John McCain, attempting to opportunistically trade on the current economic troubles, has been recently claiming that he was an early reformer who demanded tighter regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. He also claims that if he is elected President he will go after "cronyism" in banking regulation by the federal government.
So how does he square the fact that his campaign manager, Rick Davis, spent five years as a lobbyist for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Davis was collecting $30,000 a month as head of a group set us by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lobby the government for greater deregulation of those two mortgage banks. Now he is running McCain's Presidential campaign.
How does a Presidential candidate whose campaign is staffed by many of Washington's biggest lobbyists run against cronyism in government? Those guys are the ultimate cronies.
How does a Presidential candidate run as a bank regulator when his close economics adviser, Phil Gramm, is a key lobbyist for the Swiss Bank UBS? Gramm is currently not an acknowledged adviser to McCain, but but when the campaign spokesperson was asked if he was still in the running for Secretary of the Treasury if McCain is elected President they refused to deny it. Yet Phil Gramm is the ex-Senator who as Chairman of the Senate Banking committee passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that effectively eliminated the 1930's Glass-Steagall Act that had been put into place to avoid exactly the kind of financial melt-down that Wall Street is currently experiencing.
Phil Gramm released most of the regulation on banks, Alan Greenspan pumped up money supply to create the housing bubble while refusing to regulate mortgage rules, and Cheney/Bush - with strong support by John McCain - passed the tax-cuts for the wealthy that killed the government surplus revenues just as they started the unnecessary Iraq War that is currently gobbling up $billions every month.
Bush, Cheney, Gramm, and Greenspan are all directly responsible for the current financial crisis, and John McCain was a loud encourager of every one of their policies.
Now McCain is running for President to replace George Bush. McCain will say anything if he thinks it will get him elected President, but his history (including his efforts to prevent government regulators from closing down the S&L con man Charles Keating in the Keating Five Scandal) shows that he is a classic Reagan era deregulator and that he operates in the middle of the crony-filled Washington environment.
McCain has no credibility as a deregulator and no credibility when he claims to be against Washington cronyism. All he has is lies and Chutzpah.
Updated 11:53 am CDT to provide link to the news video in which McCain's spokesperson refused to deny that Gramm is still being considered for Secretary of Treasury in a McCain administration.
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