Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It's not because of Gramm's obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" who are in "a mental recession." Those remarks were so ascerbic that they may've been made just to give McCain an excuse to distance himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.
When Gramm was a Senator he was Chairman of the Banking Committee. He pushed through the legislation known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why investment banks were able to falsely inflate the prices of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities through massive futures trading, causing your costs of gas, heating oil and food to go through the roof.
Gramm also created the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. The Gramm Act was touted as a new way to protect consumer privacy, but the real meat on the Act's bones was banking deregulation. Essentially, this Act did away with laws written after the Great Depression to protect us from another Wall Street/Banking Industry collapse. That's right, Gramm stripped the system of it's safe guards nine years ago, and guess what? The value of the dollar has nose-dived, four major economic institutions have failed, Wall Street is unstable, and we are in a worsening recession.
Notably, the US investment banks that gained the most from the Enron Loophole and from the Gramm Act contributed more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign.
Currently Gramm is Vice Chairman of UBS, the Swiss Bank that came up with the idea of "death bonds." Worse, though, UBS is involved in a scam where they sold auction rate securities to American customers. Auction rate securities are supposed to be as safe as cash, but the way UBS did it, the fees garnished by their in-house investment bankers were intentionally higher than the return on the securities, ripping off their American customers. The Massachusetts Attorney General has already filed charges against UBS, and private brokers world-wide have dropped UBS stock. UBS is forecasted to lose 82.91% of it's value in 2008. We are talking about the corporate bank where Gramm is Vice Chairman. Looking at his track record there and at the havoc he has wrought on the US economy through the Senate Banking Committee, it's clear that either Gramm is a criminal or grossly incompetent.
Now McCain wants nothing to do with Gramm, wants us to forget Gramm has been a key player on McCain's team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISOR. Previously, McCain had said that he planned to appoint Gramm as SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.
With Gramm as McCain's leading economic advisor, now you know why economists and analysts say that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable.
McCain's Power Outage
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Regulation certainly plays a contributing role, but the bottom line is that owning a refinery is tough business. We've laid out the cost/benefit analysis of operating a refinery here and found that it would take 13 years of operation for one to turn a profit. However, there are still groups that are trying.
Quote Meltdown
McCain was off the mark in his Wednesday speech when he said, "Senator Obama says, 'I am not a nuclear energy proponent.' I think that makes him a nuclear energy opponent, though he does have a knack for nuance and it's not entirely clear."
Obama's answer to a question about alternative energy sources at an Iowa town hall in December was certainly nuanced: It was nearly three minutes long. But it also made clear that he is not an opponent of nuclear energy:
Obama, Dec. 30, 2007: There is no perfect energy source; everything has some problems, right now. We haven't found it yet. ... I have not ruled out nuclear as part of that package, but only so far, as it is clean and safe. I have the same attitude with respect to coal. ... There is no one single optimal solution and we have to try everything to see what works.
In addition, Obama signed on as a cosponsor to the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade climate change bill, which contains billions in subsidies for nuclear power, and he supported the 2005 energy bill, which has billions more.
Cap-and-Trade: Game or Mandate?
McCain has lately taken to denying that he favors "mandatory" limits on greenhouse gas emissions, even though a government-imposed limit is central to the "cap and trade" legislation that he favors and has sponsored.
The 2003 bill he sponsored jointly with then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (now an Independent) laid out a cap-and-trade system, which would put the brakes on the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by requiring utilities and other industries to limit emissions. Companies would be issued credits for carbon dioxide emissions; those that ratcheted down their CO2 production sufficiently could sell unused credits to others that needed them. But the cornerstone of any serious cap-and-trade proposal is the "cap" on the overall amount of CO2 being released, which would shrink over time. That's also part of a 2007 bill McCain sponsored and the energy proposal he has put forth as a presidential candidate.
Yet McCain has been soft-pedaling the "cap" part of the equation. In several recent appearances, he has denied that his plan contains any mandates. In January, NBC moderatorTim Russert asked McCain about cap-and-trade at a Republican debate:
Russert, Jan. 24:
Senator McCain, you are in favor of mandatory caps.
McCain:
No, I'm in favor of cap-and-trade. And Joe Lieberman and I, one of my favorite Democrats and I, have proposed that – and we did the same thing with acid rain. They're doing it in Europe now, although not very well.
And all we are saying is, "Look, if you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, you earn a credit. If somebody else is going to increase theirs, you can sell it to them." And, meanwhile, we have a gradual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
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