. Bush ever became President, b) the budget for financial regulation actually went up and up significantly (the SEC budget, for example, went up from 357 million to a whopping 629 million - this, according to a study by Washington University, St. Louis and George Mason University) under the fellow, c) the codes of Federal regulation actually reached an all-time high of over 75,000 pages during Bush's tenure, and d) Mr. Bush supported and signed into law, Sarbanes-Oxley, a highly REGULATORY piece of regulation. NONE of any of this points to Mr. Bush as a deregulator.....................................................................................................The bottom-line here, people, is that Mrs. Pelosi is either lying or she's an idiot. And, please, get this, too. Pelosi was actually one of the 153 House Democrats who voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley back in 1999. She frigging voted for it!...I mean, come on, does it get any better than this or what?
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5 comments:
"The bottom-line here, people, is that Mrs. Pelosi is either lying or she's an idiot."
I don't think she's an idiot. Oh she lies, yes. And she profits greatly from her lifetime of public service... er self-service.
This hatred you have for Nancy Pelosi is kind of scary.
Sarbanes–Oxley was enacted in response to "major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom".
You really think bush could have said no?
Also, bush was president for 8 years. He could have pushed for regulation of F&F. Are you telling me they couldn't have rammed it through if they had wanted to? They rammed through the tax cuts.
And don't forget that the Republicans controlled the House for 6 years of bush's 8 years in office and the Senate for 4 out of 8.
Nancy Pelosi may be oversimplifying, but she isn't lying. Republicans are pushing for less regulation RIGHT NOW. All the Republicans running for POTUS want to repeal back Dodd-Frank.
Nancy Pelosi is selling the narrative (which is what politicians do). Republicans win the argument a lot of the time because they keep the message simple. I'd be totally against Nancy Pelosi overcomplicating the narrative and losing the message war as a result.
I want Democrats to win, not lose because they've handicapped themselves due to a ridiculous notion that the WHOLE story needs to be told or it's "lying".
I don't hate her. I just feel her talents would best be spent gardening as a retired person (even though she'd still be soaking the taxpayer for more millions in the process) rather than making consistently destructive decisions from any position of power.
According to the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html), Mr. Bush pushed for sweeping reform of Fannie and Freddie but was rejected by BOTH Democrats AND Republicans in the Congress. Should the fellow have pushed even harder? You bet.............As for Mrs. Pelosi, I don't like her at all (hate is much too strong of a term) and truly think that the country would have been far better served with a Speaker Hoyer. Just my opinion.............And, really, what part of that statement of hers is true? None of it. I mean, yeah, you can criticize the Republicans now but to broadbrush frigging Bush as a small government deregulator is borderline laughable.
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