John McCain Helped Push Through Gram-Leach-Bliley

[redstate_democrat]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/16/AR2008091603732_pf.html

In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

...

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible, saying that "in an endless quest for easy money, they dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don't even understand."

He said the misconduct was aided by "casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington," where he said oversight is "scattered, unfocused and ineffective."

"They haven't been doing their job right," McCain said yesterday, "or else we wouldn't have these massive problems on Wall Street, and that's a fact. At their worst, they've been caught up in Washington turf wars instead of working together to protect investors and the public interest."

...

In 2007, he told a group of bloggers on a conference call that he regretted his vote on the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which has been castigated by many executives as too heavy-handed.

McCain is lying dog. He pushed through Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which eviscerated the Depression era regs, and even though he voted for Sarbanes, he later told people he REGRETTED IT. He regretted the regulation that could have PREVENTED the Enron debacle! NOW he is the "deregulator"? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!

[Sugarcoated]

1. And Biden voted "nay"

on the Gram-Leach-Bliley bill and the other one that weakened regulations, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. That one was added surreptitiously into another bill, in 2001 I believe. Most Democrats voted nay on these two bills.

[sandnsea]

2. All Dems except Hollings

voted no on Gramm. I don't know about the other one.

[speedoo]

3. K&R. Thanks for posting this. Must read. nt