A major piece of legislation that contributed to the cowboy mentality on Wall St. was the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The vote was 90-8. One of the eight, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), was interviewed last night on the Rachel Maddow Show. (I’m having trouble with the embed code, so here’s the link.)
Who were the prescient eight who voted against deregulation? Some are not surprising, and they were not all Democrats:
- Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
- Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
- Tom Harkin (D-Ia.)
- Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.)
- Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.)
- Richard Bryan (D-Nev.)
- Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.)
- and Dorgan
But more important, who were among the supporters of deregulation?
Sens. McCain, Feinstein, Dodd, Lieberman, Biden, Durbin, Bayh, Collins, Snowe, Sarbanes, Kennedy, (John) Kerry, Levin, Baucus, Reid, Gregg, Moynihan, Schumer, Edwards, Conrad, Wyden, Daschle, Jeffords, Robb, Rockefeller and a plethora of GOPers.
So there is plenty of blame to go around.