Keating Five // Current

Why American politicians have such rotten marriages--Specifically John and Cindy McCain

For a gorgeous heiress with a powerful husband who might be moving into the White House, she inspires more pity than you might... more

ESKCSG
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Keating law firm donates $50,000 to McCain campaign

Those voting for the first time this year may not have even been alive during the Keating Five scandal, the political corruption... more

ESKCSG
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Keating law firm donates $50,000 to McCain campaign

Those voting for the first time this year may not have even been alive during the Keating Five scandal, the political corruption... more

bansheewail
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"Joe the Plummer" & Keating 5 Connection

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s... more

Apocalipstick
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Reflections on the McCain-Keating Affair: The False Self

Anticipating that tonight's presidential debate will focus upon issues about the economy, this article describes the... more

disembedded
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KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

This short documentary was released by the Obama-Biden campaign today. A shocking look at John McCain's past.

quantisation
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Keating Five: McCain Lawyers Push Back on Obama Keating Five Charges

The McCain campaign pushed back hard against the new Obama attack over the Keating Five, arguing that the Arizona senator was... more

Apocalipstick
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KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

Don't forget the Keating 5

Apocalipstick
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McCain Repeating Keating Era Mistakes, Regulator Warns

As the stock market recovers from its biggest single-day drop since the crash of 1987, a former federal regulator who had a front-row view of John McCain's role in the Savings and Loan scandal says he is repeating some of the same mistakes.

William Black -- a deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation during the "Keating Five" scandal that nearly ended McCain's political career -- says the Arizona Republican's chief errors at the time were underestimating the importance of regulation and relying too heavily on slanted advice from captains of industry.

"In the S&L crisis, he took his advice from the worst [kind of] criminal. Charles Keating is the person he went to for his policy advice," Black said. "Now, he certainly is getting advice from Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, Rick Davis -- the whole group of economic and top political advisers are lobbyist types. He just doesn't seem to get it, ever, that the advice is going to favor their clients. Even if they just stop being lobbyists, you can't just turn that off instantly. It's their mind state that develops. ... The biggest lesson is that, when you deregulate and de-supervise, you create an environment where control fraud emerges. You hyper-inflate bubbles; you get criminalization."

Though McCain's latest TV ads tout the senator's sporadic calls for more government regulation, Black notes with interest that McCain bragged recently that he was "fundamentally a deregulator." Black, who is now an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, also said that the deregulation that McCain was until recently proud to have championed effectively took corporate cops off the beat. "Nobody calls the Houston police department and says 'I think there a problem at Enron,'" he remarked.

Black, who has long been critical of McCain's role in the Keating affair, also viewed McCain's Tuesday announcement of his support for increased FDIC insurance rates as something of a sham, calling it "just one of his many contradictions" on economic matters.

In 1991, McCain railed against raising the FDIC insurance limit from $40,000 to its current $100,000 level. "The perversity of Federal deposit insurance is exemplified by the taxpayer bailout of the savings and loan industry," McCain said, while omitting his own role in the scandal that actually precipitated the S&L crisis.

"I think it is generally acknowledged that the failure of the savings and loan industry, to a large degree, can be directly attributed to the unwarranted expansion of deposit insurance," McCain continued. "Basic coverage was increased from $40,000 to $100,000. No longer was deposit insurance for the small depositor. It became the safety blanket for large, sophisticated depositors and freewheeling bankers."

Now, as McCain echoes Barack Obama's call to raise the FDIC insurance level from $100,000 to $250,000, Black believes the idea that FDIC insurance rates ever caused the S&L crisis can finally be put to rest as being "complete bunk."

Yet, despite being a withering McCain critic, Black isn't completely sold on Obama, either. While he notes with some satisfaction that the Illinois Democrat "did at least try to do some stuff on the regulation of subprime [mortgages] a couple of years ago, he wasn't on key committees." Overall, on financial regulatory matters, Black says Obama is "really somewhat untested. I'm not sure exactly what he would do." But Black notes that the "experienced" candidate is the one most likely to be tagged with responsibility for the current mess. "McCain purports to be on the committee that dealt with everything. [Meanwhile], he did nothing on subprime mortgages for years."As the stock market recovers from its biggest single-day drop since the crash of 1987, a former federal regulator who had a... more

synclaire
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2 responses

1 month ago

South Florida Daily Blog: More Like This, Please

And let's start mentioning and reminding everyone about the Keating Five again and again and again and again.

TheRealEdwin
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1 month ago

Fox Doesn’t Want You to Know About McCain’s Role in Keating Five

‘Cut his mike,’ producer suggests The Keating Five scandal, and John McCain’s role in it, has received... more

goldenways
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10 responses

1 month ago

Man or Maniac?: McCain; Fundamentally Poor Judgement

You've seen the clip over and over and over again; McCain stating that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong"... more

TheRealEdwin
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0 responses

1 month ago

John McCain and the Keating 5: Repeating his mistakes.

Does any of this sound familiar? And before you post that John McCain learned his lesson back in 1989, take a look at his quote... more

krag2112
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7 responses

1 month ago

John McCain -- I was indited on Corruption Charges with the Keating Five

The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the... more

ESKCSG
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9 responses

5 months ago

The Militarist

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain may protest that he hates war, but no American leader has promoted it more avidly. McCain is not only the most hawkish neocon on the horizon; he genuinely sees war as America's most ennobling enterprise.

McCain, despite his protestations in a March speech that he "hates war," not only stridently backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but has spent years calling on the United States to depose every dictator in the world. He's the candidate of ratcheting-up action against North Korea and Iran, of new efforts to undermine the United Nations, and of new cold wars with Russia and China. Rather than hating war, he sees it as integral to the greatness of the nation, and military service as the highest calling.

McCain, unlike most neocons, is no chicken hawk, but while his rhetorical points of emphasis are different from typical neocon fare, his strategic ideas are the very essence of the neocon notion that threats of unilateral preventive war should play the primary role in America's approach to nonproliferation.

The military, and an expansive view of the extent to which it should be deployed around the world, is at the very core of McCain's personal and political identity. His father and grandfather were both admirals, the former led Pacific Command during the Vietnam War, and the latter sailed in Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet and helped put down the Philippine Insurrection.

To combat this alleged conspiracy of dictatorships, McCain has proposed creating a "worldwide League of Democracies," whose role would be to create an alternative mechanism to the United Nations that could facilitate coercive action "with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval." His campaign Web site further ups the ante for conflict with Russia and China by going beyond the standard missile defense rhetoric to describe his planned shield as intended to "hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China,"

McCain referred to his foreign-policy agenda as a "vision of a new era of enduring peace based on freedom,"

He sees the nation as having an interest in fighting wars. The combat itself constitutes the advance of important moral values, elevating the country from such banal national security concerns as "safety" and creating the opportunity for heroic displays of courage of the sort McCain himself made in Vietnam.Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain may protest that he hates war, but no American leader has promoted it more avidly.... more