Infamous Senators: Phil Gramm (R) Texas

When the complete history of Wall Street's financial meltdown is finally written, we'll find that former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy will both bear significant culpability in creating the conditions that allowed this credit meltdown to occur.

As a Senator, Professor Gramm chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (1995 to 2000), stripping safeguards from the U.S. financial system through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in (1999) while receiving $1 million in campaign contributions from the securities industry. He was a master of the shopworn but effective ploy of yammering about “deregulation” in order to enrich oligarchs through the pretense of populism. Mike Licht; NotionsCapital

As chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ( CFTC, 1988-93), Dr. Wendy Gramm ....

exempted energy futures trading as requested by Enron, a major source of campaign funds for her husband. A week later, Dr. Wendy Gramm resigned from CFTC, and five weeks later she was on the Enron Board of Directors, paid between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, fees, stock option sales and dividends. Wendy Gramm’s Enron stock options, valued at $15,000 in 1995, were worth $500,000 by 2000 (source: Public Citizen).

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young referred to the government's monetary policies as, "Socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor."

What financial toilet is our government trying to flush us out of? Here's the best explanation I've read of the cause of our trouble -- toxic mortgage-backed derivatives
by independent trader Jeffrey Carter at 3QuarksDaily