This does a good job of simultaneously demonstrating how powerful a working-class housing movement that cut across identity lines would be and showing why moneyed interests have no reason to fear such a movement materializing from the current Left.

@2; Charles getting the subprime mortgage crisis comically wrong includes the gem of President Clinton as the villain (because a politician named Clinton can be nothing but an arch-villain to Seattle’s hard Left) and W. as a pragmatic reformer, whose honest and visionary policy falls innocent victim to predatory Seattle bankers. (Charles may well be the last person alive still claiming W. understood either business or politics.)

@1: Safe Seattle was right all along, demanding free drug treatment for Seattle’s homeless. Charles and the Stranger will never, ever forgive Safe Seattle for this, hence the cheap barb thrown at Safe Seattle in a story otherwise having nothing to do with them.

@3 who drove repeal of Glass-Steagall? Read a book.

@4: Be specific. Which book will tell me of W as the virtuous, pragmatic reformer, out to broaden the appeal of his party to the children left behind by white, racist Democrats? Is it “My Pet Goat”?

Bill Clinton Campaigned as a Progressive.
Why Didn’t He Govern Like One?

The Democrats’ turn toward neoliberalism
was made possible by a set of powerful illusions.

Today, however, Clinton’s presidency wins little respect.

Few liberals want to return the Democratic Party to that era because so many see his presidency as a betrayal of the progressivism that was once the hallmark of the New Deal and the Great Society.

Bill Clinton was the first Democratic president since FDR to win two consecutive terms, but that accomplishment seems merely a product of his accommodation to an ideology that privileged trade liberalization, financial deregulation, and privatization of government services, while tolerating the growth of class inequalities.

Clinton’s 1996 declaration that “the era of big government is over” seemingly ratified Reaganite conservatism and in the process transformed Republican politics and policy into a hegemonic ethos that liberated global finance and eviscerated Keynesian liberalism.

Although hardly in use during the 1990s, “neoliberalism” became shorthand in the next decade for the fallout: the liberalization of trade, the deregulation of finance, the privatization of government services, the reductions of taxes on the rich, and the evisceration of the labor movement and the welfare state.

That the Clinton administration embarked on this path is without doubt. His presidency not only saw passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 but also the end of a New Deal entitlement in the welfare reform of 1996 and protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO)—and in particular against US support for China’s entry to that organization—in the 1999 Battle of Seattle, which put environmentalists and union labor on the same side of the barricade.

If Clinton and like-minded Friends of Bill were hardly neoliberals when they first occupied the White House, they had moved far in that direction by the time they departed. But this shift in policy and rhetoric was not merely a product of defeat at the hands of corporate enemies and political foes. It was also bred by the set of seductive illusions.

The Clinton administration’s assumption that a new world of technology and markets would lay the basis for both an era of prosperity and progressive statecraft proved sorely mistaken.

Instead, the financialized capitalism that Bill Clinton came to champion generated inequality and crisis, opening the door to retrograde forces they had barely imagined. The path toward the management of a capitalist polity would prove far more difficult than Clinton’s partisans could imagine.

Today, however, Clinton’s presidency wins little respect.

by Judith Stein and Nelson Lichtenstein
9/8/23

tonnes more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/bill-clinton-a-fabulous-failure-nelson-lichtenstein-judith-stein/

@6: Define "Progressive".

Clinton was more of a pragmatist. Get what we need in exchange for a few compromises. That's what gov't is all about when your base of support is only a few percent over half the voters.

It has been said that "There are no enemies on the left". Which some take to mean that everything to the right must be demonized. I define that as spoiled children. Didn't get that pony for Christmas as well as the Nintendo? Santa Claus deserves to burn in hell for that oversight.

@7
your pro-
unbridled neoliberl
capitalism point's duly noted

and duly refuted
in Mother Jones' superb
Takedown of the Clinton Myth.

see: @6.

@1: It appears that no one needs Safe Seattle. Their website seems to be blocked.

@6: Thanks for demonstrating my point; the mere mention of Clinton prompted you to swallow and regurgitate an anti-Clinton screed. Sadly for you, there are criteria for believing something other than, “it supports my pre-existing hatreds.”

“Bill Clinton was the first Democratic president since FDR to win two consecutive terms,”

While that is strictly true in the narrowest sense, it obfuscates much nuance. Harry Truman served all but 93 days of FDR’s fourth term. He was elected in 1948 over Dixiecrat opposition, and lost in 1952 to Eisenhower, who had been asked by each major party to run as a candidate. (Ike was hardly a staunch Republican, championing one of the largest, most expensive, and furthest-reaching of all big-government programs, the Interstate Highway System.) JFK was assassinated; LBJ served the rest of his term, was elected himself in a massive landslide, and chose not to run 1968.

‘Although hardly in use during the 1990s, “neoliberalism” …’

The Oxford English Dictionary shows the words “neoliberal” and “neoliberalism,” coined in the late nineteenth century, rising steadily in popularity during the entire period after 1970. They were in common usage well before 1990, and have remained so ever since.

I’m sure the rest of the piece rests upon equally-firm factual foundations, thus explaining your choice of it.

@4 "who drove repeal of Glass-Steagall?"

Republicans, obviously. Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) passed the Senate along party lines. A similar bill passed in the House with more bipartisan support. But Republicans held a majority in the House, and with Gingrich in control, many Democrats went along with the majority for fear of losing their seat (those in the Senate were more confident, given their longer terms). Democrats ended up supporting the bill as long they added anti-redlining provisions. It passed by overwhelming (veto proof) numbers in both the House and Senate.

This act is way overrated when it comes to the financial crisis. First, various parts of Glass-Steagall were repealed over the years, prior to GLBA. Second, there was some consolidation, but not at the scale many thought would occur. Finally, Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the crisis: https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/reinstating-an-old-rule-is-not-a-cure-for-crisis/.

Oh, and the Community Reinvestment Act didn't play much of a part in the financial collapse either (although some Republicans blame it, of course). The causes of the crisis were many, and will be argued for decades, but the general consensus is that regulators were simply not doing their job. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was mostly symbolic. It sent a signal to financial institutions that it was the Wild West out there. But the act passed at the end of Clinton's term, not the beginning. It was George W. Bush who ushered in the new pro-business, anything-goes approach that dominated the 1980s (under his hero, Ronald Reagan) but was taken to a new level under Bush. Whether the regulators were asleep at the wheel or encouraged to ignore the problem is debatable, but they certainly failed to do their job, just as Republican administrations have allowed consolidation in various industries, despite the Sherman Antitrust Law still being on the books.

Anyway ... this article has little to do with Glass-Steagall and GBLA. Charles is discussing subprime mortgages, and predatory lending in general. There are laws against this. One big one is the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (signed by Bill Clinton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Ownership_and_Equity_Protection_Act_of_1994. The law isn't the problem, it is the folks enforcing it. Clinton signed a bill (written by a left-wing Democrat) which gave the government more regulatory power to go after predatory lenders. But the Bush administration didn't do much to prevent it. Thus it is weird that this implies Clinton was somehow the problem, and not Bush.

@7 -- "Clinton was more of a pragmatist". Exactly. People often ignore the basics. The U. S. government is not a parliamentary system. The president only has limited power. Clinton tried very hard to pass national health insurance (similar to Obamacare). He failed, because Congress had moved to the right.

Clinton was a centrist, in the same mode as Obama and Ike. They were all conservative in the classic sense, in that they weren't interested in making huge changes (unlike Reagan, George W. Bush, FDR, LBJ or Biden). Congress had a lot to do with it. When Ike was president, Congress was overwhelmingly Democratic, and thus he is considered a fairly good president. Clinton was the opposite. Clinton failed to pass his signature legislation (health care reform) and then suffered under the Gingrich revolution. It is worth noting that Clinton didn't get a majority of the vote in either election (as Ross Perot took a substantial amount of the popular vote). Thus he didn't have a lot of political capital (Perot was basically a moderate Republican). Clinton was essentially swimming against the (Republican) tide. Then, of course, you have his blunders in the bedroom (and other scandals). He had limited political power for various reasons. I think folks had high hopes for Clinton because he was so damn articulate, and was able to cut through the bullshit to explain why the right-wing policies (championed by Reagan) were so fucking stupid. They also assumed a big swing to the left (after twelve years of Republican rule) ignoring the fact that Clinton was not the Democratic version of Reagan (and never promised to be).

I think the most disappointing presidency was Obama's. He did get health care reform passed, so he deserves credit for that. Partly the problem was timing. A year later and there would have been a huge Democratic landslide, like when FDR took office. But still, his interest in "getting along" limited his ability to make more meaningful change. Just blame the recession on Bush (and Republican polices in general) and then do the reverse. Every sensible economist said so. That was the time to spend, and spend big. But instead, Obama made minor changes (other than health care). It has been his VP (Biden) who has made the bigger changes, even though the financial situation wasn't nearly as dire. Of course coming out of a pandemic means you need to spend money, but not like a financial crisis, where the government has to do all of the lending (because the banks won't). Biden has been far more aggressive in pushing for, and ultimately passing progressive legislation, even if he lacks the charm of Obama or Clinton.

As mentioned above Charles is getting the "ownership society" thing comically wrong. It began with Reagan's deregulation, continued under Bush I, expanded further under Clinton and further yet under Bush II, resulting in the credit default swap derivative crisis of 2007/2008. Under those four administrations an expectation of equity growth was assumed which was not an outrageous thought in hot real estate markets like Seattle, but when it was carried out in Terre Haute and Little Rock, the house of cards collapsed. The basic idea that home ownership is better for people than renting is not a bad one. But making sketchy loans to people who can't afford them (like English majors?) is dangerous as hell.

@14: “The basic idea that home ownership is better for people than renting is not a bad one. But making sketchy loans to people who can't afford them (like English majors?) is dangerous as hell.”

And there was a deeper, more subtle fraud in there, as well. Back in the ‘80s, the father of one of my friends was an investment banker. He explained that when he rated a bank as an investment prospect, he looked at the bank’s real-estate holdings. If they were primarily commercial real estate, then he tended to rate the bank as a risky investment. If the real estate was individual family homes, then he would give the bank a better rating, on the theory homeowners will do anything to protect the roofs over their families’ heads.

Banks giving home loans to families who lacked the incomes to pay their mortgages undermined this logic. In the crisis, many of those homeowners simply walked away from their homes, leaving the banks insolvent.

Here on the rural eastside of King County we're becoming more diverse, but it's still gentrification. It's also not in a balanced way as it's more of the semi-diverse tech crowd messing with a once white rural demographic. Who else can afford a home on 5 acres 15 minutes from Redmond?

@14: "Banks giving home loans to families who lacked the incomes to pay their mortgages undermined this logic"

By the mid-00s, it wasn't banks making the loans so much as buying the bundled securities after the fact. And that's how we got WaMu. I had a mortgage from them back in the day when they knew their customers. But the real estate mortgage biz moved to brokers. Who moved the paper out in a matter of days and so had no concerns with product quality. An (aborted) attempt by the CFTC to regulate the mortgage securities market led to Greenspan and others to slap them down.