WaPo Calls Bullshit on McLame's Embrace of Regulation After Years of Opposition

[jefferson_dem]

McCain Embraces Regulation After Many Years of Opposition

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 17, 2008; A01

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street.

"Government has a clear responsibility to act in defense of the public interest, and that's exactly what I intend to do," a fiery McCain said at a rally in Tampa yesterday. "In my administration, we're going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we're going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place."

McCain hopes to tap into anger among voters who are looking for someone to blame for the economic meltdown that threatens their home values, bank accounts and 401(k) plans. But his past support of congressional deregulation efforts and his arguments against "government interference" in the free market by federal, state and local officials have given Sen. Barack Obama an opening to press the advantage Democrats traditionally have in times of economic trouble.

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."

<SNIP>

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

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. This will provide some good moments in a debate, I'd wager.

But I think we have to wait for the second one.

[HootieMcBoob]

10. Debates can't come soon enough for me

this race is too close and is making me really uncomfortable.

[PA Democrat]

2. Corporations exist to make a profit. McCain, like the rest of the deregulation junkies

should realize that corporations, like themselves, have no conscience.

[Kahuna]

3. I hope team Obama is gathering all of this ammunition. It's bountiful.

McCain has been staunchly against regulation all of his career and has indeed been a major obsticle to it.

[Window]

4. K/R.

:kick:

[Vinca]

5. We should be using the "flip flopper" mantra more on McBush.

Oh . . . wait . . . I guess it's been replaced by "liar liar."

[indepat]

6. Strip away the veneer of hypocrisy, mendacity, disingenuousness, reichousness, and sanctimony,

one realizes 'pukes are all about lazy fair so a lying, greedy, thieving bunch of bozos can flourish unimpeded by government regulation, oversight, or interference thereby assuring profits can be privatized and their losses socialized. :P

[moondust]

7. The Deregulator exposed!

Republicans including Mr. Deregulator own this mess. Seems to me it started with Reagan. Hammer it, hammer it, hammer it!! This could be The Decider.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

8. He was against it before he was for it n/t

[spanone]

9. k&r

the entire mcbu$h* campaign is a fraud from palin to policy