Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Bill Black on McCain on Fox NewsWilliam K. Black, who wrote the cover story of our November/December issue, (Mis)Understanding a Banking Industry in Transition, was interviewed for a Fox News special on John McCain's role in the "Keating Five" scandal, which was the major political fallout of the savings & loan scandal. The special will air at 8pm on Tuesday, August 19th (but check your local listings to see exactly when it will air.) He was also interviewed for a CNN special on the same topic.McCain's central (negative) role in that scandal has been underreported in this year's presidential election, so this coverage by Fox and CNN is most welcome, especially if Bill Black can provide his perspectives. As we mentioned on the D&S blog in February, Bill played a central (positive) role in that scandal:
Click here and here for earlier postings on Bill Black, McCain, and the S&L crisis. The Fox special will apparently be a one-hour documentary on McCain that "looks at the character and conduct of the candidate, both pro and con"; a subsequent one-hour Fox News documentary on Obama will examine "the tragedies of his early years, growing up with his grandparents and going to college, his job as a community organizer and later as a Harvard Law School student and Illinois legislator," according to the Hollywood Reporter. Labels: Bill Black, CNN, Fox News, Freddie Mac, john mccain, Keating Five, savings and loan crisis, William K. Black Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). McCain in Bed with Lobbyists; Taxpayers Get ScrewedToday's New York Times quotes D&S author Bill Black, in the article critical of Sen. John McCain that is raising such a ruckus among the political commentariat—especially among the right-wing types who had been so down on McCain until recently.Black was deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation when McCain, along with the rest of the "Keating Five" (Sens. Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, and Don Riegle) tried to influence regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, chairman of the then-failing Lincoln Savings & Loan. Black was one of the regulators the senators tried to influence; Edwin J. Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, was another. Keating had donated to all the senators' campaigns, and McCain's wife, Cindy, whom the Times describes as "the heiress to a beer fortune" in Arizona, had "joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall." The collapse of the Lincoln S&L cost taxpayers approximately $3.4 billion; the S&L crisis as a whole cost taxpayers more than $124 billion, according to the General Accounting Office. (Side note: the scandal did not end the careers of any of the Keating Five; Cranston, DeConcini, and Riegle all served out their terms; Glenn and McCain both stood for re-election and won. Perversely, after his senate term ended, DeConcini was appointed by President Clinton to the the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, aka "Freddie Mac".) The fuss about the Times article seems to be mostly about the somewhat weakly sourced suggestion that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. But to our way of thinking, McCain's participation in the Keating Five scandal and the S&L crisis is still the bigger story. Here is what Bill Black told the Times: Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain’s investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple’s assets.) He should not be able to “put this behind him,” Mr. Black said. “It sullied his integrity.” Black presents a full history of the S&L crisis in his book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry. That crisis—much like the current banking crisis—was the result of banking deregulation and the "control fraud" that inevitably follows it, as Black's recent D&S article shows. Labels: banking regulation, Bill Black, deregulation, john mccain, Keating Five, savings and loan crisis, William Black, William K. Black Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
