S.E.C. Concedes Oversight Flaws Fueled Collapse (Ya THINK???)

The New York Times ^ | September 26, 2008 | STEPHEN LABATON

[Myynnxx]

“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,” he said in a statement. The program “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate” of the program, and “weakened its effectiveness,” he added.

[Myynnxx]

"In 1999, the lawmakers adopted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which broke down the Depression-era restrictions between investment banks and commercial banks. As part of a political compromise, the law gave the commission the authority to regulate the securities and brokerage operations of the investment banks, but not their holding companies. Anyone want to explain this to me? Was this the beginning of the SEC failure?Why was it passed? "

http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/glbact.html
The Gramm-Leach Bliley Act will give information on the GLB. It's mostly about PRIVACY, so they can't share your personal information to predatory lending companies. However, the regulation was voluntary.

But that is only a tiny piece of this giant puzzle, and not the main cause of anything. Along with the securities, there are also the derivatives and the entire ponzi scheme is so convoluted that most of the bank executives that bought into this didn't understand it themselves. Their crime was believing what they were told by the greedy bastards who were making the millions selling this crap. But these executives paid these creeps to advise them, because they're too busy running their businesses to do the research, and why shouldn't they have believed these guys? They hired them because they trusted them! (Kind of like how doctors believe the pharmaceutical reps that peddle their drugs and tell the doctors the benefits of the drugs but not the restrictions (do not give this drug to pre-menopausal women it might kill them...) or side effects.. and the docs are too busy seeing their patients to read all the literature on each new Rx that comes out. Besides, why shouldn't the doctors not believe the Pharma reps? "Ambien is not addictive!"

The big problems began in the 80's when everyone really believed that deregulation was the way to go for everything in the marketplace. In a perfect, honorable world, where everyone has everyone's best interests as JOB ONE, it might work. But that is not the real world, as we've all come to know. Add one seed of greed into the mix, and that good ideal is poisoned. I guess no one really took into account that humans are weak, and are capable of sin.

Greed is a very corrupting virus. A lot of people think that if everyone was so stupid to think this would work, then they deserve to fail. Unfortunately, the people who SHOULD fail, are the very people who made the billions and most likely aren't going to be punished. It's YOUR bank that holds YOUR money, and in the long run, YOUR money will disappear if there is no rescue of somekind. Right now the credit market is frozen, and banks aren't even lending each other money, let alone you and me. This is dangerous because companies, even little ones, and Mom & Pop stores need to borrow money on occasion to expand their business, and hire more people to make more money, pay their employees more, which in turn will put more money into the economy.

Another bad thing is huge corporations in this country have exported their manufacturing to other countries because of cheaper labor. Right now, the US is not manufacturing much of anything other than DEBT. That needs to change. Jobs need to come back here. Large corporations need to pay their share of taxes not have their money in off shore accounts. [SIDEBAR] I was very disappointed in McCain for bringing up Ireland and their business taxes... it was very misleading. They have national health care, and their citizens pay almost 40% in taxes, but the companies also don't have all kinds of IRS rules to get write-offs either... sorry, I just deal with this sort of thing so I know a thing or two... and that was a silly comment for him to make.[/SIDEBAR]

China owns most of our debt. The biggest concern right now is the US DOLLAR and it's worth. I can't stress HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS. We can't allow the dollar to devalue any more. If the rest of the world decides to trade in petro EUROS instead of US DOLLARS we're going to wake up and be Argentina.

Sorry - it's early here, and I've gone off about a ton of different things... it's all related, so I hope I haven't made it more complicated....

This website: http://www.ftc.gov has a lot of great info.... take a look.... you might be surprised.

[truthandlife]

After reading this, we should understand why Senator McCain wanted Chris Cox fired. He was chief architecture in loosening oversight and probably should be fired. Nothing personal just bad judgment.