It was
disturbing enough when Senator Ted Cruz announced that Neil Bush, brother of
Jeb and George W., would be a Finance Chairman of his campaign.
Neil
defrauded U.S. taxpayers out of $1.5 billion dollars in a savings and
loan scam. Now however, Cruz has announced a key appointment that should
disturb voters even more.
Cruz
named Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm as his economic guru. This guy virtually
crashed the U.S. economy. Gramm is largely responsible for two bills which led
to the speculative bubble which popped in September 2008. First was his
Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill that repealed Glass Steagall, which separated
investment banking from commercial banking. Its repeal — which was signed into
law by President Clinton, with the backing of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers —
opened the door for a flood of money, from commercial banks, to flow into
mortgage-backed securities and other funny-money schemes, which blew up in
2008.
The
second bill was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which totally
freed derivative trading from any regulatory oversight. This was another Phil
Gramm bill, and was central to the bubble creation from 2000 to 2008, and then
again today.More
