This week John McCain is convinced “greed” and “recklessness on Wall Street” are what appear to have replaced an awful lot of our currency with Monopoly money.
Enter Paul Krugman at The New York Times. Krusty the economic clown is usually not my favorite muckraker, but he has a point today. Apparently, before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took their respective dives, McCain wrote (or at least signed — you know some staffer actually drafted the thing…) a column for this month’s issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Here’s McCain’s money quote:
“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” [emphasis added]
More vigorous competition = the free market doing its thang, right?
Or, in the immortal words of Michael Douglas’s Wall Street character Gordon Gekko:
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.” [Click here for the video, and scroll to 02:41]
Yessir — greed and unfettered economic competition rock! Except when they turn out to suck, you’re running for President, and you’ve just written that they totally don’t suck. Then you have to kinda get all flip-floppy and hope the mere mention of fiscal policy makes us all reach for the remote.
Krugman nails Johnny Mac anyway (he doesn’t watch TV): “So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago.”
Fair enough. Although I note in the interest of completeness that since Barack Obama has apparently gotten $9.9 million from securities and investment firms, and McCain has raked in another $6.9 million, any time either one dares to bite the hand that feeds them, there ought to be a quiet little place inside each of us that cries: “Balls! I recognize those!”
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Yeah, pretty much nothing available to quote/mock from Camp Obama prior to the latest crisis, is there? Cashing all those checks from Fannie Mae does take a lot of time, though.
Sins forgiven.
McCain tried to reform Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac in 2005
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/17/mccains-attempt-to-fix-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-in-2005/
“For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.
In this speech, McCain managed to predict the entire collapse that has forced the government to eat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with Bear Stearns and AIG.”
Read it all.
But corrupt democrats stopped it:
“It never made it out of committee. Chris Dodd, then the ranking member of the Banking Committee and now its chair, was in the middle of receiving preferential loan treatment from Countrywide Mortgage, one of the companies gaming the system in the credit crisis. Meanwhile, Barack Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the lobbyists McCain mentions in this speech, making him the #2 recipient of Fannie/Freddie money:”
Obama and Dodd should be on the Greed poster.
McCain tried to fix the system. As for why Palin is named … PDS?
Well … It’s not PDS. I just couldn’t make Ben Bernanke or Hank Paulson the stand-in for Darryl Hannah. It just seemed wrong on so many levels. Forgive me.
I knew McCain railing against Wall Street deregulation was going to bite him in the ass. He should stick to railing against Fannie and Freddie since he cosponsored legislation to oversee the two now wholly government organizations (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTBiMjNlZjQzNTM4OGIwMTE3YTU5MjM2ZGVhYzY4NWU) as you can reasonably make an argument that that’s where the whole mess started.
I mean he’s Republican, he’s supposed to be against regulation.
And the fundamentals of the economy are sound. This is a free market economy, or it’s supposed to be. If a company can’t pay its debts, it goes bankrupt and it fails. That’s part of the risk of owning a company, that’s a fundamental of the economy, risk v. reward. And there’s no such thing as a company too big to fail, if it’s too big to fail then it won’t but apparently AIG wasn’t because it was about to. Forgive me if I sound ignorant.
I love columnist Michael Daly’s idea (http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/09/17/2008-09-17_another_major_crisis_and_as_usual_there_.html):
I think we should all do it. I mean as taxpayers don’t we own a stake in these companies now?
Fair article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/20/business/prexy.php
But for you partisans, here you go:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903596.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/business/19fannie.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Franklin Raines Named one of the worst managers of 2004 by Business Week.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_02/b3915646.htm
A former chief executive of Fannie Mae who was ousted two years ago in an accounting scandal will receive $2.6 million under a deal disclosed Tuesday that largely resolves a pay dispute.
…
Mr. Raines, who had been in negotiations with Fannie Mae that led to bringing in an outside arbitrator, had maintained that he was owed more money under his employment contract. He left with a $19 million severance package in December 2004.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/business/15fannie.html
Talk about a golden parachute. On top of the money he made thanks to the accounting fraud. And this guy is advising Obama? (Like other Clinton people, not that I blame him, hire the people who won last time.) And what the hell happened to Sarbanes-Oxley? I thought that fixed Wall St. the last time it nearly collapsed thanks to those nefarious bad guys at Enron and Worldcom. Clearly that regulation worked.
If the answer is more regulation, let’s just stop the pretense of capitalism and when the stock market starts plunging, shut it down like they do in Russia (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ff9306c-83f1-11dd-bf00-000077b07658,dwp_uuid=9170c6b8-7fde-11dd-8eeb-000077b07658.html). Then open it back up when brokers agree to stop selling and start buying. Heck, arrest ‘em and throw ‘em in jail if they insist on selling then beat the buying spirit back into them.
Let’s not forget the Golden Child, Alan Greenspan, who oversaw the economic boom (turned bust) at the turn of the millennium.
http://www.iht.com/protected/articles/2007/07/26/business/norris27.php
In his defense, he did say might.
And another thing, all these big money firms are buying failing big money firms and becoming even bigger big money firms (Bank of America -> CountryWide, JP Morgan -> Bear Sterns, Barclays -> Lehman Bros.). God forbid the shit should ever hit the fan with the behemoths left standing in the wake of this tide.
The better question to ask is do you really want Paulson to have unfettered and unregulated approval to do whatever he wants with this $700 billion (and be legally absolved) if this all turns out to be a ? If so, I have a bridge in Alaska I’d like to sell you…
The problem with health insurance costs is uncontrolled liability for providers caused by out of control frivolous lawsuits.
In 2004, Barack Obama said:
“Anyone who denies there’s a crisis with medical malpractice is probably a trial lawyer”
But in 2008, Barack Obama has refused to even use the words Tort Reform and has been the single largest recipient of funds from Trial Lawyers.
The US needs to cap medical malpractice cases in the interests of keeping insurance costs reasonable.
You pieces of garbage are nothing but NBC, CBS, and the NYTimes pretending to expose hypocrites when you don’t have the balls to expose BLACK JESUS OBAMA for the lying, corrupt hypocrite he is. The only DECEIVER you people serve is to DECEIVE YOURSELVES. What sissies, you are so desperate for approval you don’t have the integrity to tell the truth about BLACK JESUS. Next Clown Outfit Please!
You know you’re doing good when you’ve pissed of the people on the left, and the right.
People like that aren’t on the left or right. They say they are, but it’s just another excuse to behave the way they’d behave anyway.
— Treasury’s Financial-Bailout Proposal to Congress ( http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/09/20/treasurys-financial-bailout-proposal-to-congress/ )
Has Henry Paulson lost his mind? Barack Obama and John McCain, Congress and the President need to shove these words back down his throat.
Instead of your obvious PDS
You could’ve used Penny Pritzker! She happens to be a big part of Obama’s Campaign.
Pritzker has a great history with “sub-prime” loans. She’s also hosting a welcome
party for Obama’s favorite Iranian Prez.
Check this out:
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002123.html
Penny Pritzker, Obama, And The Giant Housing Catastrophe
Who is Penny Pritzker?
Pritzker is the national finance chair of Obama’s presidential campaign. She’s from one of America’s richest families, the founders of the Hyatt hotel chain, and is herself the 135th richest person in America.
She also has an ugly history as the former chair of Superior Bank in Illinois, which (1) was created thanks to a giant S&L bailout by the government; (2) then helped invent the securitization of subprime mortgages; and (3) then collapsed in 2001 thanks to massive financial chicanery.
So Obama’s has some really great friends!
This was weak, Deceiver, and you know it. I respect your work and your desire to project impartiality but this was not your finest hour. You can do better.
There are actual VALID criticisms of John McCain to shore-up your ‘center-perspective’.
Howz’about the son of a 4-star, and his son of a 4-star somehow magically get to be a U.S. senator?
How did THAT happen? Influence?!? I wonder… Maybe they’ve all just got the BRILLIANT gene?
I am waiting for the far right to blame the whole financial crisis on President Clinton who signed a bill “…overhauling federal rules governing the way financial institutions operate.”
Specifically “opening the way for a blossoming of financial “supermarkets” selling loans, investments and insurance”
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/11/12/banking.reform/index.html
I have seen this on one blog but thats it so far
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Sparring_on_AIG.html
Of course they will fail to mention that the Senate was controlled by the Republicans and they were the ones that pushed this
“Of course they will fail to mention that the Senate was controlled by the Republicans and they were the ones that pushed this”
Yeah – Just like the left magically forgets to mention the fact that Clinton’s two biggest ‘accomplishments’ (Welfare reform and the economy) were direct result of 12 years of Republican Presidents and the Republican ‘Contract With America’. How many times was it that he vetoed welfare reform before he finally signed it and took credit?
Is this the guy YOU want running our economy?
Video surfaces of Barack Obama admitting he doesn’t understand the Stock Market http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjaoJuAYnaI
A frighteningly naive Obama talking about large growth stock, diversifying portfolios etc. In these troubled times do you really want to trust a community organizer who doesnt know economics 101 with the largest most complicated economy in the world.
Can Congress just walk away from a problem it helped create? Maybe, maybe not.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918&rss=1
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/09/20/ibd-carter-more-blame-financial-crisis-bush-or-mccain
[Please do not copy and paste posts from other blogs in the comments. A link will suffice. Thank you. --The Mgmt.]
Why Doesn’t the Media Report the Facts on Where the Blame Belongs on Financial Crisis?
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/09/22/why-doesnt-media-report-facts-where-blame-belongs-financial-crisis
[Dude, you've been warned about this. We've replaced the text with the source link. Please just use links in the future. --The Mgmt.]
Yes, I guess a Neo-Marxist with very close ties to a domestic terrorist is a much saner choice than McCain/Palin.
Although the optimist in me is pleased that both candidates grew at least a small pair to stand up to those who fund them so lavishly, the cynic wonders if they would never have brought it up had the crisis been less acute. Follow the money is still the right game to play here.
You guys seem confused, let me enlighten you:
Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH–o