The Economic Meltdown for Dummies

An older yet excellent 60 Minutes report by Steve Kroft, chronicling the economic meltdown last year and the disastrous right-wing economic policy of deregulation, which was fervently pursued by the previous Republican Congress, Bill Clinton, and Alan Greenspan. Unfortunately, Kroft's report did not include former Senator Phil "nation of whiners" Gramm, the role he played in the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and his subsequent lobbying for further deregulation of state laws which had prevented predatory lending schemes to get potential homeowners in expensive mortgages. Incidently, it was also Gramm who included the Commodity Futures Modernization Act amendment into Clinton's omnibus appropriations bill. Did Clinton or any other senators even bother to read it? Anyways, Gramm's amendment guaranteed deregulation of derivatives trading or credit default swaps. A provision in the bill, which Enron lobbied for (a major campaign contributor to Gramm), also excluded energy trading from regulatory oversight. Essentially, it paved the way for the Enron disaster and a new disastrous era of deregulation.