I put up a cartoon about this right here:http://splendidmarbles.com/2008/09/24/cartoons/banker-brigade/. Who needs a military when you’ve got these guys.

McCain has a consistent grasp on economics: consistently bad. That’s why he uses his long term buddy Phil Gramm’s. The fact that -that- is consistently counterproductive for the country just underscores the fact that McCain really doesn’t understand.

Keating 5? The fact that he also tried to help his buddy Keating gain a monopolistic control over water access in the desert state he was supposed to be working for, well, that simply shows that McCain has great ethical and moral shortcomings in addition to his other lacks.

Yeah great, so John McCain supported this particular bill. Wasn’t he one of the Keating Five as well? If so, it just seems to indicate that he doesn’t have a good consistent grasp on economics.

As a counter to the “This is all so complicated that no one understands what’s going on” position, there was one SEC regulation change in 2004 that increased debt-to-net-capital rules for five firms: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers.

That’s a fairly compelling happenstance, I have to say.

I’d recommend listening to the people who predicted this meltdown, rather than those who poo-poo’d it.

I agree.

From the floor of the Senate, the Congressional Record for May 25th, 2005 has John McCain saying the following:

Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.

Enron was a disaster. The housing bubble collapse was a disaster. The sub-prime investment related collapse was an even bigger disaster.

Sarbane-Oxley is an annoyance. Sarbane-Oxley hasn’t lost hundreds of billions (is it trillions yet?) of market liquidity.

I’m not blaming the investment banks packaging bad loans and trading them as hot stocks on on Bush or Clinton in full. Many politicians bear culpability for deregulating the market to allow the insurance/investment unholy crossover. And the bankers who packaged the loans, and the banks that offered them, and at a much smaller level the people who took them out, though in terms of amount of damage done, they’re at the bottom.

There’s enough blame to go around.

nisleib @53
We already tried that, it was called “HMO” and nobody liked it. You have a doctor working for a company with a financial interest in keeping you healthy (rather than a financial interest in performing services).
Mostly, people don’t like them. HMO doctors won’t prescribe antibiotics when you have a cold… Costs the company money, doesn’t help you. That sort of thing annoys people, because they have a “the customer is always right” mentality when they’re very very far from right.