With the economic turmoil well cemented in, many are now maneuvering to play the blame game. While history may in time find anyone in Washington the last 15 years responsible, the 42nd President is quick out of the gates campaigning on his behalf that he is completely innocent.
As he has been running to his much beloved media this week explaining his opinion had he been in office none of this would have ever happened. Let us reflect on the 2 main points his innocents would be questioned.
First of which signing the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) December 8, 1993. Claiming this to be one of his greatest accomplishments in his first year in office. While this bill was in negotiation before he was in office, mind you he campaigned against it to win office calling it irresponsible for the American worker. He was happy at the time to stick this feather in his cap.
Most importantly his signing of the 1999 legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Officially known as the Banking act of 1933, it separated banking types accordingly to commercial and investment banking and also created the FDIC. This was considered in the 80’s and major arguments for not repealing it was as follows:
1) the conflict of interests with the granting of credit, lending investing and the use of credit.
2) the control of money must be a limited power to ensure soundness and competition to remain fair in the market.
3) securities being risky the government could have extremely large payouts if the institutions fail.
4) deposit institutions are supposed to be limited risk, managers may not act prudently without this separation.
One major scale of guilt within this is to look at sub-prime loans only being 5% of all mortgages before the repeal, less than 10 years after sub-prime loans accounted for almost 30% of all mortgages. By the way, major supporters were Sens. Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dick Durbin, Tom Daschle, and Joe Biden. And the authors Sens. Phil Gramm, Jim Leach.
So as we see yet another campaign trail to deny what his guilt is, I guess it is just another case of defining what is ‘IS”.

Terry Tucker