Rubin and Summers are Republicans? that's news to me...
"In 1997, Rubin and
Federal Reserve chairman
Alan Greenspan strongly opposed giving the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight of over-the-counter
credit derivatives when this was proposed by
Brooksley Born, the head of the CFTC. Rubin's role was highlighted in a
Public Broadcasting Service Frontline report, "The Warning".
[16] Over-the-counter credit derivatives were eventually excluded from regulation by the CFTC by the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. According to the
Frontline documentary, they played a key role in the
2008 financial crisis.
Arthur Levitt Jr., a former chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission, has said in explaining Rubin's strong opposition to the regulations proposed by Born that Greenspan and Rubin were "...joined at the hip on this. They were certainly very fiercely opposed to this and persuaded me that this would cause chaos."
[17] However, in Rubin’s autobiography, he notes that he believed derivatives could pose significant problems and that many people who used derivatives did not fully understand the risks they were taking.
[18]
Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers also steered through the 1999 repeal of the
Glass–Steagall Act (1933), which had separated investment banking from the retail side. It allowed the banks to develop and sell the mortgage-backed instruments that became a principal factor in the financial collapse. In September 2011, the UK Independent Commission on Banking released a report in which it recommended a separation of investment and retail banking to prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis.
[19]". Wikipedia