ProgressiveDem: GOP Headliners Paulson, Bernanke and Cox All Loyal Bushite Deregulators
GOP Headliners Paulson, Bernanke and Cox All Loyal Bushite Deregulators
The House Government Oversight Committee hearings being held by chair, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), that are putting the CEO's of Lehman, AIG, et al. on the hot seat should cause righteous anger among Americans at these super wealthy Wall Street fraudsters who want to feed at the government trough.
"There is a joke circulating on the Hill these days. "What is the technical term for a Wall Street investment banker who supports free trade?" The answer, of course, is "liar."
Not only are the CEOs of the fianancial institutions the perpetrators of this debacle, but Paulson, Benanke, and Cox, water carriers for the criminal Bush regime, are the poster boys for its disastrous deregulatory policies that aided and abetted thiis fraud and they should all be in the slammer.
As ProPublica writes: "The chiefs of the federal regulatory agencies -- Henry Paulson, Chris Cox and Ben Bernanke -- have each called for better regulation of derivatives, the financial instruments at the center of the current crisis. Yet a look at their Senate confirmation hearings suggests they once held quite different views.
"In June, Treasury Secretary Paulson told the Washington Post that in one of his first meetings with President Bush, he warned that the growing use of derivatives posed a fundamental risk to the market. If that is the case, he didn't say so publicly. In response to a written question by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) submitted at the Treasury Secretary's Senate confirmation hearing in June 2006, Paulson said he was "wary" of proposals to strengthen regulation of derivatives because of their importance in managing risk.
"Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Cox now leads the call for increased regulation of derivatives. In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on September 23, he singled out credit derivatives in particular, pointing out that the market in credit default swaps is "regulated by absolutely no one" making it "ripe for fraud and manipulation."
"Cox has long known about the pitfalls of poorly understood hedging instruments; as a Congressman, he represented Orange County, California, when it declared bankruptcy in 1994 after its investments in derivatives went badly awry. But at the time, he did not join calls to regulate them: "I'm concerned that now anything called a derivative will be considered inherent evil in Congress," Cox said, according to the Orange County Register. "It is sort of like a fire hose: In the wrong hands, it is dangerous."
"Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has also called for fundamental changes in the processing, management and regulation of derivatives that are traded outside of exchanges, including credit default swaps. But the economist's concern for them is newly found. When former Sen. Paul Sarbanes asked Bernanke about derivatives at his November 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, Bernanke said he felt "sanguine" about these instruments, noting the sophistication of those who dealt with them. Sarbanes responded that this attitude toward derivatives and the hedge funds dealing in them could "come back to haunt you."
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