Well - the Texas governor who likes acting like a cowboy and has a penchant for executing people has finally jumped into the race for the White House.

[photo of George W. Bush] No - not this guy … [photo of Rick Perry] this guy!

That’s right - Texas Governor Rick Perry announced on Saturday that he is running for President - take a look:

It is time to get America working again and that's why with the support of my family and unwavering belief of the goodness of America I declare to you today as a candidate for President of the United States.

I guess he’s hoping the country has already forgotten the last time we elected a Texas cowboy as President.

But in case they haven’t - and Rick Perry takes his boots to the White House - then hold on to your hats - because we’re all in for another gigantic financial disaster.

Why?

Because within hours of Perry’s announcement - he received an endorsement from this guy - Phil Gramm.

Phil Gramm - you may not know him - but Phil Gramm is the man most responsible for the 2008 economic meltdown. In fact, Time magazine described him as one of the 25 most responsible, literally.

Back in 2001 - as a Senator from Texas - Phil Gramm slipped the Commodity Futures Modernization Act passed through Congress where the last Texas Governor to be President - George W. Bush - happily signed it into law.

What this act did is keep the government from regulating derivatives markets - which allowed banksters to create all sorts of complex financial instruments like credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations that inflated the housing bubble - made them all tons of money - basically creating things that were bets and then bets on those bets and then bets on those bets on those bets until we ended up with hundreds, literally hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of these bets out there that never existed before Phil Gramm created this law that made them possible, that made them legal, that made it possible for the banksters to get, and in addition to that blowing up Glass-Steagall and then what happened?

Some of the underlying mortgages started falling apart - as could have been predicted - and the bets went bad, the insurance went bad, and then the bets on the bets went bad, and the bets on the bets on the bets went bad, and it all crashed our economy.

If there’s one piece of legislation responsible for this crisis we’re in today - it’s the Commodity Futures Modernization Act - and Phil Gramm is the guy who wrote it.

So why would the disgraced Phil Gramm - former Senator Phil Gramm - want Rick Perry to be President?

Well, because Rick Perry learned everything he knows about markets and the economy from… guess who… Phil Gramm!

As a student at Texas A&M University - Perry took classes taught by Phil Gramm.

Phil Gramm who called unemployed people "whiners".

His exact words were, this is back when he was John McCain's economic advisor in 2008, he said, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

Phil Gramm - the guy who put into law the Commodity Futures Modernization act - and another piece of legislation called Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which ended Glass-Steagall and set up our too-big-to-fail banks - which both, by the way, helped his wife, Wendy, make a fortune as a member of the board of Directors of Enron.

Gramm's legislative masterpiece is often called the Enron Loophole.

And much of Perry's "wonderful economy" in Texas is the result of oil prices tripling in the past decade - and Texas is the home to lots and lots of oil refineries.

So many, in fact, that Texas produces more pollution than any other state in the Union.

Great way to jump-start the economy, Rick.

It's almost like you're channeling the Enron CEO Ken Lay, who conveniently died just before he could testify at his own trial and spill the beans about Phil and Wendy Gramm.

Phil Gramm helped make fortunes in his home state of Texas, both when he was a congressman from there, and a senator, and when his wife helped run Enron.

He even co-authored Ronald Reagan's first budget, which cut taxes on billionaires, raised taxes on working people, and began the death spiral of today's American working class.

So I guess after destroying the American middle class advising George W. Bush - Gramm wants to finish the job with his protégé Rick Perry.

That's The Big Picture.