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, Wall Street is highly unstable, and we are in the midst of a 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.
Microsoft's Six Fatal Errors
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Now Microsoft faces an uphill battle to reverse the judge's decision. It has delayed the breakup pending an appeal and is trying to hold off the conduct restrictions that Jackson imposed. It may be even harder to reverse the collateral damage from the rulings. Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund estimates that the lawsuit has lopped off as much as $175 billion from Microsoft's market capitalization. The expense of the suit, the distraction and the demoralization of the past two years have taken an emotional toll. Some employees, once true believers, are now skittish, wondering for the first time whether they should head for the exits. And what about the confidence of customers and software partners? "It's not something you put in a spreadsheet," says Sherlund. "But it is something that concerns us."
Private antitrust suits are also threatening the company. Had Microsoft settled, it could have prevented last week's ruling. Instead, for the roughly 170 law firms pressing 137 lawsuits against the company, the document is Exhibit No. 1 in their effort to prove that Microsoft harmed consumers. Though many of the cases won't prevail, any that do will win treble damages. That dollar figure, says high-octane class-action lawyer Stanley Chesley, "could be in the billions." That may not dent the company's $21 billion war chest. But Chesley vows to exercise the right "to take the deposition of every major officer of Microsoft."
Now Microsoft's fate rests in the hands of higher courts. If the company wins, the victory would be more stunning than the government's. But it's a win so costly that it could still seem like a loss.
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