Where in the World is Billy Jeff?

pettyfog · Jun 8, 2009

The Mellowing of William Jefferson Clinton

So far, the former president has avoided causing trouble for the new one. Before Hillary Clinton was picked for secretary of state, some Obama advisers were wary of bringing a freelancing Bill Clinton inside the tent. But to their surprise, Clinton has done nothing to complicate Obama’s life so far. As of early May, Clinton had never been mentioned during the daily White House senior staff meetings as an issue to be dealt with, according to two officials who attend. By contrast, one of them said, Jimmy Carter had come up twice already.
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Carter screwed things up for Clinton, he screwed things up for Dubya... why stop now?

When the subject came up during our conversation in Chappaqua, Clinton calmly dissected the case against him and acknowledged that in at least some particulars his critics have a point. In almost clinical form, as if back at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he broke down the case against him into three allegations: first, that he used the Community Reinvestment Act to force small banks into making loans to low-income depositors who were too risky. Second, that he signed the deregulatory Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, repealing part of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. And third, that he failed to regulate the complex financial instruments known as derivatives.
The first complaint Clinton rejects as “just a totally off-the-wall crazy argument” made by the “right wing,” noting that community banks have not had major problems. The second he gives some credence to, although he blames Bush for, in his view, neutering the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Letting banks take investment positions I don’t think had much to do with this meltdown,” he said. “And the more diversified institutions in general were better able to handle what happened. And again, if I had known that the S.E.C. would have taken a rain check, would I have done it? Probably not. But I wouldn’t have done anything. In other words, I would have tried to reverse everything if I had known we were going to have eight years where we would not have an S.E.C. for most of the time.”

Then there are the derivatives. There, Clinton pleads guilty. Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, opposed regulation of derivatives as they came to the fore in the 1990s, and Clinton agreed. “They argued that nobody’s going to buy these derivatives, we’ll do it without transparency, they’ll get the information they need,” he recalled. “And it turned out to be just wrong; it just wasn’t true.” He said others share blame, including credit-rating agencies that underestimated the risk. But he accepts responsibility as well. “I very much wish now that I had demanded that we put derivatives under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission and that transparency rules had been observed and that we had done that. That I think is a legitimate criticism of what we didn’t do.” He added: “If you ask me to write the indictment, I’d say: ‘I wish Bill Clinton had said more about derivatives. The Republicans probably would have stopped him from doing it, but at least he should have sounded the alarm bell.’ ”

For all that, Clinton insisted he never would have let the housing bubble grow into the problem it became (never mind the high-technology bubble that burst on his watch) and would have stepped in if he were president to prevent the free fall. “When anybody asks me that,” he told me, “I ask them, I look at them and ask them: ‘Do you think this would have happened if we had been there? Look me in the face and say yes.’ I haven’t found any takers yet.”
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Bless 'is heart! He still takes the road to de nile!

Whatever.. I count on him to step up and speak up when things REALLY go round the bend.

WhitesBhoy · Jun 8, 2009

Where the hell is Matt?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

pettyfog · Jun 9, 2009

WhitesBhoy said:

Where the hell is Matt?
..
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That's genius! Dancing skills bring to mind Seinfeld's Elaine, though.

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Where in the World is Billy Jeff?

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Where in the World is Billy Jeff?

pettyfog Well-Known Member

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pettyfog Well-Known Member

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