I've long admired Robert Scheer's writing and reporting, and his analysis of financial deregulation and Clinton's complicity is accurate. But he also largely ignores the forest for the trees: deregulation of this sort was in the larger scheme of things only one part of a much larger, essentially four-pronged (generation-long) assault by right wing market fundamentalists. The other three parts--trickle-down tax policy; inflation-targeting monetary policy; and privatization--while not as visible as the immediate cause of the Great Recession as deregulation, were even more responsible for its root cause (rising inequality, hollowed out aggregate demand), and therefore, far more lethal in the long term than any deregulatory nonsense. What this deregulatory effort did (for which Clinton and other leading Dems do deserve ample blame) was to encourage a bubble that could serve (temporarily) to paper over the much more virulent economic erosion caused by the other three horsemen of the conservative economic counter-revolution. Clinton's blame in this regard may boil down to little more than misjudging these financial time bombs as instruments of "little d" democratic credit extension--in an era of (mildly) declining inequality, moderately more progressive fiscal policy, blunted privatization, and moneatry policy diverted from its usual myopic focus on inflation targeting. Though Gore appeared to have understood this less completely than Clinton, it's entirely likely that this important backdrop would have continued largely unabated under his presidency (certainly no reversal of course on fiscal policy that we got with the Bush tax cuts and the diversion of social spending to the Pentagon) and the housing/mortgage investment bubble would have represented a smaller part of much larger, and much more evenly distributed economic activity, would have likely burst later and with less fall-out. The downside of such a scenario, of course, would be that fewer citizens would have recognized the perversity and corrosiveness of such deregulation, and the explosion that we've witnessed would have simply awaited the next Republican/Conservative regime change.
The important point here is that President Clinton encouraged and presided over historic reversals of conservative policy in these other three critical areas (largely the first since LBJ), which partly blinded him to the potential lethality of financial deregulation but also rendered it actually less important and lethal.
He should not be forgiven for having missed its import, but Americans should understand how a genuinely liberal Democrat like Clinton might have only seen all this--in the late 90s--through a glass darkly...

When I read these articles online, a key benefit is that the writers are sharing details that inspire a bit more research, to see the rest of the picture. So, here, I did a quick google search of the two legislative actions cited here: Commodity Futures Modernization Act, and Financial Services Modernization Act.

Both were key legislation that later enabled economic meltdowns. Both were passed by a Republican-led Congress (GOP had 54% in the senate, 51% in the House), and both were signed into law by Bill Clinton, just after the 2000 election (yup, the one about the hanging chads, when W was elected).

I am glad my name is not Phil Graham. He Chaired the Senate Banking committee and led both pieces of legislation. He 'earned' all the benefits that are granted to one who 'served' in Congress for 23-years, from 1979 to 2002. He retired weeks ahead of his term expiration date to try to enable the advancement of another Republican from Texas (Cornyn). He then immediately hired on as a Vice Chairman of the Investment Banking division at UBS. Talk about revolving septic systems! Yup, UBS; the same bank lately in the news (again!) for having aided billions in tax evasion.

Here is an excerpt about UBS from the WSJ:

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"...UBS in 2009 agreed to turn over the names of more than 4,000 account holders who were U.S. taxpayers and pay $780 million to resolve a criminal case involving secret offshore accounts. Since then, more than 33,000 U.S. taxpayers have confessed to holding undeclared overseas accounts and paid more than $5 billion in taxes and penalties...."
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And, a link to that WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044401750457764541261423770...

Some believe Romney's TARP (Tax Accountability Rejection Program) relates to his being among those tax-dodges involved in this amnesty. Stinks.

I've always considered Clinton to be the Great Seducer—and I don't mean sexually. The word means to entice someone (or others) into a course of action that is inadvisable or foolhardy. And here we are today, with 46 million of us living at or below the poverty line (which is itself an impoverished measurement); increased productivity by those of us who work, but stagnant (ie, stinking) wages for our efforts over the past few decades; a political process deeply corrupted by greed; and, in my view, little hope for genuine change in the near future as long as folks go gaga over folks like Clinton and Obama, mistaking the shine for gold.