Isn't this essentially how Democrats ruined our economy?

Time magazine, highlighting some of those most responsible for the economic crisis, recently singled out former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), and for good reason. Few deserve as much blame as the former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Gramm “played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street,” Time explained. “He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG.

As a Republican U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Phil Gramm introduced the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, deregulating banks in 1999. Three years later after leaving office in 2002 Senator Phil Gramm served as Vice Chairman and a member of the Swiss banking giant UBS AG. In May 2009 the company completed the acquisition of the bailed-out AIG Financial Products Corp., including AIG’s rights to the DJAIG Commodity index. Current Market Cap: $71 billion. Phil Gramm was also John McCain’s presidential senior economic adviser in 2008. Economist Paul Krugman named Phil Gramm as #2 man of the economic crisis. Alan Greenspan was #1.

Most economists state that the 1999 legislation spearheaded by Gramm and signed into law by President Clinton — the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — was significantly to blame for the 2007 sub-prime mortgage crisis and 2008 global economic crisis, the act that was widely known for repealing portions of the Glass–Steagall Act, which had regulated the financial services industry.

I think your characterization of NAFTA being a democrat invention is wrong, though it was bipartisan it was clearly anti-Labor Union and generally enjoyed more support among Republicans

You also forgot Bush tried on numerous occasions to save Social Security and was blocked by Democrats

I see Expat trying to pin the national debt on Bush, but his deficit spending was for a limited time cost (Iraq & Afghanistan) not a perpetual non-emergency govt giveaway.

So your blaming Presidents for the failures of the various Congress? They can only sign what Congress puts in front of them.

Edit: Example NAFTA

This was a Reagan creation, that Bush sn tried to get past for his 4 years. Then it was finally past by Congress with super majority votes, meaning Clinton had no choice but to sign it. The sponsors of the bill in both the House and Senate were Republicans. The majority of the yes votes were Republicans.

Not at all. Clinton left office leaving a substantial surplus, and it was believed that the national debt would be paid off in a decade. Bush43 promptly cut taxes by $8T, then spent $4T on war, and financed everything by raising the national debt 11 times in 8 years.

I agree. The democrats are just as corrupt, stupid, arrogant, and bigoted as the republicans. :)

I think its just one big political party actually, with lip service being paid to fringe issues to give the appearance of disagreements over real policy.

Uh-uh. This did it... And does it each 10 years...

I’m afraid you don't understand how US Bankster Wall Street works…

Stock market “losses” (whether “recessionary”) are scammed exclusively out of US working class pension funds -- funds which had paid premiums for stocks in the recent past (at that time stocks which bought at premium FROM US Banksters, since US Banksters conveniently “manage” US working class pension funds). Later, US Banksters force-buy them back from US working class pensions at bargain rate -- and take massive capital gains in the cycle (you'll see the US Bankster corporate gains publicly reported and bragged on soon after) (the “capital gains,” according to US richclass legal industrial complex law dictate, are not really gains, and are therefore taxed at an extremely low, atypical tax rate for so-called “non-income”).

US richclass held corporations “mass cleanse” and lay off US working class staff on a parallel with stock market “losses,” and redirect those salaries up to US richclass owners and executives. Unemployed US working class homes are in concert repossessed by US richclass banksters, and real estate markets are purged to revamp conglomerate profit schemes (off of US working class suckers).

Then the cycle is replayed, replayed, and replayed (decade by decade -- no US working class catch on forever).

For this “market correction” or “recessionary” rip-off to occur, some effectively proven, fear-inducing announcement is released (in the case of August 2011, a credit rating “drop” -- although there are a thousand such fear-mongering, scamming public announcements).

The losers - as always in the cyclical scam - are US working class. US richclass wins, as always, stealing hundreds of billions from US working class pension funds and real estate holdings through this “recessionary” scam. At some near-future event in the cycle as certain to arrive, US working class will be finally bled fully dry -- at which juncture US richclass is planned to “run for the hills” (withdraw to penthouses and yachts in Dubai) to escape the deadly revolt. This is already perfectly planned as well.

P.S. All those "losses" you cited are simply funds skimmed out of US companies directly into US richclass private accounts. Glad I could help.

Thank you very much for documenting what was, in my case at any rate, a general impression of the way things had gone.

Nah, that's just those goofy talking points for the gullible.

No, this is a far right chain letter that ignores basic facts.

AMEN Brotha.