Do you recognize this guy? Before the month is out you will. He's McCain buddy, former Republican senator Phil Gramm of Texas.
Phil, you might remember, was McCain campaign economic advisor until, early in the housing bubble collapse, he shot his mouth off about how America had become "a nation of whiners." That left McCain no choice but to jettison Gramm from his official post. However Gramm still often accompanies McCain on the campaign trail and remains an "unofficial" advisor on financial and economic matters.
McCain may soon come to rue the day he didn't just sling Gramm off the bus when he had the chance for, you see, Gramm's dirty fingerprints have been all over the Enron scandal and, much worse, the Wall Street meltdown.
Before the Dems regained control of the Senate, Phil had luxuriated in the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee. He used that position to pull off some of the most outrageous deregulation legislation to ever afflict America. One bill cleared the way for Enron to run roughshod over the state of California. Gramm's wife was on the Enron board when the company collapsed.
The best dodge, however, came in the form of two bills that deregulated essential aspects of the banking, securities and insurance industries and allowed the unregulated trade in Credit Default Swaps, the unfunded insurance policies that brought down Wall Street.
Gramm directly links McCain to the US meltdown and makes Palin's contention of Obama "palling around" with terrorists look stupidly hilarious. I suspect the American voter is going to become a lot more familiar with Phil Gramm before November 4 rolls around.
Best Phil Gramm quote: referring to Ed Whiteacre who retired as CEO of AT&T with a $158-million parachute as, "... probably the most exploited worker in American history." Can you just feel the burn?
p.s. Like our own Furious Leader, Harper, Gramm is also an economist, only he holds a PhD.
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