Here’s John McCain:
“While Fannie and Freddie were working to keep Congress away from their house of cards, Senator Obama was taking their money.”
“My friends, this is the problem with Washington. People like Senator Obama have been too busy gaming the system and haven’t ever done a thing to actually challenge the system.”
“We’ve heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign. But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was square in the middle of it.”
I know, these guys don’t write their own thoughts, and someone in the McCain campaign has a strategy in mind in writing this, but it is classic projection. Imagine someone, anyone, saying these words about McCain himself. It would be dead on.
This is from Huffington Post, which links to Contingencies, the magazine of the American Society of Actuaries. McCain, talking about health care:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation
That’s right – McCain, who was right in the middle of all this deregulation nonsense, wanted to apply the same scheme to health care.
Now he’s talking as if he were not part of the problem. He’s a regulator now, a tough guy, who wants to fire the head of the FESEFCCSPIC. If he can pull this off, if he can change his stripes while in a dead run, our media is brain dead.
Speaking of deregulation nonsense, it’s worth some of our time to read Dave Budge on the meltdown – he’s got the most to lose, as that is his business. The man has a good brain, if only he weren’t knee deep in libertarian ideology. He can’t see that the very best system we can have, the one that serves all of us best, is capitalism, but regulated. Without regulation, it tends to go haywire. Dave thinks government causes problems and that markets function well on their own, and blames the current crisis on us “socialists” who wanted affordable housing. (What’s a little bait and switch – i.e., ARMS – among friends? They sold sophisticated financial products to the most unsophisticated among us, assuming real estate was a bottomless well, and are now blaming the victims. Like the lending people didn’t know what they were doing.)
If the evidence that deregulation leads to disaster were not right in front of our noses, it would not seem so ludicrous.
Piece of Mindful 
Deregulator purists are socialists too. When things go bad it’s taxpayers, not the market that picks up the pieces so we can move forward. Corporate socialism, or classic fascism, will save banks, insurance giants, but won’t lift a finger to help individuals with the same “liquidity” problems. If we’re all in this together, it’s high time we share in the profits when times are good. Raising corporate taxes, closing offshore loopholes, and establishing a living wage for workers would be a good point to start. If consumers can’t afford to consume, the system can’t restart.
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Mark, deregulation began under Carter admin. (trucking and airline deregulation, the main bill that did that, was written by then staffer for Sen. Edward Kennedy, Stephen Breyer of the SCOTUS) and look at all these Democrats in the Senate that gutted the New Deal era Glass-Steagal Act. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999,
see
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1229
Summer 2008 »
The Legacy of the Clinton Bubble
I would note that moderate Republican, Rep. James Leach, who is now
supporting Obama, was a lead sponsor in the House of Representatives,
and these Democrats voted for the Bill in the Senate, Lincoln [D-AR],
Feinstein [D-CA], Dodd [D-CT.], Biden [D-DE], Graham {D-FL], Cleland
{D-GA.], Akaka and Inouye {D’s-HI], Durbin [D-IL.], Bayh {D-IN.],
Breaux and Landrieu [D’s-LA.] , Sarbanes [D-MD.], Kennedy and Kerry
[D’s-MA.], Levin [D-MI.], Baucus and Burns [D’s-MT.], Reid [D-NV.],
Lautenberg and Torricelli [D’s-NJ.], Bingaman [D-NM.], Moynihan and
Schumer [D-NY], Edwards [D-NC.], Conrad [D-ND.], Wyden [D-OR.], Reed
[D-RI], Hollings [D-SC.], Daschle (for Obama early on) and Johnson
[D’s-SD], Leahy [D-VT.], Robb [D-VA.], Murray [D-WA], Byrd and
Rockefeller [D-WI]. The only Democrats to vote against were, Boxer,
[D-CA.], Harkin [D-IA], Mikulski.[D’s-MD.] , Wellstone [D-WI.],
Dorgan [D-ND], and Feingold [D-WI.]
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s1999-354
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act
A prescient article by Robert Kuttner (author of, ” Obama’s
Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative
Presidency (Paperback – Aug 25, 2008)
Buy new: $14.95 $10.17
26 Used & new from $8.76 ), see
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_bubble_economy
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And note these comments as well.
From a major book on the Clinton era by a leftist economist, Robert Pollin, “Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity, ” published by Verso Books, the publishing arm of New Left Review.
Bob Rubin, http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/06UU5RV6D66qT/610x.jpg
w/Obama, Laura Tyson and Joseph Stiglitz.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1842720,00.html
>…”The second major component of Clinton administration policy in this area was supporting the successful repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall framework of financial regulation through the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, otherwise known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley Dismantlement of Glass-Steagall, de facto and de jure, had been long in the making. Innovative financial market players were easily circumventing this old regulatory apparatus, with its focus on creating firewalls between segments of the financial services industry, and preventing commercial banks from operating in more than one state. But the point is that an alternative to both Glass-Steagall and complete deregulation could have been devised, through some combination of policies such as taxing speculative financial transactions and establishing lower reserve requirements for loans that finance productive, as against speculative, investments. But the Clinton administration never considered such an approach. Quite the contrary. The 2001 Economic Report of the President, the last one written under Clinton, was unequivocal in dismissing Glass-Steagall and touting the virtues of financial deregulation:
“‘Given the massive financial instability of the 1930s, narrowing
the range of banks’ activities was arguably important for that day and
age. But those rules are not needed today, and the easing of
interstate banking rules, along with the passage of the Financial
Services Modernization Act of 1999 have removed them, while
maintaining appropriate safeguards. These steps allow consolidation in
the financial sector that will result in efficiency gains and provide
new services for consumers.’
“Moreover, Robert Rubin, a major Clinton administration force
behind Glass-Steagall repeal, was also among the first to benefit
personally from it, in moving from his Treasury position to co-direct
the newly merged investment/commercial banking conglomerate Citigroup.
Under any reasonable interpretation of Glass-Steagall, the former
commercial bank Citicorp and the former investment banking firm
Travelers would not have been permitted to merge.”
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Mike – You’ve answered the question that was not asked, and quite well I might add. I wrote about McCain trying to change his stripes, and wondered if he might be successful.
I’m aware that deregulation started under Carter, that both parties participated, that Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, that Robert Rubin was a coyote both who negotiated first the open the door for the coyotes, and then revealed that he too was a coyote.
We’re in agreement.
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