McCain and Keating Economics

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
McCain and Keating Economics
19
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 1:56pm

It would do well for everyone to remember that this scandal did not happen too long ago.  Watch and learn.


http://www.keatingeconomics.com/?source=sem-pm-google&gclid=CKTO8reVk5YCFQRfagodgWLRFA


The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.


John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.


At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.


When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.


The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.




Edited 10/6/2008 1:57 pm ET by sistah_w

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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-18-2006
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:08pm

<<If what Ayers did was sooo bad, why isn't he in JAIL? How did he get to be a college professor? When he allegedly did these acts of terrorism Obama was 8 years old. sheesh, talk about trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill! >>


I have no idea how he got out of this charge.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:18pm
How do you know all this, that he can't work for any of those agencies? did you call them up and ask them? Maybe you should!
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-18-2006
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:21pm
My DH is in law enforcement and has worked for the federal govt.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:27pm

You did read where McCain accepted donations from Keating, went on vacations to Keating's retreat, road on Keating's plane, Cindy invested with Keating, and McCain didn't own up to all of this until the authorities were getting tough.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:31pm

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:32pm

I really think a big deal is being made about his so-called association with Ayres, especially the FACT he was 8 years old when Ayres did these acts. I think it is still trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. sorry, I know you hate Obama, that's your prerogative. Me, I don't HATe McCain, I just don't want another Republican as President. At least not in my lifetime! After I'm gone they can nominate Mickey Mouse for all I care.


My DH knew and was HS friends with a guy who is in prison for rape, he raped patients while working as an orderly, so he couldn't run for president or have any of thos e jobs, FBI, etc?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:34pm
I don't think you really want to head down this path.


Oh, hell yes, I do. Because, as far as I'm aware, none of those other men are currently running for President of the United States. McCain is.

McCain and Glenn were not "cleared," he was chastised for having exerciesed "poor judgment," as you say. But it's a bit more involved than that. Of the five, McCain was the most personally connected with Keating. He was the one who took Abramoff-style junkets to ski resorts and to Keating's estate at Grand Cay in the Cayman Islands (which he neither reported nor reimbursed Keating for until forced to do so by public disclosure of the impropriety and the scrutiny which accompanied it). He was the one whose wife invested heavily in another Keating venture (a shopping center).

But, far more damaging than any of that, were ripe plums of lines written in various letters to various regulators (and the people who held power over THEM, such as this choice one from a 1985 letter from McSame to then-White House Chief of Staff James Baker):

I believe it to be unwise, and I think it flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise.


Keep in mind that these were John McCain's behind-the-scenes, unvarnished thoughts on behalf of a crooked banker, to one of the most powerful unelected men in the country. Says it all, pretty much, about John McCain's notions about regulation specifically affecting banks and mortgage outfits. Now why am I thinking that might have some relevance to today's situation.....and who should or should not lead the government through it? LOLOLOL.

Billmon over at dKos puts it best:

...if Keating didn’t comp McCain as generously and vigorously as he did the other four, it was probably because McCain was a very junior senator at the time, with relatively little influence to peddle. But it wasn’t because Honest John was shy about accepting the favors that were offered him. If John McCain had a problem with the way lobbying (i.e. legalized prostitution) was being done in Washington, you definitely won’t find it in the record of the Keating investigation. McCain’s fit of Puritan self-righteousness (or political calculation, depending on your view) came after the fact, once he’d already been caught. And yet, from that single Senate speech sprang the shoot that eventually grew into the sturdy tree of John McCain’s media image.

You have to admit it was a neat trick: Happily accepting the naughty goodies while they were being handed out, but then winning brownie points for admitting he took them – after the world had already found out he took them. But that’s precisely what McCain did. He’s never looked back since.


Exactly.

And it's not as if this was an isolated, "ancient-history" sort of frozen-in-time thing for John McCain, either. In 1999 - well after his supposed conversion into the wonderful "maverick" that he is today, McCain was acting on behalf of Vicki Iseman (the lobbyist who looks uncannily like a 20-year-younger Cindy McCain with whom McCain was rumored earlier this year to be having an affair) and her client, "Bud" Paxson, head of Paxson communications. McCain's campaign, back in February, even went so far as to deny that he'd ever spoken directly with Paxson about intervening on his behalf with the FCC. Unfortunately (for McCain), Paxson was out in the press - with no hostility, just setting the record straight - flatly contradicting the McCain campaign's account of events:

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said yesterday, "I remember going there to meet with him." He recalled that he told McCain: "You're head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."


And the McCain campaign's response? "Old news, nothing to see here, folks....who cares? Move along!"

McCain attorney Robert S. Bennett played down the contradiction between the campaign's written answer and Paxson's recollection.

"We understood that he did not speak directly with him . Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?" Bennett said. "McCain has never denied that Paxson asked for assistance from his office. It doesn't seem relevant whether the request got to him through Paxson or the staff.


John McCain is wary of the resurfacing of the whole Keating Five incident, with good reason - he should be.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:35pm
False.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:36pm

Why is that relevant?

Raines has nothing to do with the Presidential race we've been debating (mostly) here. It's a political topic, yes....but Raines has no involvement of any significance with either campaign.


iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Mon, 10-06-2008 - 8:41pm

LOL!

No, if you wanna go all "Ayers" on us, then the one you should be looking at for the converse with Johnny Mac would be G. Gordon Liddy, convicted, unrepentant felon, a man who's admitted "taking one for the team" instead of coming clean about what he knew regarding how deep the various Watergate-era scandals actually went, a man who's admitted to planning the murder of journalists, etc, etc......that'd be your "comparison" - if one can even be reached, since Obama's connection with Ayers is even more tenuous than that.


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