McCain's scary economic advisor, Phil Gramm

[maddezmom]

McCain's scary economic advisor
Not only is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm a shill for special interests, his deregulation policies helped spur the mortgage crisis, among other financial disasters.

By Joe Conason


May 30, 2008 | Even as John McCain struggles to preserve his image as a reformer by dismissing a few of the Washington lobbyists who dominated his presidential campaign, the futility of that effort suddenly became painfully obvious. Dire bulletins in the financial media warned of many billions in rotting mortgage paper held by UBS, the financial conglomerate that just happens to employ former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain's campaign chairman and chief economic advisor. Until two months ago UBS listed Gramm as a federal lobbyist on housing and mortgage issues.

So there at the shoulder of the Arizona maverick is perched yet another special-interest shill, in this instance not merely an errand boy for various dictators but the vice chairman of a Swiss bank whispering advice on how to cope with our economic woes. Or how not to cope, as in McCain's do-nothing approach to the foreclosure crisis, which displayed the strong influence of the financial lobby on his campaign.

Undoubtedly Gramm is promoting the agenda of those who subsidize him, as he has done ever since he entered politics as a servant of oil interests in his home state. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars from energy and financial interests as a congressman and then as a senator, rising to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, where he could really perform major favors. He is famed for slipping in an amendment desired by Enron Corp. back when his wife was on that doomed company's board. His employment by UBS, a company that recently warned some of its executives to avoid entering the United States for fear of criminal prosecution, demands fresh scrutiny of him as well as McCain.

But if Gramm's role as a banker and lobbyist is embarrassing to McCain, the greater harm is likely to be done by his economic advice. He and McCain have been friends since they were young congressional "foot soldiers in the Reagan revolution," as both like to say, and he is often touted (or was until lately) as a likely candidate for Treasury secretary should McCain win the White House.

more:http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/05/30/mccain_gramm/

[chelsea0011]

1. Ah, yes. The man who hated big government but lived off a government

check most his life. That Phil Gramm?

[shain from kane]

2. “Mr. Gramm, who was fond of noting that he’d flunked the third, seventh, and ninth grades…”

[DBoon]

3. Isn't he the one who said he dreamed for the day when ...

Democrats in Texas were hunted with dogs?

[texanshatingbush]

4. And don't forget Mr Gramm's lovely wife, Wendy.....

who sat on the board of Enron, provided no oversight, allowed the company to rape America, and THEN had the gall to petition the bankruptcy court for $1 million (I think it was) for her loss of income as an Enron Director.

I am truly at a loss for words to describe how despicable these two and their ilk are.

[Virginia Dare]

6. They give Dick and Lynne a run for their money..

as far as soullessly greedy and evil couples go.

[Virginia Dare]

5. I just saw a poll where McCain is trusted over Obama on economic issues..

sometimes I just have to say what the FUCK is wrong with this country? How did people get this stupid, ignorant and self-loathing? What are we, a bunch of masochists?

[east texas lib]

7. Ah, Phil Gramm...

Known in this neck of the woods as "Old Turtle Head". Super chicken hawk and fiscal
prick from the Dick Armey school of finance. Educated on the government nickel, with
more college draft deferments than Dick Cheney. Yep, a real keeper!