I know you people from foreign states think I am completely obsessed with the thought that every bad thing that happens – from the financial markets tanking to Sandra Bullock’s really bad botox – on Phil Gramm, a former congressman and senator from the State of Texas.

Phil Gramm - Noted Problem Causer

Come to find out, I am right.  I am dead solid perfect right.

Phil Gramm is not only the cause of sequestration, he invented the term.

Phil Gramm is the Forrest Gump of financial calamity. Time and again, his face appears at key moments in history. Unlike Gump, Gramm is usually planting the seeds of future disaster whenever he pops up.

Former Texas Senator Gramm is best known for his fine work dismantling financial regulations in the 1990s, which helped bring us the financial crisis of the mid-to-late-2000s. But he is also the intellectual father of the latest nightmare deviling the economy: the sequester.

And then after that, he went to work setting up illegal tax havens for rich Americans at UBS.

When I tell you to pay Texans no mind and for God’s sake don’t let them near money, you need to listen to me.  They are financial magicians – they can make money disappear from your pocket.

You know when you find gum on your new shoes and you cannot get that crap off?  That was Phil Gramm’s gum.  I can prove it.

Thanks to Texas Ellen for the heads up.