McCain Takes Aim At Bush, Fannie, Freddie, And The Fed For Financial Crisis

[maddezmom]

Source: RTT News

(RTTNews) - Republican nominee John McCain pledged Friday that he, along with running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, will "put an end to the reckless conduct, corruption, and unbridled greed that have caused a crisis on Wall Street."

The Arizona Senator delivered the remarks at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one day after he called for the firing of SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. McCain was highly critical of rival Barack Obama as well as the Federal Reserve and the Bush Administration.

Instead of placing blame on the short-sellers or deregulation on Wall Street, McCain took aim at the special interests in Washington for the current crisis, making Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) ground zero for the financial market turmoil.


Read more: http://www.rttnews.com/Content/PoliticalNews.aspx?Node=B1&Id=715937

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McCain's Fannie and Freddie Connections

John McCain railed against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the campaign trail today, saying that the CEOs that led the lenders to ruin "deserve nothing" and should have to pay back their severance packages. In an Wall Street Journal op-ed co-bylined by his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, McCain suggested bold reforms for Fannie and Freddie that would "terminate future lobbying, which was one of the primary contributors to this great debacle."

If that's the case, McCain should look first to his campaign staffers as the cause of that debacle. One of them was Fannie Mae's head of lobbying, and spread tens of millions of dollars around Washington in the form of lobbying contracts. A number of McCain staffers were on the receiving end of those contracts, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each from the lenders to rep their interests. And McCain's campaign manager served as president of a lobbying association that fought to protect Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae from the sort of regulation that McCain is now proposing.

In McCain's op-ed in the Journal, he and Palin wrote:

For years, Congress failed to act and it is deeply troubling that what we are seeing is an exercise in crisis management rather than sound planning, and at great cost to taxpayers.
We promise the American people that our administration will be different. We have long records of standing up to special interests…
But McCain's own campaign staffers are those special interests, a fact that casts doubt on both McCain's hiring judgment and his ability to pursue tough reforms of Fannie and Freddie.

more:http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9663_mccain_fannie_freddie.html


Keating 5 Survivor John McCain Now Favors Regulating Same Industry He De-Regulated When Lobbied 15 yrs ago

Today's news that AIG has been taken over by the federal government for $85 billion dollars could be the straw that breaks John McCain's back. If, and only if, Obama hits the message home in real time and doesn't let up until November 4th.

McCain, a champion of deregulation in the Senate, former Commerce Committee Chair, has taken an abrupt about face on the economy after yesterday's suicide mission in which he called the fundamentals of the economy strong.

In that one statement, then the support of regulation of finance, McCain has demonstrated that he is right. He doesn't know much about the economy. The late Tim Russert brought that out on Meet the Press not long ago.

If this is the moment Obama has been waiting for and he stays on message, he will win the election.
There is no easier target than a presidential campaign that was on the uptick then self-destructs. McCain now looks out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans, who are legitimately worried about their 401Ks and investments. McCain also looks out of touch with the thousands of people walking away from the buildings they worked at in Manhattan with no jobs and no clear future.

more:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-donahue/as-of-today-fundamentals_b_127030.html

[bdamomma]

1. unbelieveable

he has been sitting in Congress for the past 26 years, and hasn't done crap. What total BS, I just hope the American people are not buying this BS.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Literally n/t

[tularetom]

3. OK now it's time to start pounding the Keating Five thing

I'm guessing that many younger voters have never heard of it and older Americans need a reminder.

[maddezmom]

6. Revisiting McCain's Keating 5 history

Revisiting McCain's Keating 5 history
At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he would...

By Los Angeles Times

At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he would say, "didn't question my honor."

Among McCain's earliest benefactors in Arizona was Lincoln Savings and Loan chief Charles Keating Jr., who filled McCain's campaign coffers with more than $100,000 and hosted the McCains multiple times at his vacation home in the Bahamas.

Keating expected his largesse to be rewarded, and when federal regulators began looking into Lincoln's questionable lending practices and investments in the late 1980s, he turned to five senators whose coffers he had lined — Alan Cranston of California, Donald Riegle of Michigan, John Glenn of Ohio and both Arizona senators, Dennis DeConcini and McCain.

McCain attended two meetings with regulators at Keating's request. McCain's view was that he was seeking information on behalf of a constituent who was an important employer in his state. The regulators' view was that they were being pressured to act favorably for Keating.

Lincoln's collapse, the biggest of many savings and loan failures, cost taxpayers $2.6 billion. Keating spent four years in jail, before his sentence was overturned on a technicality, and the Keating 5, as the senators came to be known, lived under an ethical cloud for years.
more:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008157607_mckeating04.html

[HopeHoops]

4. Yo - McDude - the largest of your houses is MADE OF GLASS!

[AllentownJake]

5. Keating 5, Phil Gramm, and Carli.

Hit McCain for being dirty in the last govt. bailout.

Hit him for being BFF with the guy who deregulated everything

Hit him for the CEO who nearly destroyed a great American Company and than walked away with millions.

Rinse, and Repeat.

[maddezmom]

7. McCain's scary economic advisor, Phil Gramm

McCain's scary economic advisor, Phil Gramm
McCain's scary economic advisor
Not only is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm a shill for special interests, his deregulation policies helped spur the mortgage crisis, among other financial disasters.

By Joe Conason


May 30, 2008 | Even as John McCain struggles to preserve his image as a reformer by dismissing a few of the Washington lobbyists who dominated his presidential campaign, the futility of that effort suddenly became painfully obvious. Dire bulletins in the financial media warned of many billions in rotting mortgage paper held by UBS, the financial conglomerate that just happens to employ former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain's campaign chairman and chief economic advisor. Until two months ago UBS listed Gramm as a federal lobbyist on housing and mortgage issues.

So there at the shoulder of the Arizona maverick is perched yet another special-interest shill, in this instance not merely an errand boy for various dictators but the vice chairman of a Swiss bank whispering advice on how to cope with our economic woes. Or how not to cope, as in McCain's do-nothing approach to the foreclosure crisis, which displayed the strong influence of the financial lobby on his campaign.

Undoubtedly Gramm is promoting the agenda of those who subsidize him, as he has done ever since he entered politics as a servant of oil interests in his home state. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars from energy and financial interests as a congressman and then as a senator, rising to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, where he could really perform major favors. He is famed for slipping in an amendment desired by Enron Corp. back when his wife was on that doomed company's board. His employment by UBS, a company that recently warned some of its executives to avoid entering the United States for fear of criminal prosecution, demands fresh scrutiny of him as well as McCain.

But if Gramm's role as a banker and lobbyist is embarrassing to McCain, the greater harm is likely to be done by his economic advice. He and McCain have been friends since they were young congressional "foot soldiers in the Reagan revolution," as both like to say, and he is often touted (or was until lately) as a likely candidate for Treasury secretary should McCain win the White House.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x362659

[benld74]

8. THE CAUSE IS THE REMOVAL OF REGULATIONS HE VOTED in favor of!