No Keating around this time, folks

Hmmmm. This all sounds so familiar, and not only to me.
Let’s see. High-rolling finance types pour big, big bucks into the campaign coffers of U.S. senators. They fly them on fancy vacations for free to fabulous private island getwaways. Sound familiar?

There’s more.

After softening these senators up with big, fat donations, they then press these senators to lean on the government for deregulation. That way, they can use public investment for shady schemes. If the schemes pay off, the greedy finance types become filthy rich. If things go south, well, the government’s not going to let thousands or even millions of American taxpayers lose everything.

So these senators do as they told. The shady schemes fall apart. The government starts seizing important financial institutions. Thousands lose everything. And the government has to step in with more billions of taxpayer money to fix the problem than anyone dreamed possible.
A paltry few get caught and a few senators get their hands slapped for doing everything but breaking the law to help their once richy-rich friends, who are soon to be prison inmates.
Here we go again.

Finally, I’m not the only one who remembers how this all went down before in the late 1980s when the U.S. Savings and Loan scandal taught Americans an important lesson about the dangers of banking deregulation. It really wasn’t all that long ago that Lincoln Savings and Loan icon Charles Keating became the poster boy for S&L evil and corruption. Keating, whose nefarious schemes and plots cost 20,000 people every dime they had in savings, and forced American taxpayers to pay well over $100 billion to unravel the mess. But Keating didn’t destroy American S&Ls by himself. No, no, no. Over several years, Keating bought himself five important U.S. senators to pass bills he needed and to lean on federal regulators to look the other way when dealing with Lincoln S&L.

Ringing a bell? Yes, those were the infamous Keating Five. Those five powerful senators who had their re-election coffers stuffed full of cash and who took numerous incredible vacations on private jets to super=exclusive Bahama Isaland getaways in exchange for their, errr, “friendship.”

And has American forgotten all too soon which of those Keating Five scoundrels is running for president these days? Oh, yes. It’s John McCain, who nearly lost his senate seat after the scandal when he had to go before a senate panel to determine whether McCain acted criminally in the case. He and four other very powerful, very well connected senators had to undergo Democrat scrutiny and humiliation for their deeds. He joined other Keating favorites, such as John Glenn and Alan Cranston.

I remember the hearings as if they were just weeks ago, not years. Four Democrats and The Maverick squirmed as federal regulators retold how there were pressured into backing off of Keating’s bank. There was no way a Democratic Senate was going to press charges against four of its favorite and most powerful pals, and the Keating Five either sank or swam together. Republicans, all but one, The Maverick, howled because no charges were filed. In typical partisan style, the senate panel publicly scolded the Keating Five for using “poor judgment” in running interference for Keating and working to deregulate an industry that nearly crippled the U.S. economy.

McCain has worked very hard to get Americans to forget about his bad judgment in banking deregulation, and even worse judgment in what was clearly congressional bribery.
Well I was lucky enough to have my savings in an insured account at the time, and I got my money back. But I know some who didn’t, and none of us have never forgotten John McCain and his role in the Keating Five scandal and how those prominent politicians vowed to never let it all happen again.

Well they did. And The Maverick has consistently and regularly pointed out that he’s still the King of Deregulation. And there are plenty of people who want to let this man run a White House administration what will be first in line to try and clean up the banking industry so that this most recent banking debacle doesn’t happen again.

That comes only from the “you gotta be kidding” department.

I’m not alone in making the connection here. A new website, www.keatingeconomics.com, started up today and offers voters a little refresher course on just how much The Maverick had to do with the last U.S. banking disaster, and just how little trust you should have in this man to handle this one.