Whitewashed sepulchres

"Keating 5" McCain's likely fix: slap a new coat of paint on the same old, rotten system and call it reform. How in heaven's name can a man whose fiscal worldview was shaped by Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm - the two men most to blame for the mess we're in - be relied on to face down Wall Street? Does he think we're all as gullible as the drooling, knuckle-dragging Republican base? Get real, asshole.

In Candidates, 2 Approaches to Wall Street - NYTimes.com

On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”

But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline.

While Mr. McCain has cited the need for additional oversight when it comes to specific situations, like the mortgage problems behind the current shocks on Wall Street, he has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator and he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms.

He has often taken his lead on financial issues from two outspoken advocates of free market approaches, former Senator Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman. Individuals associated with Merrill Lynch, which sold itself to Bank of America in the market upheaval of the past weekend, have given his presidential campaign nearly $300,000, making them Mr. McCain’s largest contributor, collectively.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, liar, crook, Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan, Wall Street