mccain's dirty little friend

From the Washington Post:
...But if the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru.

Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up...

keating five

Obama campaign hits back from nasty race-baiting with the truth:

McCain's Ties to Gambling Industry

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

This news is a bit old at this point, but it seems not to have penetrated, so it's worth noting. In his years in the Senate, McCain has played a major role in guiding the expansion of casino gambling on Native American reservations. In an extensive piece, the New York Times reveals that

in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

And shows how McCain has taken sides in some recent disputes over new casino projects when long time lobbyist friends became involved on behalf of both pro- and anti- casino groups.

The article also illustrates how while taking down Jack Abramoff in 2005, McCain was able to get revenge against a number of political opponents from his 2000 Presidential campaign while many of his friends: lobbyists who previously competed with Abramoff for work, won lucrative contracts with the disgraced lobbyists' former clients, representing them in their struggle to bring Abramoff's misdeeds to McCain's attention.

• For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling: A very interesting read that further undermines McCain's claim of independence from lobbyists and special interests.

Oops we lost your $20,000 lady

Wait for the McCain kicker at the end.

rick davis getting paid off

New York Times is doing its job:
One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis & Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House. Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafortfor the presidential campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to benefit from its income....

repeat after me: keating 5

$30,000 a month to block regulation

This morning's NY Times has an article on McCain campaign manager Rick Davis getting paid $30,000 a month to block stricter regulation for Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae:

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies...

social security privatization