Phil Gramm

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Phil Gramm

William Philip "Phil" Gramm (born July 8, 1942 in Fort Benning , Georgia ) is an American economist and politician who was first for the Democratic Party (1979–1983) and then for the Republican Party (1983–1985) MP in the US - House of Representatives was. From 1985 to 2002 he represented the state of Texas in the US Senate as a Republican and was a pioneer in the deregulation of the US financial markets in the 1990s. He then worked as a business lobbyist, including for the Swiss bank UBS , and as a political advisor for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Family, education and work

Phil Gramm was born on July 8, 1942 in Fort Benning, Georgia and grew up in nearby Columbus . His father, an Army Sergeant , suffered a stroke soon after his son was born and was permanently disabled. Gramm's mother worked as a nurse; the children had to contribute to the livelihood of the household early on. Gramm attended a public school and graduated from Georgia Military Academy in 1961 . He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Georgia in 1964 and received his PhD in Economics in 1967. From 1967 to 1978 he taught the subject at Texas A&M University and founded Gramm & Associates (1971–1978), a business consultancy firm.

Phil Gramm is married to Wendy Lee Gramm, a Hawaiian of Korean roots who worked in the administration of the Reagan and Bush administrations. They have two sons and live in Helotes, near San Antonio .

Congressman and US Senator

After an unsuccessful candidacy in the party primary against incumbent US Senator Lloyd Bentsen in 1976 , Gramm was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1978 for the Democratic Party in the sixth Texas congressional electoral district. There he stood out for his very conservative voting behavior; Among other things, he was one of the main authors of the laws that brought the conservative financial and economic policy of the new US President Ronald Reagan (" Reaganomics ") in 1981 on the way. When he was therefore no longer proposed on January 3, 1983 by the Democratic Congress leadership for the influential House Budget Committee (Budget Committee), he resigned on January 5, 1983 from his mandate. He changed sides and was re-elected as a representative of the Republicans in Congress in the following extraordinary election for his previous seat on February 12 of that year.

In 1984 , Gramm was elected to the US Senate for the Republicans to represent the state of Texas. In the election he received 3,116,348 million votes (58.5 percent), making him the first candidate for the US Senate in Texas to have more than three million votes. He succeeded in doing this again when he was re-elected in 1990 (3,027,680 votes). In the 1996 presidential election he ran as a candidate in the Republican primary, but failed early and retired after the Iowa caucus in favor of Bob Dole . In September 2001, Gramm announced that it would not stand for re-election in the 2002 election and resigned from his manat a few weeks before his regular resignation on November 30, 2002 in order to give his successor John Cornyn an advantage over the appointment of the Senate through seniority . what was unsuccessful.

According to the US Senate

From then on he worked as a political advisor and lobbyist. Shortly after retiring from the Senate grams became vice president of the investment bank of UBS and worked until his retirement in late 2011 to more than 120 business transactions worldwide. He also founded his own lobbying company, Gramm Partners. From 2007 he acted as chief economic advisor in John McCain's 2008 US presidential election campaign and was designated Treasury Secretary until he was criticized for an interview in July 2008. The Washington Times told Gramm that the perceived economic downturn at the time was a purely “mental recession” and that the United States had become a “nation of whiners” while the underlying economic data was different Speak language. McCain then distanced himself from Gramm, who shortly thereafter retired from his consulting work. Since 2012, Gramm has been a partner in the US Policy Metrics lobbying firm and a Visiting Scholar in the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute , where he is working on proposals for restructuring the American tax and social security system, including the abolition of the Obama administration's health care reform .

Gramm is primarily held responsible by the political left for directional decisions that led to the subprime crisis and thus to the global economic crisis from 2007 . The economist Paul Krugman, for example, called Gramm the “high priest of deregulation” in 2008 and called him, together with the former US Federal Reserve President Alan Greenspan, primarily responsible for the crisis, since Gramm, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, played a decisive role in the deregulation of the financial sector in the 1990s had driven forward. For example, through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 1999, Gramm played a key role in the repeal of the Bank-regulating Glass-Steagall Act from the time of the first global economic crisis . The financial and professional amalgamation of the Gramms with the energy company Enron came under criticism because the company, as a major donor, may have influenced its legislation. Gramm rejected the allegations and instead explained the crisis from 2007 onwards with what he saw as the irresponsibly generous state aid from the Clinton administration for private real estate in the 1990s.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b Phil Gramm for President 1996 Campaign Brochure: 'Restoring the American Dream'. In: 4President.org .
  2. ↑ Kent Demaret: Texas Democrat Phil Gramm Hears the Call of a Different Drummer — and Switches Partners. In: People , Jan. 24, 1983.
  3. ↑ David Frum : Righter Than Newt. In: The Atlantic , March 1995; Andre Parrella: From The Archives: Sen. Phil Gramm And The 1996 NH Primary. In: New Hampshire Public Radio , April 23, 2015.
  4. ↑ David Plotz: Phil Gramm. Good Riddance to the Naysayer. In: Slate , September 7, 2001.
  5. ^ Republican Seniority List: 114th Congress. In: United States Senate Periodical Press Gallery (note below).
  6. ↑ Nathalie Tadena: Gramm Retires as UBS Investment Bank Officer. In: The Wall Street Journal , February 10, 2012.
  7. ^ Daniel Gross: Phil Gramm's UBS Problem. In: Slate , July 7, 2008.
  8. ↑ Patrice Hill: McCain Adviser Talks of 'Mental Recession'. In: Washington Times , July 9, 2008.
  9. ↑ Lorraine Woellert: Gramm Steps Down as McCain Co-Chair After 'Whiners' Remark. In: Bloomberg.com , July 18, 2008.
  10. ↑ Phil Gramm. In: US Policy Metrics .
  11. ^ Senator Phil Gramm Joins AEI to Work on Economic Policy. In: AEI.org , June 6, 2012.
  12. ↑ Phil Gramm: A Simple Cure for ObamaCare: Freedom. In: The Wall Street Journal , February 23, 2015.
  13. ↑ Lisa Lerer: McCain Guru Linked to Subprime Crisis. In: Politico.com , March 28, 2008; David Corn: Foreclosure Phil. In: Mother Jones , July / August 2008; Joseph Karl Grant: What the Financial Services Industry Puts Together Let No Person Put Asunder: How the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Contributed to the 2008–2009 American Capital Markets Crisis. In: Albany Law Review , December 18, 2009.
  14. ^ Race for the White House, September 22, 2008. Transcript of a conversation between David Gregory and Paul Krugman , September 22, 2008 (see also the video ). See also Paul Krugman: Taming the Beast. In: The New York Times , March 24, 2008.
  15. ^ Bob Herbert: Enron And the Gramms. In: The New York Times , Jan. 17, 2002; Eric Lipton: Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'. In: The New York Times , November 14, 2008.
  16. ↑ Phil Gramm, Miko Solon: The Clinton Era Roots of the Financial Crisis. In: The Wall Street Journal , August 12, 2013. See also Eric Lipton, Stephen Labaton: Deregulator Looks Back, Unswayed. In: The New York Times , November 16, 2008. Against this line of argument Gregory D. Squires: Scapegoating Blacks for the Economic Crisis. In: Poverty & Race. Vol. 17, 2008, No. 6, p. 3 f. (Online version) .
personal data
SURNAME Gram, Phil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gram, William Philip (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Benning , Georgia