http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080918/NEWS0108/809180392&s=d&page=#pluckcommentsIf you have some time create a login and start commenting. Pinning Wall St.mess on Gramm & McCain no matter how much dittoheads try to change the subject.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6007788.html'The fundamentals of our economy are strong," John McCain said as Wall Street went into white-knuckle panic over diving investor confidence. Does he believe that? It doesn't really matter, because the Republican has outsourced his economic policy to the ideologues whose opposition to regulations brought the financial markets to their knees.
McCain's former economic adviser is ex-Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. On Dec. 15, 2000, hours before Congress was to leave for Christmas recess, Gramm had a 262-page amendment slipped into the appropriations bill. It forbade federal agencies to regulate the financial derivatives that greased the skids for passing along risky mortgage-backed securities to investors.
On Monday, McCain issued a tough-talk statement that he was "glad" that the feds "have said no to using taxpayer money to bail out Lehman Brothers, a position I have spoken about throughout this campaign." On Tuesday, the government did the daddy of all bailouts. It took over AIG, fearing its bankruptcy could set off a cataclysmic chain of events. And do you know where the problems lay at AIG? They weren't in its main insurance business. They were in its derivatives-trading unit.
Last February, Fortune Magazine called Gramm "McCain's Econ Brain." Gramm lost the official title of economic adviser for making an impolitic remark about this being "a nation of whiners." But Gramm's belief in letting speculators do as they please was never an issue. And even after he left the campaign, Gramm had been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary in a McCain administration.
Another Gramm contribution was the "Enron loophole," which prevented federal oversight of Enron's electronic energy trading. Such favors proved very expensive to consumers but profitable to the Gramms. Enron CEO Ken Lay chaired Gramm's 1992 re-election campaign, and wife Wendy Gramm spent years on the Enron board, earning as much as $1.8 million, according to Public Citizen, a consumer advocate.
See how they voted, slam hard & often
The current economic crisis was forseeable if not for the idealogical blinders of the GOP & their enablers.
I blame the Senate Republicans of the 106 Congress and Phil Gramm for dismantling the Glass-Steagell Act of ' 33. Up until his Americans are just whiners about the economy gaffe, Phil Gramm was McCain's chief economic advisor.
What was Phil Gramm's and the Senate Republicans motives for removing oversight of our financial institutions? The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed the Seanate on a partisan basis 54-44. Now the chickens have come home to roost and the American tax payer is on the hook for the greed that the Republican enablers made possible.
See how they voted and hold them accountable.
Aye AZ McCain, John
Aye OH DeWine, Michael
Aye OH Voinovich, George
Aye KY Bunning, Jim
Aye KY McConnell, Mitch
See the complete roll call vote here. Interesting that the Nays are all Democrats.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s1999-105
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