Originally Posted by mcap View Post
Thanks for the history lesson mick. Was really too young at the time to remember anything of Reagan. Only things I really know about him was he was an actor, republicans remember him quite fondly, and he was a big part of escalating the drug war and is referenced for in some movies for shady ties to I think Nicaragua at the time.

I was referring to deregulation going “overboard” with Clinton repealing the Glass Seagall act in 1999. He’d be out of office a year later before it could have much effect. Many people think that act made the ‘08 crisis a possibility. Prevented any regulation of junk derivatives, allowed large banks and insurance companies to merger.
Interesting story about this. In the 90s I worked in banking and actually worked for Citibank when they merged with Travelers Insurance in 1998.

This was just PRIOR to the repeal of the Glass-Stegall act which prevented banks from owning insurance companies and vice versa primarily to prevent the too big fail scenarios that occurred in the great depression.

In our company news letter there was a CEO Q & A and a question for the CEO asking how is the merger going to get approved since the Glass Steagall act prevents that? And the CEO basically said “That act is almost certainly going to be eliminated, we are working with legislators on it right now” Kind of like if I was murdering someone snd they said “Stop you’re gonna end up in prison” and I said “Nah, Im working on getting that murder law repealed and confident I will.”

That was the first time it really hit me that the government doesn’t really work for the people, it works for corporations. Heck government and corporations are essentially the same as its usually the same people moving back and forth from public to private sector that are the ones developing policy.

Whose more to blame Republicans or Democrats?

Well, Another interesting thing I recall from my banking days (Although this is probably true of most companies even outside of banking) Is that I would see disclosure sheets of the political contributions the banks were making to candidates and most of the time they were contributing equally to candidates from both parties so they didn’t really care who won.

They greased up both sides so while us little folks are arguing over whose worse Dems or Republicans the big banks and corporations know they are always going to have a seat at the table and strong influence due to large contributions they make to everyone.