Bill Clinton signed the Gramm law. And he didn't do it because he was forced to. In fact, Bill Clinton issued marching orders to his Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, to lobby and act as enforcer to acquire democratic votes for the passage of that bill. Only you and Exgoper write otherwise.
And as to your railing against Reagan's econ policies which have been described as 'trickle down' and a 'failure', what do you think about Obama's trickle down policies?
Lest you feign ignorance on this subject, the federal reserve has stated explicitly that the goal of this gov'ts economic policy is for the money they are creating to influence the financial markets and trickle down to the main street economy.
Curiously, I haven't heard you demonize that 'trickle down'. If it is the gov't trying to trickle down, and it's been an absolute disaster at it's intended effects, you say nothing.
If the trickle down is from the private sector, and it was successful at stimulating business activity, you leftists spend the next thirty years trying to rewrite history.
The bottom line is you want the gov't to trickle down, and it grates on you if the private sector trickles down. Even if the private sector's work was successful and the gov'ts was a disaster. No matter to you, it's the gov't plan you desire regardless of consequences.
The gov't sector is a leach, not a productive asset in society. Sorry.
Wouldn't you like to be able to ask Clinton if he was aware, when he signed that Omnibus funding Bill during the waning months of of his Presidency, that he was also signing into law a Bill that would repeal Glass-Steagall. With the stroke of a pen he removed the barrier between Investment and Commercial banks, and between Insurance Companies and Banks! I would certainly like to ask him if he had any misgivings at all. I've never heard him comment on that. It was damn clever of Gramm to get it attached to the "must pass" Omnibus Bill that way. He'd failed in previous attempts to get his bill passed. In the end, he rammed it through, with virtually no debate, when everyone was anxious to leave for the the Christmas holiday. Old Tom Daschle knew exactly what was going to happen, though, and said so, but nobody listened. Christmas cheer was in the air.
With regard to your comment re trickle down, I've never read a quote of anyone associated with the Fed using that term. Have you? My guess is you read it in a media report of Fed policy. Trickle down has been thoroughly discredited among economists, I can't imagine anyone directly associated with the Fed would use that term in public to describe Fed policy, unless they were drunk of course.
Trickle down is precisely what happened though. They rescued the real estate building industry by forcing down mortgage rates via their QE and twist operations. Rather brilliant, in my opinion. The recovery of real estate prices did of course trickle down to home owners as their loans began to bubble up to the surface from under water. And the low interest rates, and refinance opportunities they created, saved the asses of million of folks with adjustable rate loans. A kind of Trickle down at its finest to be sure, but I can't imagine any Fed employee using that term to describe what they accomplished. Of course the kind of trickle down where you attempt to help the poor by making the rich wealthier is a different kind of trickle down altogether.
N.B.
Gramm was working on solving the problem of the illegal Citigroup-Travelors Insurance merger, to wit: "The remaining provisions of the
Glass–Steagall Act—enacted following the Great Depression—forbade banks to merge with insurance underwriters, and meant Citigroup had between two and five years to divest any prohibited assets. However, Weill stated at the time of the merger that they believed "that over that time the legislation will change...we have had enough discussions to believe this will not be a problem". Indeed, the passing of the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in November 1999 vindicated Reed and Weill's views, opening the door to financial services conglomerates offering a mix of commercial banking, investment banking, insurance underwriting and brokerage." [the preceding quote has been taken directly from the Wiki history of Citigroup. The discussions Sandy Weill was referring to were undoubtedly those between Citigroup/Travelors and Senator Gramm, and/or is lovely wife Wendy.
