John McCain has a long history of opposing regulation of the financial markets. Hell, he was part of the Keating Five, for crying out loud, one of the other times you and I and everybody you know has had to pony up and bail out a financial system run amuck. The idea that the markets should be able to work unfettered by government intervention is absolutely ludicrous. I think the events of the last couple of weeks bear me out.
Now, since it’s election season, McCain is railing at the corruption on Wall Street and the corruption in Washington and the CEOs who are making big piles of money while the little people suffer. Meredith Viera, during and interview with McCain this morning (pops to YouTube), asked the man to jibe that with his employing Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of HP, as a top economic adviser to his campaign. Vieira noted that Fiorina “is an example of exactly the kind of person you say is at the root of the problem.” McCain replied, “I don’t think so”:
McCAIN: I don’t think so. … Because I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don’t know the details of her compensation package. But she’s one of many advisers that I have.
Q: But she did get a $45 million dollar golden parachute after being fired while 20,000 of her employees were laid off.
McCAIN: I have many of the people, but I do not know the details of what happened.
“How can you not know the details of her past? I mean, that would be awfully important,” Vieira responded.
Nor is McCain’s statement that Fiorina did a “good job” as CEO of Hewlett-Packard quite accurate. The board of HP fired Fiorina in 2005, concluding “that she was spending too much time on the road, neglecting the nuts-and-bolts execution of her own strategic ideas,” according to the New York Times. “[H]er superstar status was also her undoing.”
As CEO, Fiorina parked profits overseas using tax shelters, even though it negatively impacted the economy. The company held more than $14 billion overseas in 2004, according to the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal noted that her tenure was “marked by a drop in morale at a company with a legendary history of a collegial culture.”
Fiorina’s golden parachute and her rocky tenure at HP, however, don’t seem to matter to McCain, who does “not know the details of what happened.”
(part of this post is from thinkprogress.com)
Part II
Okay, it’s been suggested that, for once, I give reasons I’m voting for Obama rather than reasons not to vote for McCain. Very well, here we go, in easy-to-digest bullet list form:
- Obama actually has interest in a Lincoln-style Team of Rivals in his cabinet. It’d certainly be breath of fresh air after eight years of cronyism and yes-men
- He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. So he actually knows what’s in it, and there’s a better than even chance that he’ll respect it. Another breath of fresh air. I’m not expecting that from McCain, who’s voted with Bush 90% of the time. Some “maverick.”
- He believes in diplomacy, rather than saber rattling. I think he understands that we can’t afford another war (especially with the market bailout this week). McCain wants to bomb Iran and was actually more of a hawk over the Russia-Georgia situation than Bush.
- Obama’s energy plan is better than McCain’s
- His Supreme Court nominees will likely be more in line with the middle of the country rather than the far right fringe.
- His running mate isn’t Sarah Palin.
Well, that’s a start.
Part III
Another update about “the maverick.” Seems his campaign team features more than a few Bush acolytes. And why not? They’ve been great at running campaigns short on issues and long on divisiveness. And since Bush is doing such a marvelous job, I’m sure we want to elect the next guy these parasites are sellling.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I wonder Dave, do you actually read the stories or just the headlines?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_five
“ Glenn and McCain: cleared of impropriety but criticized for poor judgment
The Senate Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of Glenn in the scheme was minimal, and the charges against him were dropped.[26] He was only criticized by the Committee for “poor judgment.”[29]
The Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of McCain in the scheme was also minimal, and he too was cleared of all charges against him.[27][26] McCain was criticized by the Committee for exercising “poor judgment” when he met with the federal regulators on Keating’s behalf.[7] The report also said that McCain’s “actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him….Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate.”[30] On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.”[7]”
Here are some headlines with the stories…
How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0
IBD: Carter More to Blame for Financial Crisis Than Bush or McCain
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/09/20/ibd-carter-more-blame-financial-crisis-bush-or-mccain
Obama’s Economic Adviser is a Recent Former CEO of Fannie Mae and Oversaw a $6.3 Billion Accounting Debacle, Was Paid $90 Million For His “Stewardship”… that was your money folks!
http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/obamas-economic-adviser-is-a-recent-former-ceo-of-fannie-mae-and-oversaw-a-63-billion-accounting-debacle-was-paid-90-million-for-his-stewardship/
Of course I read the articles, Tom. The fact remains that McCain has long been a staunch deregulator. I fail to see how lack of federal oversight was a good idea in light of the mess that was made by the mortgage banks and the people who packaged up junk mortgages and gave them AAA ratings.
And it’s nice of Hassett to blame the collapse on the Democrats. Republicans have whined for years about overregulation; when the Democrats actually voted along the lines of less regulation they gave the Republicans the ammo they needed to lay this debacle neatly at their feet.
By the way, Kevin Hassett is from the American Enterprise Institute, tied in tightly with the Bush administration. He’s a neocon. I’d hardly call his opinion piece the last (or authoritative) word on the issue.
Is it at all surprising that Republican pundits, who are all about freedom in the markets, are now blaming that unfettered freedom and the damage it’s causing, on the Democrats? During an election year?
I’ll see your Frank Raines and raise you one Rick Davis, McCain’s Campaign Mdviser.
“I fail to see how lack of federal oversight was a good idea in light of the mess that was made by the mortgage banks and the people who packaged up junk mortgages and gave them AAA ratings.”
Who were “the people who packaged up junk mortgages and gave them AAA ratings”
Andrew Cuomo
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/541234%3C/p%3E
Janet Reno
The Clinton administration
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=36048
government policy laid the foundation of this crisis more than 30 years ago when Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. This law forced banks to loan money to low-income borrowers as a way to ensure that financial institutions would “meet the credit needs of the local community.”
Under the Clinton administration, federal regulators began using the act to combat “red-lining,” a practice by which banks loaned money to some communities but not to others, based on economic status. “No loan is exempt, no bank is immune,” warned then-Attorney General Janet Reno. “For those who thumb their nose at us, I promise vigorous enforcement.”
The Clinton-Reno threat of “vigorous enforcement” pushed banks to make the now infamous loans that many blame for the current meltdown, Richman said. “Banks, in order to not get in trouble with the regulators, had to make loans to people who shouldn’t have been getting mortgage loans.”
Oh and the NYTimes is a real unbiased authority.
Obama web page - “Plan for Change”
Make sure you plan Dave, because change will be all you have in your pocket if he gets in.
There’s a difference between passing legislation making something possible and being the banks that made the poor decision to capitalize on it. From the article you linked:
“In Richman’s analysis, it is precisely the government guarantee of Fannie and Freddie that is “short-circuiting” the market.” That guarantee “removes market discipline,” emboldens banks to make bad loans, and encourages Fannie and Freddie to back them. This, Richman asserted, is a “moral hazard.””
So not only did the government act irresponsibly (Democrats doing what they do naturally — trying to help not only the richest but the poorest as well), the banks made those loans.
The Janet Reno threat boogeyman is a red herring anyway. A vast number of those loans were made after 2000, when Clinton was no longer in office and Reno had been replaced by a progression of Bush yes-men.
And please, don’t trot out that nonsense about only having change left if my pocket. For one thing, his tax plan is plenty generous to us in what’s left of the middle class. Under either candidate’s plan, we stand to have more “change” left in our pockets after January.
What I’d like to hear from both candidates is a plan to pay down the incredible amount of debt Bush has saddled us with.
I’m not sure what you meant by the NY Times crack. Was there anything false in that article?
DING!
OK! End of the first round.
Now that we are all evened up with no one budging, perhaps now is the time to rethink a Sharpton presidency. NOT ONE of the posts/links above mentions Sharpton being responsible for ANY of……that shit you were talking about. Something about unbiased change at AAA. As long as they keep crankin’ out the Triptiks, all is good.
(And you know those hurricanes would have different names if he was in charge. And nobody would be getting the nickname “Brownie”. So Dave should be on board.)
I’m Jim and I approved this post. Heh heh — I said post.
Finally read that whole long Village Voice article about Cuomo.
Okay, so Cuomo has a rectal-cranial inversion problem. In the eight years since he was running HUD (with six years of Republican hegemony among them), what was done to curb the stupid policies Cuomo put in place?
I still fail to see how a known deregulation advocate is going to fix that problem.
From that article:
(Bold and emphasis mine.)
So, basically, Cuomo had one last chance to fix the mess he created before Bush’s appointees came on board. Why? Because there was no way either of them was going to fix it.