Home Grown Terrorist

The US economy was the victim of a terrorist attack in 1999. We really didn't notice until several years later. The terrorist was not a brown skinned man from the middle east but a US senator, Phil Gramm of Texas. When Jazz and I talked to Shaun Mullen on Mid Stream Radio yesterday he promised us the details today and here it is:
John McCain's Terrorist In Pinstripes
Go read the entire piece at The Moderate Voice or at Shaun's own blog, Kiko's House but here is a teaser.

Phil Gramm, who is co-chair of McCain's campaign, is not just another lobbyist. He is the man most responsible for the repeal of Depression-era banking regulations that have led directly and inextricably to much of today's economic turmoil, and parlayed that classic example of legislative legerdemain into a lucrative lobbying career for the very people who scratched the smug Texan's back -- as well as McCain's -- on Capitol Hill.

Gramm was the biggest of the big guns behind the 1999 repeal of the banking regulations -- the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act -- which was officially called The Financial Services Modernization Act. (Don't you just love the name!)

Shaun points out that Gramm's bill, which is in large part responsible for the current economic melt down, was blessed by the Clinton administration. Shaun concludes with this:

Considering the pain and suffering that Gramm's masterwork has caused ordinary Americans, it is not hyperbolic to say that he is a terrorist, he just doesn't wear funny looking headgear and carry a Kalashikov.

McCain acknowledges that he's "no expert" and "doesn't understand" the economy. That is worrisome enough, but that he is relying on a terrorist in pinstripes to figure things out for him is . . . well, terrifying.