McCain v. Obama on regulation

Apparently someone recently mentioned to McCain that the rest of the country is having this teensy little economic meltdown and he maybe ought to say something to address it. Oh, and it's apparently caused, in large part, by deregulation.

So today, McCain says: "The McCain-Palin administration will replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street."

Really? I was under the impression that McCain was "always for less regulation." As he said in the Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2008.

McCain proposed, unsuccessfully, a moratorium on regulations in 1995.

He also gave a speech on the housing crisis in March of 2008. In that speech, he said, “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

McCain's campaign co-chairman and economic adviser (until recently), Phil Gramm, has been a massive champion of the deregulation cause. Gramm attached the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into an omnibus spending bill in 2000, just after the Bush v. Gore case was decided (i.e., no one was paying attention). The Commodity Futures Modernization Act contains the Enron loophole.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (catch his name) was passed in 1999, on pretty much a party line vote. McCain, like most Republicans, voted for it. This act created significant deregulation of the financial market. Many economists indicate this act as a significant contributor to the housing crisis.

Of course, Gramm is no longer officially with the McCain campaign, since his boneheaded "mental recession/nation of whiners" remark earned the McCain campaign a lot of very well-deserved flak.

McCain's record on regulation is clear. He supports deregulation. He supports those that support deregulation. Changing his mind after the financial crisis has begun is too little, too late.

In contrast, Obama said in March of this year: “Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices,” Senator Obama said. “We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.”

In the same speech, Obama also offered a detailed six point plan for creating the appropriate regulation needed to prevent this from happening again.