re: preventing cdss regualation, the enron loop hole and repeal of glass-steagall. i have lots of examples, here are a couple:

November 2, 1999 - Robert Scheer, writing about what would become the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the LA Times:

Only last week, as the bill was being pushed through a congressional conference committee, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers rushed back from a trip to China to huddle with lobbyists representing Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other financial giants. The meeting was closed to the media and public, but one participant told the New York Times that Summers lectured the lobbyists on how to spin this bill so it appears to be in the public interest. "He said it would be very unfortunate if any financial institution were to suggest that they do not see the broad public purpose of this legislation," the lobbyist reported.

June 21, 2000 - A joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (chaired by Lugar) and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (chaired by Gramm) was held on the S.2697 , The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

From Summers' opening statement (in support of the CFMA):

I believe it is a matter of great importance to the future of our financial system and to the future of our economy to move ahead with legislation that provides legal certainty for swaps and OTC derivatives transactions. And I believe that such legislation is now within our grasp, with the unanimous agreement of the President's Working Group and the very substantial consensus that has formed in the central area of legal certainty for OTC derivatives among members of these committees, members of the House of Representatives and the various constituencies.

I believe that if anything, the events of the last year, as we have seen dramatic increases in competition in the financial services area across countries, only go to emphasize the importance of the United States moving to provide legal certainty.

So it is our very great hope that it will be possible to move this year on legislation that, in a suitable way, goes to create legal certainty for OTC derivatives while, at the same time, reducing systemic risk, protecting retail customers, and maintaining U.S. competitiveness.

And it is our belief that the central provisions contained in this bill with respect to OTC derivatives make great progress in achieving these goals and are provisions that we can support as they follow very largely the recommendations of the President's Working Group.

^{“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski}

rollout, can we please retire the "change we can believe in" mantra suffusing the Obama mystique? If anything, the Summers/Geithner/Rubin connection only reinforces the notion that there isn't a ha'penny's difference between Repub and Demo policy vis-a-vis "the Street" and the financial community in general. The revolving door is spinning wildly as one group of swindlers leave and another prepares to assume power.
Rubin is to the financial community what Richard Perle represented to the foreign policy apparatus under Bush: "Prince of Darkness". Absolutely criminal, and the hosing of the public continues unabated.

Team of Rubins

As progressives, we can view President-Elect Obama's emerging economic team in one of two ways. Either he has disappointed us by picking a group of Clinton retreads--the very people who brought us the deregulation that produced the financial collapse; the fiscal conservatives who in the 1990s put budget balance ahead of rebuilding public institutions. Or we can conclude that he has very shrewdly named a team of technically competent centrists so that he can govern as a progressive in pragmatist's clothing--as he moves the political center to the left.
...
Which brings me back to Obama's economic team. Leaks suggest that it will include Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary; Lawrence Summers as a senior White House adviser, perhaps head of the National Economic Council; Peter Orszag as director of OMB; and Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee and Jack Lew in other senior economic positions. All are relative centrists. And with the exception of Goolbee, the one thing that all have in common is that every one is a protégé of former Treasury Secretary and current Citigroup executive Robert Rubin. Even Hillary Clinton, as president, might have found a fresher group.
What kind of magic does this man Rubin have? He was one of the key Democratic architects of the extreme financial deregulation that brought the economy to this pass. At Citi, he was one of the grand strategists of the speculation in securitized loans and off-balance-sheet gimmicks that has brought Citi to the edge of bankruptcy. Yet he continues to fall upwards. Surely Barack Obama must have noticed that Rubin is a false prophet. So why is his entire senior economic group a Team of Rubinistas?
(more...)

http://tinyurl.com/6ppuen

Kuttner seems to feel/hope that if circumstances warrant it, Obama will step away from the Rubinites and go his own way. One wonders...but, if Obama does indeed work out the insidious connections between the major actors and the (self-inflicted)plight the US financial sector finds itself, he must act accordingly, or he will just set the table for more of the same down the line.

A bailout of this size to Citi would be a big middle finger to the Big 3. A full out give away and a step closer to a nationalized bank system versus a LOAN to a manufacturers that produce a product rather than trade 0's and 1's in the ether. You've got to be kidding me.

I'd like to see how many Citi private jets, solid gold telephones, and platinum toilets are given up with a price tag like $300B+. I'd at least like to see a grilling of Citi CEO's and CFO's like that thrusted on the Big 3 execs.

Agreed. And I bet that if they called them in, the top 5 guys at each of the top 5 or 6 WS firms could each fly in on private jets. Separately. In THEIR OWN jets.

when the fed is talking 7.7 trillion without any accounting whatsoever.

That's a paltry $25,800 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

I did inhale.