Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It is not just because of Gramm's recent obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" and that unemployed Americans are in "a mental recession." In fact, those remarks were so obnoxious that I wonder if they were engineered just to provide McCain an excuse for publicly distancing himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.
When Gramm was a Senator he was chair of the Committee on Banking, and in that capacity he was able to push through the legislation now known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass the Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why the 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 was a member of McCain's campaign team, but now Gramms' name is turning to mud. In addition to the Enron loophole, Gramm pushed through the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act in 1999, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. Essentially, this Act did away with all of the good 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, three major economic institutions have failed, Wall Street is highly unstable, and we are in the midst of a worsening recession.
Now you could say that this is not Gramm's fault, that he didn't know what the outcome of his actions would be. However, it turns out that the same investment banks that benefited from the Enron loophole and from the Gramm Act gave more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign. Uh oh. A Congressional hearing is going to be convened to investigate this. And McCain wants to have noting to do with Gramm, wants us to forget that Gramm has been a key player on McCain's campaign team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISER. Previously, McCain had said that he planned to appoint Gramm as SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. It looks like McCain is scratching that idea, now that the public is finding out about Gramm. Didn't McCain's team bother to find out about Gramm before publicly considering him as Secretary of the Treasury?
With Gramm in the driver's seat as McCain's leading economic adviser, now you know why economists and analysts are saying that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable.
Speaking the Same Language
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
Latinos could prove pivotal come November, but they're frequently mischaracterized. Four myths:
1. All they care about is immigration. In fact, immigration typically ranks far down the list of the most important issues for them—No. 5, for instance, in a 2007 Pew Hispanic Center survey (after education, health care, the economy and crime). Those who care most about the issue—recently arrived immigrants—are the least likely to be eligible to vote.
2. They want political advertisements en español. Among Latino voters, only 11 percent live in Spanish-only households; 74 percent were U.S.-born.
3. They are swing voters. Though Hispanics have sometimes migrated in large numbers to Republicans—President Bush won roughly 40 percent of their votes in 2004—the extent to which they're "up for grabs" is often exaggerated. For the most part, Latinos vote Democratic; Republicans can only hope to chip away at the margins.
4. They won't vote for African-Americans. Polls show Obama leading McCain 2-1 among Latinos. Hillary Clinton beat Obama with Hispanics mainly because her name was associated with economic growth and she had better Latino surrogates.
© 2008
Discuss