Hillary Helped UBS—and Then the Bank Funneled Millions to the Clintons

[Octafish]

83.  Clinton and Gramm: Crony Capitalism’s Power Couple

Former senator Phil Gramm helped pass laws that let the banks go wild, yet he’s stayed silent on UBS’s crimes.

By Robert Scheer
The Nation, DECEMBER 21, 2012

 Where is Phil Gramm hiding? The former Republican senator from Texas, who wrote the radical banking deregulation of the 1990s and was rewarded for his efforts to enrich the banks with a plum job at Switzerland-based UBS, has not been heard from since his bank got nailed by the G-men. Or, as The New York Times put it, UBS now has the distinction of being “the first big global bank in more than two decades to have a subsidiary plead guilty to fraud.”

SNIP...

That “modernization” in 2000 made legal the mergers that created the too-big-to-fail banks that had to be bailed out by taxpayers, as well as insuring that the burgeoning markets in toxic derivatives and credit default swaps were summarily freed from all government regulation. Bill Clinton signed off on the new laws, and his successor, George W. Bush, enthusiastically enforced them.

How fitting then to find the two presidents united again on several occasions documented on the UBS website participating in bank-sponsored panels on “Revitalizing America.” Clinton’s foundation has partnered with UBS in mentoring small businesses in poorer communities, the very communities hit hardest by the banking shenanigans of the past decade. Ever the optimist, Clinton promised that “Our partnership with UBS Wealth Management Americas will give these businesses essential new opportunities to expand and to make a positive difference in underserved communities.” With friends like these…

The cozy bipartisan reunion of Gramm with the two presidents under the auspices of UBS goes a long way toward explaining the source of our economic misery. It would be instructive to now ask all three whether the crimes of UBS had been enabled by their own actions while they were still running the US government.

That is why I assume the normally loquacious Gramm is on the lam, or surely we would have heard from him by now, at least on the Fox News Channel that has been so solicitous of his wisdom in the past. But not just on Fox. Gramm and his wife Wendy, who was rewarded with a position on Enron’s board of directors after her own stint in government undermining consumer protections, were the high priest and priestess of the religion of radical deregulation that captivated US presidents from Ronald Reagan through Bill Clinton and on to George W. Bush.

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http://www.thenation.com/article/clinton-and-gramm-crony-capitalisms-power-couple/