That's not me accusing you. That's me bringing up that Clinton didn't have a large role in the 2008 Crisis as you could put any other political contender there at the time, and the result would most likely be the same. Moreover, all I did is ask you to validate your point, which was Clinton's role in the 2008 crisis. I also think W. Bush's "incompetence" is vastly overblown and is essentially a liberal meme at this point. But I agree, I also think W. Bush did not have any idea about what was going on. There were too many other things going on at the time, namely the War on Terror and a little later, the Russo-Georgia War which re-ignited Cold War fears. As I already said, W. Bush is in an unfortunate position of being President during the crisis which was, for the most part, unforeseen by the political establishment. Al Gore in 2000 didn't say a word about the Finance sector, nor did John Kerry in 2004.
You didn't present an argument. All you did was parrot the usual Glass-Steagall talking points. That's not an argument and I addressed it with the relevant information from the FCIC. I'm not the one playing Cat&Mouse. I asked you to specify what criticism you had against Clinton, and then I addressed any information you brought up.Then why don't you do so, if you can so decisively beat my argument? Why play cat and mouse? And why must only my claims against Clinton be substantiated? Why not Reagan and the two Bushes as well? Why is their guilt so much more obvious than the Clinton Administration's? Why is the possibility that the blame could be even the smallest bit bi-partisan in nature so unacceptable to you? Do people like Chuck Schumer, who openly embraced the deregulatory agenda of wallstreet, not exist in your mind or something?
Also, the two articles I just cited in my last post weren't opinion articles... Unless that term has a specific context in terms of economics, they should technically be scholarly articles with many references attached(2nd one is from MIT press, so...). Furthermore the Hill article, and the NYTimes article I posted are not opinion articles(again, unless that has a specific context in economics), since NYTimes opinion articles are mentioned with the sub-heading "opinion" which that article was missing, since it was in the international business section. And neither is the Time magazine article I posted, to my knowledge, since like I said, opinion pieces are almost always labelled as such; the three of those should be news articles. So like I said, unless the word "opinion article" has a specific context in economics, you're seriously misrepresenting a sizeable portion of the evidence I've provided.
This would be an opinion article:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009...iglitz200901-2
From a nobel laureate in economics. Both he and Paul Krugman believe that repealing Glass-Steagall was a mistake, although Krugman doesn't believe it caused the crash. Naturally, the article's headline reads:
Stiglitz was also working for the World Bank. He wrote one of my favorite books on the euro. I know who he is and I'm even familiar with the vanity fair article, moreover he doesn't agree with you on Glass-Steagall either.Because financial de-regulation happened under all three--it might be an opinion article, but that statement is factual, that is for sure. It's really not uncommon for all three of those presidents to be mentioned when talking about financial de-regulation and the 2008 crash. Also worth noting that he worked on a committee under the Clinton administration:
So his opinion is especially valuable because he was an eye witness to some of Alan Greenspan's deregulatory actions and decisions under the Clinton administration.
I've never seen Sitglitz say that the repeal of Glass Steagall caused or significantly contributed to the 2008 crash. Most economists don't. They treat the repeal of Glass-Steagall as a symptom, not a cause.The most important consequence of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was indirect—it lay in the way repeal changed an entire culture.
The Federal Reserve is independent of the Clinton Administration. Greenspan was appointed largely because he was a safe choice for both Ds and Rs. Moreover, the CRA thing is a myth and I didn't see you post any other two sources. Because there was no link and no citation. I'm not going through an entire book to understand what specifically you are talking about. Back to the CRA, that's a myth that's been pushed by Conservative economists but who have yet to provide a good argument.No, I haven't; noticed that you conveniently skipped the last two sources I provided. The first one also discusses how the Clinton Administration's policy of "affordable" housing for the poor created the conditions for the creation of subprime mortgages, which has absolutely nothing to do with Glass-Steagall. Second one mentions how considerable financial de-regulation occurred under the Clinton Administration, without mentioning the Glass-Steagall act, which is a well known fact, unless you have a source which suggests that considerable financial de-regulation under Clinton didn't occur? Furthermore there was also the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which thwarted attempts to regulate derivatives, signed by Clinton. Unstable derivatives later contributed to this crash, so again, harmful financial de-regulation occurred under Clinton.
He even openly admitted that he was wrong about de-regulating derivatives and that he should have attempted to regulate them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3Z2Z2WMJk
The FCIC on the CRA. First section, Conclusions of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, page xxvii. Page 28 in simple PDF terms.
As for the CFMA, which is one of the biggest factors in the Financial Crash of 2008, here's the voting record. This bill was going to get passed no matter what and I fail to see what the Clinton Administration had to do with a bill that was so successfully lobbied.Finally, as to the matter of whether government housing policies were a primarycause of the crisis: for decades, government policy has encouraged homeownershipthrough a set of incentives, assistance programs, and mandates. These policies wereput in place and promoted by several administrations and Congresses—indeed, bothPresidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush set aggressive goals to increase homeownership.In conducting our inquiry, we took a careful look at HUD’s affordable housinggoals, as noted above, and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The CRA wasenacted in 1977 to combat “redlining” by banks—the practice of denying credit to individualsand businesses in certain neighborhoods without regard to their creditworthiness.The CRA requires banks and savings and loans to lend, invest, and provideservices to the communities from which they take deposits, consistent with banksafety and soundness.
The Commission concludes the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lendingor the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicatesonly 6% of high-cost loans—a proxy for subprime loans—had any connection tothe law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which theywere required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the sameneighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law.
Nonetheless, we make the following observation about government housing policies—theyfailed in this respect: As a nation, we set aggressive homeownership goalswith the desire to extend credit to families previously denied access to the financialmarkets. Yet the government failed to ensure that the philosophy of opportunity wasbeing matched by the practical realities on the ground. Witness again the failure ofthe Federal Reserve and other regulators to rein in irresponsible lending. Homeownershippeaked in the spring of 2004 and then began to decline. From that point on,the talk of opportunity was tragically at odds with the reality of a financial disaster inthe making
Correct, however, the issue with focusing on Glass Steagall is that Glass Steagall does little to address the biggest causes of the crisis. Leverage and shadow banking. Like the quote said, the compartmentalization of the two entities may have helped, but it would be an indirect and small effect. GSA doesn't address the leverage ratios, or the massive shadow banking sector that's beyond government oversight anyway. And when we say shadow banking, we're mostly referring to investment banks. The issue was that deposits in investment banks (and other similar financial vehicles) were widely considered to be as safe as normal banks, except there was little regulation to control their risks. GSA doesn't address that fact, and the 12 trillion dollars in that system. So no, there is very little evidence that the repeal of GSA was a large factor in any of this. Simply speculation.The Glass-Steagall act effectively prohibited commercial banks from engaging in activities such as insurance under-writing and investment banking, as well as mergers between commercial and investment banks(to my understanding). Signed into law in 1933, the general idea was to keep commercial banking and investment banking totally separate from one another--the intent was to prevent people's deposits from being used in speculative activities aside from loans, as well as to discourage banking monopolies(from what I understand). It was also intended to prevent conflicts of interest from occurring. It also had further regulations such as that a industrial company could not own a bank, and that a bank could not own more than 10% of a non-banking entity. In the film "Inside Job", Soros compares this piece of legislation to an oil tanker, which is compartmentalized such that if the tanker gets a hole in it, only the compartments affected will lose their oil, and not the entire ship. He then compared the repealing of this act to eliminating all of the separate oil compartments in a tanker.
As to whether I think it would have stopped the crisis? Not necessarily considering how much other de-regulatory policies were being, or had already been, passed at the time. I agree with what you quoted beforehand:
Like Soros' analogy, I think the increased compartmentalization and regulation that banks had under Glass-Steagall would make it more difficult for banks to behave as riskily as they did(as well as discourage monopolies). In 1987, in a report by the Congressional Research Service examining the case for and against Glass-steagall, found that: #3. " Securities activities can be risky, leading to enormous losses" they predicted that this could happen if this was repealed, and that's pretty much exactly what happened. Even if the Glass-Steagall act had already begun to have been eroded, repealing it just made things easier for banks to merge, behave more riskily and etc. IMO.
Go back and re-read your own posts. No, it isn't clear that Clinton played a role in the 2008 crash and the evidence you brought up then didn't implicate the Clinton Administration in anything... The narrative that all 4 administrations had a role and were all responsible for the financial crisis is lazy and unimaginative and does nothing to address the actual causes of the crisis.No, I definitely have. You just have odd standards of evidence, especially when it comes to insulting the Clintons, apparently.
Ah, but how does that make Clinton responsible for the crash? The de-regulation in isolation do not cause the crash all by themselves.Significant financial de-regulation occurred under Clinton. Too bad, so sad.