Found it! Here's the story I was thinking of where Michael Greenberger explains the deregulation I was thinking of. It's a really complicated story but he explains it pretty well.

At about 4:18, he talks about Gramm's role:

In December 2000 on the floor of the Senate, Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate finance committee, introduced a piece of legislation that completely deregulated these markets not only at the federal level but also at the state level. So they are completely outside the law, so to speak...
It was called the Commodity Futures Moderinization Act. It was a 262 page bill and it was added as a rider to an 11,000 page omnibus appropriations bill as congress was recessing for Christmas in 2000. I would say there was no one, exept the drafters of the bill who understood what it did and I can assure you that the drafters of the bill were not members of congress.

The bill allows "credit default swaps" which involves hedge fund-like bets on credit defaults--betting on whether homeowners will pay off their loans--and the banks had all bet that the homeowners would pay off their loans and so they are now losing massive amounts of money. To make matters worse the banks considered the bets themselves really solid assets and put them on their books as assets. But the law also allowed the banks to place the bets, not through any hedge fund or traceable market venue, but through "offbook" entities called structured investment vehicles. So when the banks started losing massive amounts of money they weren't putting those losses on their balance sheets.

When the feds last week said something vague about the takeover of Freddie and Fanny being triggered by their accounting process, I thought immediately of this. I think this needs to be investigated throroughly. Maybe a call to Michael Greenberger.

The point of a Talking point is the ‘sound-bitey’ nature. While there is truth in ours and often little or none in theirs . . . Having to explain it, kills it. Deliver it with gusto and self-absurdity.

In a nut shell, the Law bearing Gramm's name allowed banks to become investment banks and allowed companies to speculate in the commodities they generate.

This lead to creating securities from bundled loans then buying/selling these securities with 99% leveraging.

This lead to Enron’s house of cards financing of their organization and the bilking their investors AND customers.

This lead to oil companies record-profits due to their ability to drive up prices on the oil futures then passing the ‘costs’ onto us at the pump.

Yada yada.