McCain is all over the deregulation of the banking industry and has many of its lobbyists on staff including the author of the concept himself Graham. Of course thats nothing compared to having Carly Fiorina-Ms Golden Parachute for me layoffs for you as an "economic advisor" So what are they doing with the banking crisis? Trying to play six degrees of separtion to connect Obama to some financial executives involved with Fannie Mae....

Phil Gramm is the guy you are talking about.....thought I'd tell you before Wolf shows up.

Another interesting link is to Wendy, Phil's wife, who was on Enron's board of director and was on the Audit committee.....funny that she missed all of the fraud. The board was sued and agreed to pay $168 million (which would have come out of the pockets of the insurance company). They also agreed to let the insurance company pay for their insider trading fines....$13 million for that.

In 2005, McCain sponsored legislation to thwart what he later called "the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole." What was Obama doing during this same time? He was the second largest beneficiary of donations from the freddie/fanny leadership. Once again Obama is just a lot of talk when he claims he is for reform. He is as inside as anyone can be.

While you try to make a rather obscure connection to McCain, Obama has some rather straight forward connections which have bearing directly on the current crisis and Obama's willingness to take lobby money.

Jim Johnson, Obama chief economic advisor and former head of VP search committee. Also former CEO of Fannie Mae.

Frank Raines, another fomer CEO of Fannie Mae.

Oh, did I mention that Obama has the honor of receiving the second largest amount of Fannie Mae contributions next only to Chris Dodd.

Oh yeah real desperation.

Obscure connection? Graham? You're doing kool aid in shots these days arent you ranger?

Umm, was Graham a CEO of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac?

Darn I forgot to mention Johnson's working for Lehman Brothers. Must have been where he learned all his skills for Fannie Mae.

First, there's plenty of blame to go around. Neither candidate is innocent.

Second, the amount of money Obama got from Fannie/Freddie employees is greater than the amount that McCain got... but as a proportion of their total dollars raised the difference isn't particularly huge, nor does it represent more than a drop in the bucket to the grand total raised. It's hard to get too upset over that in real life (as opposed to hyperpartisanland).

Third, while Obama got more money from Fannie/Freddie employees than did McCain, McCain got more money than did Obama from lobbying groups promoting Fannie/Freddie. This difference, both in proportion and actual dollars, was greater than the Obama/McCain gap from Fannie/Freddie employees. The total amount McCain got from these lobbyists was also proportionally more of McCain's total fundraising amount than the employees' contributions to Obama.

Now, if I were an honest man, I'd say that taking money from lobbying groups supporting Fannie/Freddie is worse than taking $20 contributions from Fannie/Freddie secretaries.

I have no problem with people knocking Obama for his legitimate Fannie/Freddie connections nor McCain for his de-regulatory bent; they're both true. But the intellectual honesty behind knocking Obama for taking more money from Fannie/Freddie employees is suspect at best.

Johnson was not an economic advisor, he was briefly on the VP search. So what?

Raines and Obama have both denied that he works on the campaign.

Gramm was the author of the bill that allowed this to happen.....

Got any links to show how much money you think Obama got from the guilty parties or are you just repeating McCain's ads?

Obama has received $112,000 out of the $390 million he has gotten so far. Biden got $500.

McCain got $16,000 from employees of Freddie and Fannie, since 2005.

<link>

Based on a search of Fundrace.org, 210 people who work for Fannie Mae gave a total of $212k to democrats.

Rick Davis and Charlie Black made a fortune as lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and are now running McCain's campaign. Phil Gramm is the author of the bill that deregulated the banks and brokerages (and is still advising McCain) and is also a lobbyist for UBS (a swiss bank).

Puhhhleeeze.....

Neither has a plan though.

I think newer numbers, from F/F employees, are $123 349 for Obama and $21 550 for McCain. However, in addition to that(from CNN.com):

"The New York Times has published a separate list looking at contributions from "directors, officers, and lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" for the 2008 campaign cycle. That list — using figures from the Federal Election Commission — shows McCain receiving $169,000, while Obama received only $16,000."

To explain the difference, the Center for Responsive Politics (which compiled the first numbers listed here and, earlier I think, those collected by middleview) said that they ignore contributions from those on the board of directors and from lobbyists.

You would think that the McCain campaign would avoid feeding McCain lines that could be checked so easily.

Thanks for the info.

"Neither has a plan"? Whats YOUR plan? It just happened and it happened because the deregulation the conservatives so love left no one to watch the loan making and the money making-the profits are all taken and now the losses will be foisted on the American people.

Tax the rich? YES! Who made money in the markets? Not the poor and working class who saw a negative wage growth and still need to fight for every dollar and pay a higher and higher percentage of their health insurance.

Why should we as workers be saddled with the bad debt which helped make the rich richer? Any capitalist will tell you that if a business is going to fail it should be allowed to do so-yet we saved these thieves from bankruptcy. Soon unemployment will grow beyond its less than rosy 6% because of the bad market too.

Its time the rich pay for the way they made these profits-tax the crap out of em and pay down the debt.

What can they possibly do to retaliate? Lay people off? Send their jobs out of the country? Oh thats right-they already did that! So much for the trickle down economic theory.

1. Yes there is a lot of blame to go around. Pop Quiz. Whose administration signed the law doing away with the safeguards to prevent using mortgages (bad ones) as collateral? Times up. Your answer please. If you said a Bush, you are wrong. If you said Clinton, you are right.

2. $126,000 is nothing. You must be a real limo lib. McCain got a mere $21,000. Guess they figured they were not going to get much from him

3. Really?

<link>

"The New York Times has published a separate list looking at contributions from "directors, officers, and lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" for the 2008 campaign cycle. That list — using figures from the Federal Election Commission — shows McCain receiving $169,000, while Obama received only $16,000."

Look at fundrace.org. They list all of the employees, but not officers, directors or lobbyists.