Bill Clinton: I was wrong to listen to Rubin and Summers' advice against regulating derivatives

[brentspeak]

Clinton should have expanded his second-thoughts to include any and all advice given to him to implement NAFTA and to help grant China MFN status.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/04/clinton-rubin-and-summers-gave-me-wrong-advice-on-derivatives-and-i-was-wrong-to-take-it.html

Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

Clinton: I Was Wrong to Listen to Wrong Advice Against Regulating Derivatives*

April 17, 2010 7:20 PM

In my EXCLUSIVE “This Week” interview, I asked former President Bill Clinton if he thought he got bad advice on regulating complex financial instruments known as derivatives from his former Treasury Secretaries, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. He acknowledged that he was wrong to take the advice of those advising him against regulating derivatives.

“On derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency. The money they’re putting up guarantees them transparency,” Clinton told me.

snip

The former President also said he was also wrong about understanding the consequences if the derivatives market tanked. “The most important flaw was even if less than 1 percent of the total investment community is involved in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could affect a 100 percent of the investments, and indeed a 100 percent of the citizens in countries, not investors, and I was wrong about that.”

Clinton also blamed the Bush administration for scaling back on policing the financial industry. “I think what happened was the SEC and the whole regulatory apparatus after I left office was just let go.”

[Larkspur]

1. Glad Bill is throwing Rubin and Summers under the bus, but it's a bit late Bill

Although, Bill could be giving a signal to Obama to fire Summers and stop listening to Rubin.

[activa8tr]

2. Yeah, I'm hoping that's the message getting through

I'm at such a loss as to why Rubin is being listened to.

[disndat]

4. Still, it is important

that Bill Clinton admitted he was wrong on Rubin, the 800 lb elephant in Clinton's living room. Maybe if Clinton remain president he would have stopped the deregulations of Wall Street. It was Bush's laissez-faire deregulations that caused the Wall St. meltdown of '08.

[impik]

3. Well, Obama said he'll veto a bill without strong derivatives regulations

So maybe we should wait and see.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Guernica

Has anyone thought to do an impression of Guernica using color?

[CTyankee]

6. As I understand it, from Simon Schama's excellent book "The Power of Art"

there had been some people who felt Guernica should include color in order to get the power of the piece over more strongly but Picasso resisted...

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. I'm seeing shades of blood red in my head.

Maybe browns, too.