do you not realize that the market crashed in Sep. 2008? What’s the date? Why hasn’t the bleeding stopped?

Layoffs are once again picking up. Here they come! Watch out! Hope you’re retired or independently wealthy!

Who knows what the White House and this imperial Congress will do next… that’s the point. Nobody, and nobody can make effective long term plans.

Don’t you libs get it? Maybe not?… See: Mass. election from last Tuesday.

Perhaps when there’s evidence that they’re destroying our economy?

He needs to cut government spending, and tell the American people that this mess must clean itself up.

Sure. Everyone wants to be the next Herbert Hoover.

We’re pursuing the same agenda as Japan in the 90’s 00’s, and today; the same agenda as FDR; the same agenda as all Keynesian control freaks.

And we’re suffering BIG TIME.

Obama does not need another proposal. He needs to cut government spending, and tell the American people that this mess must clean itself up. Of course, after his past rhetoric, that would be political suicide. But the alternative is national suicide down the debt hole.

Really, could you commentators wake up?

As long as we’re quoting Phil Gramm:
Phil Gramm has a lot more to say about that bill:

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act was anything but a midnight surprise. It was the result of two years of intensive public debate with hearings held in three committees of the House and a joint committee in the Senate. The final bill was a compromise crafted by the Clinton administration, the financial regulators and the leadership of both houses of Congress.

The bill was actively endorsed by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt. The bill initially passed the House by a vote of 377 to 4, and the final compromise was adopted as part of a conference report, which was unamendable in the Senate. The compromise was debated in the Senate, at which time an endorsement letter signed by all four major financial regulators was printed in the record. It passed on a voice vote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100902695.html

So look to Phil Gramm for the act – it wasn’t even really passed, in the sense that there was no debate on it in the Senate. Here’s Phil Gramm’s statement at the time:

today I am proud to add my voice in support of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This legislation represents the end product of work that began in S. 2697, which Senator LUGAR and I introduced on June 8. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 completes the work of last year’s financial services modernization law, bringing our financial regulation in line with the rapid pace of developments in the global marketplace. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will now allow new and important financial products — single stock futures — to be sold in America. It protects financial institutions from over-regulation, and provides legal certainty for the $60 trillion market in swaps…

Mr. President, enactment of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will be noted as a major achievement by the 106th Congress. Taken together with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the work of this Congress will be seen as a watershed, where we turned away from the outmoded, Depression-era approach to financial regulation and adopted a framework that will position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century.

And when you read those words, remember – this would likely have been the chief economic advisor
for a John McCain Presidency.

Then in 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was passed and signed into law by President Clinton. One of the provisions of that bill gutted the SEC’s ability to regulate and oversee derivatives like CDSs. And the rest is history, as they say.

David Frum said mostly the same thing a few days ago. Were credit default swaps and CDOs based on CDOs of bad mortgages really that innovative?

Actually, I must admit, they were. So was the first nuclear weapon…