Keating 5 Survivor John McCain Now Favors Regulating Same Industry He De-Regulated When Lobbied 15 Years Ago

Today's news that AIG has been taken over by the federal government for $85 billion dollars could be the straw that breaks John McCain's back. If, and only if, Obama hits the message home in real time and doesn't let up until November 4th.

McCain, a champion of deregulation in the Senate, former Commerce Committee Chair, has taken an abrupt about face on the economy after yesterday's suicide mission in which he called the fundamentals of the economy strong.

In that one statement, then the support of regulation of finance, McCain has demonstrated that he is right. He doesn't know much about the economy. The late Tim Russert brought that out on Meet the Press not long ago.

If this is the moment Obama has been waiting for and he stays on message, he will win the election.
There is no easier target than a presidential campaign that was on the uptick then self-destructs. McCain now looks out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans, who are legitimately worried about their 401Ks and investments. McCain also looks out of touch with the thousands of people walking away from the buildings they worked at in Manhattan with no jobs and no clear future.

McCain is in a corner, one he can tactically be kept in quite easily for 6 weeks. All Obama-Biden have to do now is talk about the banking crisis and the change in position of former deregulation champion John McCain. Oh, and by the way, who favors deregulation? Oh yeah. The lobbyists.

Surely someone who was a target of the Keating 5 investigation understands this. Remember that one in the early nineties, when McCain helped a banking mogul who was lobbying him to de-regulate the S&L's?

Comments

[Janelynne]

This so called "Democrtic Congress" is a misnomer with 51 potential Democratic votes. When the Democrats write for a reform initiative, they need 60 votes to pass anything. The GOP votes as a block against all reform. McCain and Leibermann among them. The Democrats need to fill more of those seats so we can get the 60 votes, because God knows, no Republicans will vote for reform. Everyone, please vote for Democrats in November so we can actually get some change.

[JoConservative]

What has the Dem Congress done for us in the past 2 years?
Anyone?
Anyone?

[VAindependentthinker]

Fought the Republican blockade crap. The Republicans seem to not know the concept of teamwork.

[lemonyashes]

They've been blocked by filibusters of the Republicans that's what, they've only been a 51/49 for less than 2 years after 12 years of Republican Majority and a Republican President. This is a diabolical disaster engineered, supported, and carried out by Republicans.

[idest]

The Republicans have set a record for filibusters during this Congress. Its hard to do anything when Republicans obstruct progress for the average American for the sake of their fat-cat puppet masters.

[JoConservative]

Keep drinking that Obama media Kool-Aid, Jennifer!
Do you just not understand free-enterprise? With it comes great reward, but also great risk.
Those finance companies that got too greedy, lent money to those that wouldn't / couldn't pay it back (stupid adjustable rates) deserve to crash and go out of business. Let the wiser, better company buy them cheap and rebuild the accounts on solid financial investment.
More government = more mess.
Sorry you are so bitter and have lost your objectivity.

[Publius2]

Jo, glad to see you understand free-enterprise so well. Hope you can explain it to fellow conservatives and the GOP. In case you haven't noticed, this administration has now nationalized more private businesses in a shorter time than any Soviet dictator, Cuban revolutionary, or Venezulan nut case ever has. The lesson from this is that ordered liberty requires ordered markets, meaning that wise regulation is necessary to protect the sanctity of contract and avoid Socialism and Communism. Now, billions in contracts (credit default swaps, auction rate securities, and mortgage backed securities) are being destroyed because the GOP eliminated the common sense requirements of adequate margin, adequate capital and adequate oversight necessary to ensure that parties meet their obligations. Sure, they should suffer, but unless you're Hoover, you should understand we will all suffer too.

[Jetling]

Don't kid yourself.

The debt is the only thing socialized.

What's needed is a reckoning.

A key figure of the Savings and Loan scandal will only work to reset the tale for another disaster two decades from now - an unfortunate consequence of not nailing him to the wall when we had the opportunity.

[Jetling]

Regulation wouldn't have let those products out on the market as is.
Regulation would have prevented the companies from bundling those loans nd understating the risk when they were sent out to the open market.
It becomes a free market when the taxpayers have to bail them out every 15 years...as we did with the S&L debacle.

And Johnny Mac crashed that jet too (6 total if you're keeping score)

Now that deregulation has enabled banks (insured by the FDIC) to buy failed investment firms that weren't insured by the FDIC, that burden has now been shifted to...TAXPAYERS!

Your free enterprise lives becuse you've gerry-rigged the system. The investment firms that failed still paid out the execs, though. Probably softened the blow for the major investors for good measure.

I don't know what American Way that is, perhaps you could elaborate for us.

[gevan]

McCain is just a MAVERICK. He'll wander away from every position or principle he has ever held if given enough time. . . and seventy-two years is a whole passle of time.

[websmith]

What people are not understanding is that all of this happens because the federal government is illegally in the regulation business. The Constitution does not give the feds the power to regulate. When they began to regulate, special interests swarmed on them like flies. Corruption entered, games began to be played, and the disasters that we are now facing were created.

Regulation is legally allowed at the state level. The feds are only supposed to step in when the regulations become oppressive or harmful.

This problem will not be fixed with more regulation at the federal level. It will only be worsened, if it's possible for things to get worse.

We have seen one communist and dictator run country fail after another. They only got better when they began to deregulate.

[DavidGreen]

What are you talking about? Of course the Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate. It's called Article I, Section 8. You might try reading it.

[Jenoah2008]

The article is spot on. However, who has sealed and taken Obama's lips off timing. Timing of responses is very important in this now-degraded battle for the minds of the fickle and unstable.
McCain should never had had an opening (in time) to appropriate a position on the economic melt-down which was not his position. With all the lies and half-truths which had been spun and spread by McCain 527s' ads and vacuous sensationalist media, the Obama camp should have been quick to step into the arena with the specific substantive responses that he has always had. This election should not go down in history as "The Biggest Steal" or "Stealthiest Subversion of the Middle American Mind" in American politics.

[scordsdu]

Dear Publius: Senator McCain is what some call, "Hanoi Tiger". Now America builds Tigers after losing The Vietnam War. Thomas Paine was a British King's Tiger(Common Sense@1776). A Tiger can turn and maul its possessor/oppressor as Siegfried and Roy know all too well. Now be very careful what you decide to do with this information.

[annieR]

McCain's ties with shady characters doesn't stop with Charles Keating. Check out Kemper Marley and Cindy McCain's father's involvement with Marley that was repaid with the beer distributorship that made Cindy's family rich, rich, rich. The video at the Republican convention about Cindy's hardworking father left out his jail sentence, taking a fall for Marley. Marley was also implicated in the murder of Don Bolles, an Arizona Republic investigative reporter. So John McCain was at least on the fringes or associated with some unsavory people.

[luvienne]

Mccain once a crook always a crook. A rich crook.

[Jenoah2008]

Obama et al are too slow and reactive in this critical political game. McCain had too much time to change his mask. As soon as the bubble burst, an alert contender, and/or his advisers, would have anticipated the McCain move to appropriate and publicize a position that has never been his . Who is tying Obama's hands and sealing his lips, and where were his advisers? Timing is also a critical variable in the contest of words and wills.

[JoConservative]

Must be a crook to make $ right?
$66 million in 1 month....

[KissyMama]

Are you related to Elizabeth Hasselback?

[justobserve]

Obama-Biden: Don't let McCain-Palin lie away this record.
"McCAIN 2008 -PALIN: LIE WITHOUT BLINKING! Vote DEMOCRAT for AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE, WOMEN'S CHOICE, VETS BENEFITS, EQUAL PAY".

[arthur2008]

John "Country First" McCain has established beyond a doubt that he is a self-serving opportunist, and has been that throughout his life. He is proud of having been found innocent of wrongdoing in the Keating Five scandal, but his "exoneration" came from his cronies in the corrupt political culture he has been immersed in for decades. His shameless lies, flip flops and distortions in the currrent campaign are not surprising in that they come from a man whose public morals (as Charles Keating's bag boy) and private morals (as in his womanizing and his desertion of a disabled wife for a wealthy woman who steals her drugs from charity) have never been admirable. The fact that he was a POW is meaningless.

[Janelynne]

In Dec. 2000, right before the Christmas recess, in the dead of night, the Republican congress rammed through "Credit default swaps" which allowed loans to get swapped and bundled. This little piece of legislation ushered in the grand coverups that have given rise to this meltdown on Wall Street. This legislation allowed bad loans to get hidden until, now, the time of reckoning. Bad loans were made by unseasoned people who worked on commission to make as many loans as possible.
The lenders didn't care, who then sold the poison loans to others. In many cases, they were sold to us with our retirement savings, or to States, or cities, or other bewildered entidies.

It was a Republican scheme, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Top Chicken, McCain, is trying to bait and switch one more time, and say it is the fault of others. I wonder how McCain voted that night. He certainly has voted against oversight many times, and if he was there I am sure he voted for this himself. Does anyone have the Congressional record?

[appleknocker]

And Clinton signed it?

[JNagarya]

And the Republican Congress WROTE it.

To the person "approving" these posts: WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALLOWING THAT FACT TO BE KNOWN?

[JoConservative]

What has the Dem Congress done for us in the last 2 years as this mess started?
Anything?

[ofbbg]

Let's see - 15 years. That would mean the Bill Clinton signed the legislation, wouldn't it?

[Xplicit]

The Keating Five affair was the result of deregulation of savings and loan associations in the early 1980s, during the Reagan administration. Charles Keating, chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association had made contributions amounting to over $1 million to various U.S. Senators (including McCain) and later called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. After regulators backed off, Lincoln Association became one of 747 S&Ls that tanked in the late 1980s during the savings and loan crisis. The total cost of the crisis was around $160 billion. U.S. taxpayers were once again called upon to bail out private investment corporations to the tune of $124.6 billion.

Every taxpayer in the country should be outraged that this is happening again. Proof that deregulation (supported whole heartedly by McCain) doesn't work. Why should U.S. taxpayers be forced to spend their hard-earned money to pay the price for corporate greed?

[nwmother]

He did. To be fair, the parts dealing with credit market were never debated and were buried in a huge appropriation bill. Not that that's any excuse...I also believe that the treasury secretary at the time, Robert Rubin, supported the measures.

[Indieguy]

Or it could mean that the GOP majority in congress over rode Clinton's veto.

[JNagarya]

Or at minimum that the REPUBLICANS WROTE the bill.

[JNagarya]

But it would NOT mean tha Clinton WROTE it -- which he DID NOT DO. Blaming Clinton for the Republicn Congress which, bought and owned by lobbyists and special interests, enacted the bills written by those lobbyists and special interests, with the participation and help of the Republicans of Greed as Substitute for Religion and Morality. As misrepresented as being "family values".

[BubbaC33]

It seems some folks on HuffPo are always looking to attack the Clintons, with no regard for facts or for the truth.

[appleknocker]

Does the word "triangulation" ring a bell? Or the proclamation "The era of big government is over " ?

[thecanadian]

Great Post Jennifer! You told it like it is! Just think - old McCain might have slipt under the radar on this! Thank you .

A Senior Womans Group

[fistbump]

Why isn't the Obama camp bringing the S&L scandal up? Seems like it would be appropriate here, especially to the seniors who were bilked back then and the seniors who remember that era well.

[roshni]

Agree - please hit him with this and hit him hard.
Keating 5, Keating 5, Keating 5.....................

[11907281]

Maybe the MSM told them they won't let them talk about it on air because it's "old news"?

[jm711]

I agree. We think alike. KEATING 5!! Can you believe what dumb butts these Republicans are. I am scared at how they are not figuring it out.

[IndependentTogether]

Actually, it may not be the right time. The momentum is already shifting, so the Obama camp must pace themselves...no need to waste amo.