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AIG, Bail Outs, Obama & McCain Spar Economics
September 17, 2008 3:07 pm Elections, Finance, John Mccain, Obama, PoliticsNick Timiraos reports from Elko, Nev., on the presidential race.
John McCain and Barack Obama didn’t
criticize the government’s decision to bailout insurance giant AIG, but
the two presidential hopefuls did continued to jockey Wednesday over
who would better extinguish the nation’s financial fires.
Obama mused that it had been “really interesting” to watch McCain
respond to the crisis by calling for better regulation after years in
Congress of advocating deregulation. The Democratic candidate didn’t
elaborate on his own economic policies Wednesday, but mocked his
Repubican rival, saying McCain got “a little carried away” on Tuesday
with a promise to challenge “the old boys’ network in Washington.”
“The old boys’ network?” Obama asked. “In the McCain campaign, that’s called a staff meeting.”
A McCain campaign spokesman dismissed the rhetoric as an attempt to “disguise [Obama’s] non-existent record.”
The Obama campaign has tried to link McCain to a decades-long push
to deregulate financial markets, which culminated with the 1999
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed New Deal-era securities
regulations. Phil Gramm, a McCain adviser and former senator, helped lead that push, but Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who has advised Obama, helped to secure passage of the bill.
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, charged that McCain had been shaky on
AIG, rejecting a taxpayer bailout on Tuesday. McCain was asked on CNBC,
“If you were in the Fed’s position, do you let it fail?” He responded:
“I think you have to,………….
