I thought I remembered him saying he was in favor of less regulation
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/us/politics/16record.html?emWASHINGTON — The crisis on Wall Street will leave the next president facing tough choices about how best to regulate the financial system, and although neither Senator Barack Obama nor Senator John McCain has yet offered a detailed plan, their records and the principles they have set out so far suggest they could come at the issue in very different ways.
On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”
But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline.
While Mr. McCain has cited the need for additional oversight when it comes to specific situations, like the mortgage problems behind the current shocks on Wall Street,
he has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator and he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms. And this from 3/26/08
http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3533If you think this sounds like a preface to calling for new regulations to preempt a new generation of financial shenanigans, however, think again. McCain scolds both lenders and borrowers and talks about what they should do, but without pledging any government intervention to fix the underlying problems. His bottom line from a policy standpoint seems to come in this summation near the end (emphasis added):
"In financial institutions, there is no substitute for adequate capital to serve as a buffer against losses. Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital."http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/mccain-has-zero-history-to-suggest-he.htmlTuesday, September 16, 2008
McCain has ZERO history to suggest he will properly regulate Wall Street
Chris in Paris · 9/16/2008 04:19:00 AM ET · Link
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In fact, all history points towards leaving Wall Street alone to do whatever they want. Let's be clear about McCain's history here. He started his political life in DC in the Keating Five scandal. McCain used his influence to deflect regulators from investigating Charles Keating's troubled S&L, Lincoln Savings. Thanks to McCain's involvement the US taxpayers ended up getting stuck with the $2.6 billion.
Fast forward to this campaign where McCain has relied on Phil Gramm, former Senator who set up the economic problems on Wall Street today and who now works for exclusive Swiss bank UBS. Gramm helped rescue a failing McCain campaign last year and McCain has repeatedly referred to Gramm as his economic brain and his rumored Treasury Secretary. Gramm has a long history of changing Wall Street rules, creating an "anything goes" atmosphere that never, ever, never includes regulation. So for McCain to suggest he is now in favor of regulation is a ridiculous assertion. Who honestly believes that 72 year old John McCain, without any history of encouraging regulations on Wall Street, can change and suddenly be in the lead on regulation? C'mon.
Mr. McCain’s reaction suggests how the pendulum has swung to cast government regulation in a more favorable political light as the economy has suffered additional blows and how he is scrambling to adjust. While he has few footprints on economic issues in more than a quarter century in Congress, Mr. McCain has always been in his party’s mainstream on the issue.
In early 1995, after Republicans had taken control of Congress, Mr. McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. He was quoted as saying that excessive regulations were “destroying the American family, the American dream” and voters “want these regulations stopped.” The moratorium measure was unsuccessful.
“I’m always for less regulation,” he told The Wall Street Journal last March, “but I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in situations like the subprime lending crisis, the problem that has cascaded through Wall Street this year. He concluded, “but I am fundamentally a deregulator.”
Later that month, he gave a speech on the housing crisis in which he called for less regulation, saying, “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”
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