you know i haven't done enough reporting on phil gramm to say definitively clearly. folks like phil gramm and other people in washington played a significant role in and pushing this because the reason that that folks at the big banks were emboldened to do this is they knew that that the shackles have been taken off that there was little chance that there was going to be any kind of enforcement any kind of rule making and often you know as they say you know what was what the crime was was what was legal it was sort of an anything goes. and vironment right which brings us to the philosophy of the phil gramm was pursuing or pushing and not just him i mean in this whole thing as you point out you know from from carter forward and in and reagan put it on steroids and really nobody has challenges since then although i would submit that in some ways the obama administration is now starting to aggressively challenge it eric schneiderman today in. new york really going after some of these guys but but this neo liberal notion using the european word today we hear in america w

joining us is former senator phil gramm and former vice chairman at ubs. want to start with this, jamie diamond, the distinguished ceo is usually a democrat. heap says washington policies have made the recovery slower and worse. why do you and jamie diamond agree? were are you here to tell me? >> i'd like to say we're both smart guys. basically here's the deal. if we were recovering at the rate of the recovery we had in the average of the ten post-war recession, we would have 13.5 million more jobs than we have now and per capita gdp for every man, woman and child in america would be $4,500 greater. the recovery has been ham strung from the beginning. today nobody in america can tell you what their taxes are going to be next year, what health care costs are going to be next year, what energy policy is going to be next year, what the regulatory burden is going to be next year. >> so uncertainty is killing -- >> uncertainty is killing the goose that lays the golden egg. >> not my usual norm. but what president obama and his team would say is that we suffered

i remember one time i was in conference having a hard time from phil gramm and don nickles and all of my buddies over there, and tom was in his conference having a similar time and i stepped out in the hall to call him on the cell phone and i he answered it and stepped out in the hall and i said, we have problems here, and we have to get this done, and we will do it and we will do it now. we meet you on the floor. and he got it called up, and both of the conferences saying nay. now i'm not going to tell you what the bill was because you might say, yeah, you shouldn't have gotten that done [ laughter ] but that is called leadership when you are willing to step up. tom mentioned the 50-50 senate, and that one almost cost me my job. i negotiated a deal with tom that my conference thought was too good of a deal for tom, but i think that we did the right thing. we shared it. 50-50 in the committees and so forth. so you need to dodo more of tha and the american people will demand that we begin to make some change cans, and we find a way. so many of these things are not partisan. a national

and gamble that money in wall street and and this was blown up in one thousand nine hundred by phil gramm and you know led right to in large part the crash of the the wall street crash and so paul volcker a good republican says want to do this and and and the obama and congress republicans as well bode for this thing and now the banks want to blow it up and it looks like the republicans want to go along with it i don't understand why i mean the problem i see with essentially you know we're referring to banks not being able to make proprietary trades on the road be halfwit other people's money so they're going with the reason that you know that i mean this is exactly what applies to putting the rule back in would basically it would disallow banks from being able to use that money to provide the reason we don't have a static economic pie in this country is if i invest something the person that i give that money to the person who i make that investment with is then free cheat use that money into other economic pursuits that then create more wealth in other areas of the economy so if you don'

the board of directors of enron so this is there's a long history to the bizarre corruption here phil gramm who was john mccain's economic adviser and and good buddies with ronald reagan free marketeers say hey anybody should be able to gamble on anything you know. but we historically haven't done that we've had markets that are transparent and that are regulated particular commodities markets how do we get back to that. well you know free marketeers also love to quote adam smith who thought this sort of thing was despicable so this isn't a market in any conceivable sense of the word in a market when the demand for a commodity goes down the price reacts accordingly this is something else altogether this is gambling it's gambling in secret it's gambling in private in the way you get rid of it is by regulating what needs to be regulated in some cases to it maybe going on with your money and mine being put at risk so you know what you do is you go in and you say this is what you can and can't do is a financial institution particularly one that subject to too big to fail this is what you can an

chairman of the federal reserve, alan greenspan, the right-wing republican senator from texas, phil gramm, who once called wall street "a holy place," and later would become a high priest at the global banking giant, ubs, and the democratic secretary of the treasury, robert rubin, former co-chair of goldman sachs and tireless advocate of taking down glass-steagall. in the weeks before its repeal rubin left government to join, are you ready for this, citigroup's board, the very financial giant made possible by glass-steagall's elimination. and so it was -- the fix was in, the path was cleared all the way to the top. >> sandy called his friend the president last night and invited me to join in on the conversation and we had a good talk. so the president was in fact told last evening about what was going to happen. >> you got that, i'm sure. wall street was telling the president of the united states what was going to happen. within two years, glass-steagall was deader than a doornail. with the stroke of a pen, president, bill clinton, signed legislation that eliminated its protections and ga

there was the concert that took place at the pavilion, where phil gramm came in and brought in bob dylan and the grateful dead and the starship and 20 other acts and basically save the san francisco sports program in the schools and raised a whole lot of money. then there was the unity festival in 1975, when i was still living at the park, where the grateful dead and the starship played for free. an amazing time. my favorite weekend of the year is the first weekend of october. i would never miss it. that is because of hardly strictly blogger's. when i started going about five years ago, what i remembered was that it reminded me of a simpler san francisco, a simpler, gentler time, a friendly time, where there are no hassles. never seen a fight. i have been there for hours and hours and hours. i have never seen it came during -- never seen angry and pushing people. i was amazed at how big the bike lock up was, and this is a wonderful lesson for our city, and we need to cherish it. we really do. let's help people have better festivals and more festivals in the park. supervisor mar: sir? >>

vanished from our economy is a wreck as a result of the lack of regulation it was brought about by phil gramm when his wife wendy was on the board enron and he was pushing through the grammys blyleven to blow up class stiegel to deregulate the banks and the commodities futures modernization act to deregulate commodities so that enron could make a fortune on and it crashed our economy seven trillion dollars has vanished all the federal government let fannie mae and freddie mac. steal it had nothing to do with that and they are. and with that bill that was another good example of why government agencies like freddie freddie and fannie should never should have been privatized anyhow it's time for a quick fire let's get to our last question here quickly now the title is icons of childhood entertainment in america under attack by conservatives first it was the moffats muppets that sponge bob square pants and now dr seuss take a listen to what lou dobbs had to say about the newest dr seuss film the lorax. the movie set to be released nationwide next month is about a woodland creature who speaks for

what they got confused was that i was for a plan that phil gramm that said if a employer provided health insurance, that they would have to offer a medical savings account that were now called health savings account program. and they simply got it wrong. i don't think you'll find anywhere else i advocated. in 1994 during the campaign, you'll find that i made the whole point that i was against government mandated health care. i ran against harris wofford, the author of hillary care. one reporter misunderstood what one bill was about. >> the romney campaign is clearly worried about you and put in a conference call today including the minnesota governor tim pawlenty trying to peel away your tea party support by raising your support of earmarks in congress. governor pawlenty said id "the he wants minnesota conservatives to believe he's as conservative as they are but he's not." you responded. let's listen. >> i understand that governor romney is having a little fun time attacking me on earmarks. and i just want to say that for the record, as you know, governor romney was an advocate of earma

and also, in 1999, republican senator phil gramm of texas got these people in trouble in the first place. host: the caller brings up the fact federal money helped freddiefannie mae and mac and should make it easier for everybody involved. guest: the caller makes a great point. we're talking about refinancing, mostly talking about people who are current on their current loans, paying high rates. now, what we do if we refinance them at lower rates, the prevailing rates? well, you put money in their pocket. at first of all, they go out and spend it. that would be very good for the economy. it would be like a little stimulus plan. that would create jobs, and also probably helped the housing market. because people would be less likely to foreclose. if they don't default on their lawns and face foreclosure. if they are less likely to default, that would help fannie mae and freddie mac because they are the insurers, they are the guarantors of the mortgages. they are on the hook, ultimately. in fact, it would be better for them to push refinancing, which is one of the ironies of the story is tha

when phil gramm took that firewall down, that's when we began to have our problems with the banking systeme enacted glass-steagall again, that would at least help solve some of the banking problems. it is not all just corruption. these are deliberate attempts by certain individuals to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. that is not class warfare. that's an actual fact. host: go ahead, gideon rose. guest: there's a certain amount of truth to that. i'm not the world's greatest expert on financial reforms and which should be done and how much glass-steagall's loss contributed to the policies. i am not entirely sure. it is certainly true that we need policies directed towards the overall economy. let's just say that the democrats bear their share of the blame, as well. there are very kind -- there are various entitlements that are very costly. long-term debt is an issue for economic competitiveness, as well to and what we really need is to make sure or finding a way of making sure that government policy is not captured by various types of special interests, or really sub-national interes

there is an op-ed in the "wall street journal" this morning by phil gramm and mike salon that if we hadowed the same policies as reagan, that we would have about 17 million more americans working today and that our gdp per family would be about $23,000 higher. so the basic question, we recognize the constitution says the government has certainly basic responsibilities. we have to provide for national security. some people feel like we need to provide for basic research funding. but then everything else is really sort of on the table. so my question is fairly simple. i'd like you to give me the an bridged reader's digest response if you can, who is the better allocator of capital to the greater public good? is it the private sector or the federal government? >> well, as i was saying earlier, there are some areas where the federal government is really the only provider. it's very hard to get the private sector to provide just -- but for innovative industries and those sorts of things, i think it's agreed that the private sector is better and china is an example of a country which has a co

gramm warriors who have destroyed the south. the president is ulysses s. grant and william tecumseh sherman and also phil sheridan all of these names are familiar. and these are the men who were running things. 1871, they unleashed the greatest war machine in american history. looking at this tribe that was sitting there holding up everything. 1871 these guys said, one of the reasons the comanches were still there as i point* out is the civil war took the attention away from the planes. 1871 that attention was no longer focused on the war or reconstructions but now look to see what we will do about the comanche problem. quanah parker was 21 years old the leader of the most remote and most hostile bands in the panhandle by low becker amarillo texas. they were an amazing bunch. they kept away from the white man contracted very few of the disease is. 15,000 horses, they traded with men who operated out of new mexico. you see them in movies as a rough bunch. so grant and sherman decide they have been death so they center colonel mackenzie down, and he wrote rues career parallels custer. so they send mackenzi