McCain, one of the Keating Five, is distancing himself from George Bush as much as he can, and presumably that is intended to reflect a dislike of telling falsehoods. McCain, one of the Keating Five, is against, "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed." WaPo says that McCain says so.
Pigs fly.
One of the more interesting outcomes of the Keating Five situation was publication of an analytical book, "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One." Which is not to say that the book title or the Keating Five and S&L failure situation "back then" has any bearing on our current "market correction." Far be it from me to attempt to insinuate any such thinking for you. Draw your own inferences, please.
I use that "market correction" term, as fearless leader's mouthpiece originated it, in this answer to press questioning, "I'm not able to talk about any specific future actions that may or may not be rumored or not rumored to be under consideration by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. But what I can tell you, what the President meant by that is that clearly there is a market correction going on. Clearly these are challenging times."
My market needs some correction, so where are my federal billions? None have been offered, yet. I remain hopeful. But I digress. Back to Honest John.
A man with both "poor judgment" and an apparent flat learning curve wants to be our President. And, he indicates an aim to be a different president than George Bush (a man often noted for the quality of his judgment and learning curve).
We cannot help but recognize that Senator Honest John McCain does talk the talk. We can read that in the Washington Post. Yes, the thin coat of whitewash has recently been applied.
Quickly applied. As bailout billions accrue. Yet something shows through the McCain whitewash coating. The record. Troublesome facts. You'd face facts, discuss and explain them, wouldn't you? But then you are not Honest John, candidate for a job he feels fit to be given.
With Phil Gramm as an advisor, he will reform the excesses of Wall Street greed into non-existence - he says so, so believe. A skeptic might consider the following as not isolated fact, but a pattern going back to Charles Keating and the 1980's, and its multi-billion dollar S&L "market correction" [and who was it that said ignoring history dooms you to repeat it].
First, for the now famous McCain comment, in its interesting context, see here, the comment being, "You are interviewing the greatest free trader you will ever interview, and the greatest deregulator you will ever interview." That is what he said, and decades ago the regulators were after the Keating abuses that sent the man to prison, and he is the "great degegulator." Sarah Palin probably thinks a "deregulator" is something Todd Palin has on one of his snowmobiles to make it go faster and louder, while her ticket mate is one. That perhaps confuses her, but she has faith, and all of that also is a digression. Back on point, the Buffalo Pundit put the quote in a context, you can read most of it at the linked item; but the editorial view there is one I see as valid and wise:
Unfettered, unregulated market activity leads to things such as AIG collapsing, a decrease in competition in the oil markets, Lehman, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae. It leads to things such as the housing meltdown and the speculation that trumped supply and demand and led to the ridiculous and unprecedented spike in oil prices. How is it good for the market to permit lenders to throw adjustable-rate money at wholly unqualified borrowers, only to have their mortgage payments double, leading to abandonment, foreclosure, and on-the-street ruin?
We can, I suppose, keep the economy afloat bubble to bubble, relying on one bubble to maintain economic growth while another bursts. But maybe it’s time that the government do its job and, in many cases, protect companies from themselves so that the economy can grow steadily and organically, rather than in a casino-like speculative atmosphere.
Real growth, with real well paying jobs not sent overseas, is an interesting and novel concept in out times. Not smoke and mirrors, not looting senior management jobbing over the shareholders; not a parade of Enron-like failure and deceit; not Wall Street firms doing IPO offerings of themselves while still largely acting as they did when solely partnerships dividing the spoils of the moment among themselves - leopards not changing more than a spot or two to find share buyers.
Mother Jones has been on the story, with this said [quotations, links, italics, and bolding are set out as in the original]:
McCain, Champion Deregulator
Listen up. Yesterday I called bullshit on John McCain's brand-spanking-new zeal for regulation. Why should we believe a life-long deregulator when he says he's the man to bring tight, effective controls and safeguards to Wall Street? Why should we believe a man who voted consistently against accountability in the financial sector when he says stuff like, "In my administration, we're going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we're going to enact and enforce reforms"?
Answer: we shouldn't.
I want to make it as clear as possible that what John McCain is advocating in the face of these new developments in the economy is completely antithetical to his actual beliefs.
Here's McCain speaking to the Wall Street Journal in May 2007:
"You are interviewing the greatest free trader you will ever interview, and the greatest deregulator you will ever interview."
Here's McCain addressing the housing crisis in March 2008:
"Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital."
And here he is speaking again to the Wall Street Journal, apparently a receptive audience for regulation-bashing, in March 2008:
"I'm always for less regulation. But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the subprime lending crisis -- that there are people that game the system and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight.
"As far as a need for additional regulations are concerned, I think that depends on the legislative agenda and what the Congress does to some degree, but I am a fundamentally a deregulator. I'd like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated, not just a moratorium."
You see where that got us.
Please follow those links. It is helpful to do so, in trying to understand things. In trying to weigh the merits of Honest John. And Family Faithful Sarah. I will not excerpt further in this post.
However, there are three items I feel are particularly worthwhile, to read and to mull over, perhaps rereading, and forwarding links to friends. First, Mother Jones, "McCain's Fannie and Freddie Connections." Second, Pam Martens' "The Man Who Vetted Palin." Third, Martens again, "Bush, McCain and the Old Iran-Contra Team -- The Gang's All Here." The second and third items show that the "Mavarick John McCain" label is as much a fiction as the "Honest John McCain" label has its Keating Five tarnish. His ties are multiple and direct, to the earlier, very plain-vanilla GOP suits that called the shots for both Bush presidents, and others. He is no more a maverick from GOP main-line than Sarah Palin is an intellect. McCain is no more deviant from the GOP crowd, Bush included, Cheney included, than Culvahouse was a novice in vetting Palin for the purposes that crowd had in mind for a person such as her, on the ticket. A Spiro Agnew, with lipstick. A relatively unknown beltway outsider, and a demographic ticket-balancing act, who could complain and attack. A Dan Quayle with lipstick, patatoe and all, i.e., a relative unknown who would not appear too bright or too removed from faith-and-family values a Bush-McCain part of the GOP must regularly pay lip service toward in order to keep a campaign cash-contributing and voting coalition intact.
Cynical ticket balancing, that deja vu, all over again.
Each of those three highlighted articles has a different but related perspective of Honest John and his finely-suited crew. A unified view of his moneyed interests taking an interest in his effort to grab the top government post. GOP history, as with history of the Keating Five. McCain in Context. Palin in Context. The McCain man as a sum of his parts. Plus this: Budwiser is swill, a very mediocre beer. There's that against John McCain too. Something the quite Republican Coors family must also face, brewing and/or warehousing swill for a living.
And, finally, too big to fail? AIG is. Bear-Stearns? Well, the sensible regulatory answer is to chop them up so each piece is NOT too big. The Bushco answer? Merger. Bigger is rescue. Let the currently troubled big-time ventures be brought into deals amalgamating them into or with currently less exposed major financial sector players.
Next failure cycle, next bursting ill-regulated bubble situation, what do you think will be said? "After the last round of failure and mergers, they are bigger now, and that means each of these institutions is simply __________________ [fill in the blank]." Uh-huh. I think you got it right.
When companies have been prudently run, keeping reserves against downturns, thinking long-term and providing safe jobs while being productive in adding to the gross national product and not merely shifting piles of money and risks around as casino activity does; those firms are ripe takeover targets - seize enough shares to run the show, and dismember since they've prudently kept rainy day reserves on hand there's loot there, so take them, loot them, and share the spoils among members of the small insider-takeover cabal, including the necessary bankers who fronted the takeover funding. It's just a great world, without regulation. Folks can do as is best for themselves, and we toutingly say "free market," but curiously not fair market, or honest market.
Enron can get accounting advice, well paid for accounting advice, from accounting firms who owe nothing to any person or thing beyond their own firm's bottom line. Will they counsel ethics and be replaced, or counsel deceit and rapaciousness and be retained?
Go figure. What will be the long term lesson and reforms from things like the AIG failure, the Bear-Stearns fund frauds, Fannie, Freddie, and the Carlyle Capital failure (without the principals of the Carlyle private parent company showing any real suffering from the fall, but with the fund IPO'd to shareholders left holding the bag)? Things likely will be better with Obama than McCain is one guess, but that does not mean things will be sufficiently regulated if Obama is elected. Only better.
What is the role of the Fed? Who polices it besides the bankers that own and run it - literally, check it out, that's not said in any figurative sense. That's how the Fed, from its start, was structured.
Fannie, Freddie, and Fed, perhaps we should call it "Feddie" but it sounds too much like "Freddie" so "The Fed" suffices. They can debase the currency, juggle, and as long as gross hyperinflation is avoided and pension hopes do not go entirely abandoned - only cheapened greatly but not to a zero real-worth balance - it seems that absent a total undermining "the people" do not run about with nooses, torches and pitchforks intent on finding and killing the unnatural beast the doctor's created. What exactly is "financial engineering" and "risk management" when we see happening the things we see? Words. Strung together to make terms. What else? Probably nothing else. It is difficult to lie without words, mimes seldom do, their success is to be truthful, ironic and insightful without words, as Chaplan was.
Too bad, the folks are too indifferent. The middle class should be more self-interested. Insufficient self-interest is not a fault middle class folks share with their investment facilitators, their insurers, or their bankers. But rather than having bitterness people have distractions, and worries. It is part of managing a society to keep folks on their toes, watching one thing or another, while the money is largely held and handled by others except when taxes are needed. Then the middle class has its place.
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How history judges Honest John is independent of how you, as a voter this November judge him, and history, as is well footnoted on the above cited Wikipedia "Keating Five" entry, is that McCain took the money. Read about it:
McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981,[10] and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators.[21] Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona.[18] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.[22] In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.[6][23]
That late payment for the cushy Keating-fronted McCain family-and-servants junketing, why does that remind me of our own Sen. Norman Coleman's living arrangements in DC -- without any written lease, and late (after public disclosure) payments? Well in case you did not know, it's the Grand Old Party, i.e., the letters GOP actually DO NOT stand for "grudging overdue payments" -- something you feel obligated to pay only grudgingly, when publicly holding to the embarrassment of an "among cronies" lax status quo would be in inescapably bad judgment.
And that's just one of the many little known facts of life you can learn reading Crabgrass. Here's another: That McCain was "vetted" over his Keating Five conduct back in the 80's as he was by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics suggests continuity from then to the present, where "usefulness" of the process of being their own regulators is debatable.
Honest John, Honest Norm, Bush, Cheney, they are a hoax-pack. If it were their billions it would be a good joke, but it is yours. They stay wealthy.
And they stay self-satisfied.