Yep, it was a joint (bipartisan?) effort to reward major campaign cash contributors.
Oh, bipartisan is a very good word to use.
In fact, it was Bill Clinton that signed the legislation that dismantled Glass-Steagall in 1999 after publicly supporting the creation of Citigroup. A major hold out blocking the legislation was the Black Caucus, who did not like that banks were going to be released of their obligation to the poor. This is where Jesse Jackson came into play and helped Clinton get the nod (Banks received loop holes, instead of downright excused). The banks and Big Business had, for a couple decades, courted politicians to reverse the regulations enacted through the New Deal. With the vast majority of the financial donations going to Republicans, Clinton's argument was that Democrats should get more than they were. This is why he was instrumental for Republicans when it came to deregulating the banks and the energy industry. Enron executives and lobbyists were constantly present within the Clinton entourage overseas in foreign governments and they actually helped write the legislation that Congress and the White House would approve.
Another fact, after Enron imploded just two years after they helped write the legislation that freed it to **** itself, filing for bankruptcy in 2001,the Center for Responsive Politics estimated that 71 senators and 188 members of the House had received contributions from Enron. These were Republicans and Democrats, all seeking to satisfy the average American's ideologies against the other, while working for the same corporate employer.
So, yeah, when it came to the 2007 banking meltdown, Republicans and Democrats were all too eager to throw our tax money towards their true benefactors. The irony is that after spending so much time and money convincing Washington that it could regulate itself, thus dismantling Glass-Steagall, it wound up proving that it couldn't...just like it did in 1929. Directly after the 2007-08 meltdown, these banks went on to shamelessly seize the average American tax-payer's home and his small business. So, banks not only made a temporary killing in their decade long cash grab, they also made money by forcing the government hand-out, and then made money seizing people's property. In the meantime, Republicans tried to blame liberals for obligating banks to support the poor (despite the 1999 or 2000 legislation relieving them of that obligation) and Democrats (Obama, after making a brilliant bi-partisan speech presenting exactly what happened) blamed Republicans for driving the bus (before Obama appointed Clinton's economic team that led deregulation in the first place).
And today? Corporations were given a gift in 2007. They no longer pay federal taxes at all. But here we are again...looking for government to use even less tax-dollars to create some socialism for the American people.....with corporate bail-outs inevitability on the way. This wouldn't be such a big deal were we not so enthusiastic about being a debtor nation with nothing in the bank other than more Treasury bonds destined for China. Except this time, bail-outs will be more shameful because corporations don't even pay their share of the taxes anymore. And isn't unemployment already appearing, meaning an inability to pay rent, mortgage, and other bills? What did the banks do last time while corporations hunkered down and sat on a trillion dollars? Again, we see Trickle Down proving itself as a con game to enrich the much upper echelons of American society.
My bet? Nobody is going to learn a damn thing again. Conservatives will continue to make bad arguments about socialism even as their elected practice it for Big Business. Democrats will continue to insist that their side is clean and cares deeply for Americans. They will both persist in their quest to vote for their political team as if it means that they get to feel like they win too, while the Republicans and Democrats they vote for sit in the same room and receive their corporate donations to pretend that they actually oppose each other in any meaningful way.
