President Clinton: I should have better regulated derivatives

[blueclown]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/16/bill.clinton.qanda/

These are excerpts from a interview that President Clinton had with John Roberts.

A very good read. He is very complimentary of President Obama.

[SmileyRose]

1. Bill can bite me.

He was not as bad as Reagan or Bush 1 or WhistleAssInc, not by a LONG shot, but he sold me and mine down the river none the less.

[Kashka-Kat]

2. day late and a dollar (no make that 63 trillion dollars) short

[ixion]

3. perhaps, Bill, if you hadn't had been so busy brown-nosing the GOP

maybe, just maybe, you'd have paid a bit more attention that "little problem".

[geckosfeet]

4. Yeah. He brown nosed them so well he got impeached by them.

[ixion]

11. a lesson Obama should learn from

that the GOP is a group of unethical bastards who don't operate on reason and civility.

They've shown this time and again, and yet the dems continue to treat them as if they're able to compromise. Why is that?

[geckosfeet]

13. Don't know. My view is that they cannot be trusted. But I think that Obama

is using the rope-a-dope strategy with them.

I also think the rich and corporate interests that the republics generally represent simply buy them off. There is no reason, no civility, just the smell of the almighty dollar - which by the way is losing a lot of luster lately. We can attribute some of the failing fortunes of the republic party to the weakening of the dollar and the economy. It is unfortunate that we all have to suffer in order to purge the vermin.

[Captain Hilts]

6. They had the majority of both houses. And Democrats stomped on him also. Nunn, etc. nt

[karynnj]

17. Not when he entered the Presidency

I don't think the loss of both Houses was all his fault, but there were things in the first two year that helped the Republicans.

[polmaven]

10. And just exactly

what would you have suggested he do? He had a Republican majority in Congress, and you have seen their definition of "bipartisan" during the past few weeks. "If you do it OUR way, it is bipartisan...but ONLY then"

He was not someone to shred the Constitutiion with illegal Executive orders and signing statements, so what would you have had him do? :shrug:

[applegrove]

5. He's a man and he can take responsibility for his mistakes. Unlike *.

[Captain Hilts]

7. That's right, let's give Bubba some dap. nt

[applegrove]

12. What is "dap"?

[Captain Hilts]

16. 'Cred'. I learned it listening to Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. nt

[aquart]

8. No, Bill. You should have banned the toxic little toys.

[BlooInBloo]

9. Aaah. Much better than all of the "you need to ban derivatives and CDS's!" idiocy....

(all said without having the slightest idea of what they even *are*.)

Bill knows what they are, and knows that there's no need to ban them. They just need to be regulated.

Just like they discovered the need for depository institution regulation after the '29 crash/depression, we now have the opportunity to discover the need for non-depository institution regulation after the current mess.

[JVS]

14. This is good. It allows the party to be united on this issue and what must be done without having..

a fight involving Clinton's legacy.

[DCKit]

15. And here I was thinking that Congress made the laws and regulations.

Bill, you've got some 'splainin to do.

[gratuitous]

18. Let's not leave Phil Gramm out of the equation

It was Phil's idea, nay, demand, that his pals in the derivative market didn't need no steenking regulations. And in those days, what lizard-brain wanted, he got. Clinton is manning up to take some responsibility for his part in this debacle, but the real farmer who planted these poison seeds was Phil Gramm.

Oh, and I don't recommend holding your breath to see a similar interview with Gramm anytime soon.