Dylan Ratigan Explains 'Con Job': Greenspan, Banks, Congress To Blame

Dylan Ratigan sought to explain the causes and scope of the of the financial crisis Wednesday.

Calling it a "con job," Ratigan identified former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as a godfather-like figure at the helm of the alleged scam. Ratigan argued that Greenspan's decisions to keep interest rates at low levels benefitted banks who used the low borrowning rates to lure Americans into taking out more and more loans. Banks didn't maintain enough capital, but that didn't matter, Ratigan said, because--thanks to the government's support of too-big-to-fail banks--the system was rigged and they stood to gain no matter what happened to the loans that they made. Ratigan blamed Congress for "feeding the money" to banks and not looking out for Americans.

WATCH:

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Comments

[mike72]

06:42 AM on 04/09/2010

Come on ... the biggest con man is actually the American Public. It knows, or more so unconciously, that the only way to enjoy enormouos luxury life style is through massive free supply of printed money.

Greenspan and the rest are just dancing to that desire and make huge profit out of that desire.

There are over 500 Trillion printed US Dollars flooding the world. Let me repeat, $500 TRILLION! It is the T! That is how we can afford to live the way we do with enormous manufactored resource shipping into our shore. And of course we will continue beating up on the suppliers of these resource by making sensational headline of defects to hide the fact that we are enormous consumer (PARTY TIME!!!) on these resource.

We are the biggest con men. Greenspan and his men are just making sure we are happily fed and make huage profit on the side.

[HoosierRadical]

03:45 AM on 04/09/2010

Dylan forgot to mention that the public doesn't support tougher regulation, the public is easily manipulated into believing that regulation kills jobs or harms economic growth. The public than acts all innocent when things like this happen. That is why the congress could not pass an public option or God forbid a single payer system. The public is too misinformed to know what is in their best interest.

[nancytheragingliberal]

09:27 AM on 04/25/2010

HR: Yes, that is why the public votes against its own best interest, each and every time. They hate unions, regulation, socialized anything. Why? The Fake News Channel by Murdock fills their tiny brains, live, 24/7 with misinformation that they lap up as true and their favorite sport is bashing the President. I happened to watch a panel on that awful station for 5 minutes (I never watch Murdock), and there they were, bashing teachers and teacher unions. How dare teachers have a Defined Benefit when they retire? How dare teachers who work for 40 years get 100 thou. in retirement? Did they mention the billions that the thieving CEO's received compliments of the tax payers for doing a crappy job and robbing Americans blind? You know the answer. There will be no correction and we will be robbed again in the future. Count of it.

[textynn]

02:56 AM on 04/09/2010

Dems handed over health care to the Elite health care cartel and they are going to hand over financial reform to the financial industry. Wake up Dems. These Dems are the same as the REpubs. the Repubs are mad because they want to be the favorite son of the Elite. It has nothing to do with US.

[textynn]

02:59 AM on 04/09/2010

Grayson, Sanders, Kucinich excluded of course....Included: Obama and Pelosi, Backus, Emanuel, and most of the others. Particularly Obama and Pelosi.

[HoosierRadical]

03:47 AM on 04/09/2010

Kucinich and Sanders are awesome. However there are to many corporatist dems to really do the peoples' business.

[textynn]

02:36 AM on 04/09/2010

Dont forget about Paulson. he was working with the God Father.

[sheaintsayin]

10:53 PM on 04/08/2010

I approached this video with trepidation due to my correct assumption of a major pissoff...Thanks Mr. Ratigan for your outstanding public service.

[ThomastonPaine]

09:38 PM on 04/08/2010

MSNBC's "The Dylan Ratigan Show" is simply the "must watch" program on financial reform.

*One would hope that all those in positions of power and influence... and their staffers, would be regular viewers of Mr. Ratigan. It is simply inexcusable for Congressman and Senators to not have a substantial knowledge of the ongoing financial crisis and reform efforts. Every day Americans may not be required to know what about naked credit default swaps, CDO's, the carry trade, black box trading etc..but it is critical that our representatives do.

*Additional point:

Numerous media reports from this week are claiming that the government has made approximately 10 billion dollars in profit from the bailouts? Unfortunately, this is only on the approximate 410 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Current estimates of the size of the overall ongoing bailouts to the Financial Industry actually put the figure at 4.6 Trillion with "2 Trillion" yet to be paid back!
(See Links Below)

http://www.prwatch.org/node/8987

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html

*Most potentially damaging...this misrepresentation makes it all the harder for the public to fully comprehend the enormity of these policies and to fully understand the critical need to effectively work together to end “Too Big to Fail.”

[Jeronimo Dan]

01:12 PM on 04/08/2010

It wouldn't do me any good financially, but to have that feel good feeling, is to put Greenspan in prison for the amount of time as he served as head of the FED, which was around eighteen years. Then his wife could drop by every six months, or so and interview him. Priceless!

[ErnestineBass]

11:21 PM on 04/08/2010

I'd certainly feel sorry for the poor sod who had to share a cell with him.

Greenspan is not exactly what you'd call a conversationalist.

[StJames]

11:35 PM on 04/08/2010

LMAO...I'm so glad I had to come looking for a place to reply to you Ernestine! That was priceless !!!!

I can remember putting gas in my first car for $0.19 a gallon....

When you look at wages vs inflation, is it any wonder people are in so much debt? I become almost homicidal when a troll starts talking about people buying **stuff** they can't afford.
Like we can all walk around naked and kids don't outgrow their clothes and shoes.

[AndyWright68]

12:01 PM on 04/08/2010

ʇuǝɯuɹǝʌoƃ ɹno

[nThenwhat]

11:55 AM on 04/08/2010

Good material from Ratigan ....
As usual Fleckinger is spot on as usual ...
Sen. Grayson ... Hara kiri / Seppuku? .... really? ... I suppose that would be too convenient.

[AndyWright68]

11:46 AM on 04/08/2010

¡pǝɟ ǝɥʇ puǝ

[king friday]

11:55 AM on 04/08/2010

easier said than done...unfortunately, it will not happen.

[AndyWright68]

12:00 PM on 04/08/2010

It's inevitable. Whether the people get fed up and take it down or it collapses on itself.

[nThenwhat]

11:59 AM on 04/08/2010

good one ... upside down, just like the U.S. economy :-)

[Fred Hood]

11:24 AM on 04/08/2010

stealing from the tax payer is not a crime........we need to fix this

[Fred Hood]

11:16 AM on 04/08/2010

good one....maybe he put it where even the tea and god people will understand..........we got s c r e w d

[devildog21]

11:11 AM on 04/08/2010

Comment below was supposed to be a reply to peterg76.

[devildog21]

11:09 AM on 04/08/2010

Far too few unfortunately.

[whitemale08]

11:05 AM on 04/08/2010

Everybody thought it was cute-n-funny to bail out Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan when to this day they have all of the mark-to-fantasy derivatives and credit-default swaps backtsopped by the U.S. taxpayer while America goes broke in the process.

The American sucker ...you gotta love 'em.

[nThenwhat]

11:50 AM on 04/08/2010

I must have missed the "cute-n-funny" part ... but enjoyed your "mark to fantasy" characterization.