McCain guru linked to subprime crisis

[SHRED]

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An older article but just a reminder that this asshat called the victims of the mess he helped create, "a nation of whiners".

Was he referring to Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, etc...when he said that?
Hell no, those are his "buddies".

Ladies and Gentelman: Phil Gramm.
Former Republican Texas Senator and now chief McCain campaign adviser.
Many believe, should McCain become elected that Gramm would be appointed Secretary of the Treasury...{{{shudder}}}.

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McCain guru linked to subprime crisis
By LISA LERER | 3/28/08 2:06 PM EST

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Phil Gramm stood by John McCain in his worst days last summer when his campaign went broke and his candidacy was all but written off by political observers.


The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today’s economic turmoil.

“A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business had changed,” the Illinois senator running for president said in a New York economic speech. “But by the time was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.”

Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9246.html


Foreclosure Phil

Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html


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[wordpix]

1. bank and investment deregulation=rape, pillage, plunder the weak so the rich get richer

:puke: Wonder if Gramm did anything illegal with his repuke cronies in this effort. :eyes:

[SHRED]

2. Where are the Obama ads about this?

He needs to hit this hard right NOW!

[BumRushDaShow]

4. It's coming. He already has this one out today

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fundamentals_ad/

[SHRED]

12. we need to see Gramm on these

[PA Democrat]

3. And not one single TV "news" reporter has questioned McCain on this issue.

McCain has been on CNN and MSNBC this morning and no one dares to ask the question. Why should the American people trust McCain to resolve the current crisis when one of his chief economic advisers played such a pivotal role in helping to CREATE it?

[annabanana]

5. YooHoo, , anyone out there still calling themselves a JOURNALIST?

THIS is the kind of stuff we need to know...

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. Yes! Yes! McCain must wear the Gramm albatross prominently!

He needs to be asked about it at every opportunity.

[SHRED]

11. Gramm is the worst of the worst

[mrJJ]

7. ALL GOP Senators were Responsible!

GrandPA McCain & the GOP Own This Mess

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act.

53 Republican Senators plus one Democrat - AYE

44 Democrats no Republicans - NAY

How The Senate voted

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00105

[SHRED]

8. thanks for that link

[SHRED]

10. It is legislation like this, which Clinton signed into law rather than...

...veto the bastard, that makes it laughable that anyone would call Bill a "liberal".

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[CitizenPatriot]

9. Thank you

I read that mother jones article a while ago and thought it summed up this mess very well. It should be required reading for all voters. I can't stand the way no one asks McCain about this. Hysterical how the pukes want to talk about how Obama knew someone in 3rd grade that might have been iffy....but they are literally feeding the hand that bites us and is ruining our economy.

This brilliant asshat, Gramm, also deregulated the energy sector, causing the Enron debacle, and guess whose wife was on the board of Enron and guess who made millions of dollars off that episode? yeah, our buddy, Phil Gramm, the guy who thinks we are a bunch of whiners.

I learned a few things while working for people who are the equivalent of washington insiders in another industry. There are as follows:

If they tell you we are all a family or mention team playing, you are being fuc*ed in the as*.

If they accuse anyone of whining, they are taking advantage of you and you just don't know how yet.

If they never seem bothered by the long hours and less pay their workers are getting, it's because they are being rewarded for getting the workers to die an early death.

In this same industry, we were rewarded very well with retirement bennies. One day, our rep came to our location to answer questions. Someone asked if there was enough money in the fund to support all of us. Our retirement benefit rep laughed and said "not to worry, most people in this industry don't make it past 60."

We all realized that day that the big dogs were making a HIGH living life style on our backs -- not paying what they should but promising things in the future which were clearly never to be, because they were slowly killing us off with overtime and relentless, mind-numbing demands.

Kinds sounds like Enron, but it was a different business.

Watch your backs, peeps. These guys are viciously greedy and will stop at nothing. They really do not care about anyone but their own bank accounts.

Danger, Will Robinson.