Phil Gramm is a Cracker

True, but he's also John "Don't know much about the economy" McCain's economic Brain. And Gramm bears considerable responsibility for the unregulated shadow banking system that has brought us to the brink of a new Depression. And half of you fuckers want to elect McCain???

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

As we watch the financial sector move into the next stage of melt down, here's a reminder of what Gramm did to earn himself a spot as not only a Real Smart Person, but McCain's top economic advisor.

[Gramm]was co-sponsor of the 1999 law that allowed commercial banks to get into investment banking. And the fact that Gramm was a prime architect of a 2000 bill that kept regulators' hands off of "credit default swaps," an exotic financial tool which helped enable the bundling and selling of crappy subprime mortgages to investors.

In other words, Gramm was at the top of the list of people rushing to give the banking industry "more flexibility" and relieve them of all those nasty regulations that kept them from showing the kind of constraint that Wall Street always shows when nobody is looking.

The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion.

The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion.

The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion.

The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion. [!!!!!!!]

[Risk expert] CHRISTOPHER WHALEN: They are the most hideous kind of speculation. To have a federally insured bank like JPMorgan as the largest dealer in this market, to me says we don't know what we're doing anymore, and we don't understand the difference between real work -- real economic activity -- and something that's essentially wasting.

Phil Gramm saw to it that banks could not only become involved in risky investments, they could buy and sell those investments to each other, creating a speculative shadow economy many times larger than the real economy, and Gramm made sure that all this activity was completely unregulated.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Phil Gramm, economy, depression