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From the Carpetbagger Report:When A Bank Lobbyist wrote McCain's Housing Policy

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s national campaign general co-chair was being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy, federal records show.

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” reported Tuesday night that lobbying disclosure forms, filed by the giant Swiss bank UBS, list McCain’s campaign co-chair, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, as a lobbyist dealing specifically with legislation regarding the mortgage crisis as recently as Dec. 31, 2007.

Gramm joined the bank in 2002 and had registered as a lobbyist by 2004. UBS filed paperwork deregistering Gramm on April 18 of this year. Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman.

Following the Link from the Carpetbagger Report, we drop by Talking Points Memo (The blog that broke the US Attorney firings) for this:

Reader KB sends in articles Businessweek and Forbes that show just how big a player UBS was. Forbes says that UBS is among the banks worst hit by the global credit crisis, particularly in their direct exposure to the US subprime market. According to Forbes, UBS has some $37 billion in write-downs on assets tied to bad US mortgages. In other words, the bank’s very life appears to be on the line in how the US government chooses to handle the matter.

As MSNBC reported, UBS deregistered Gramm as a lobbyist for the company on April 18th, though he continues to serve as a vice chairman of the bank. But that was fully a month after McCain’s speech outlining his own approach to the crisis.

From Obsidian Wings for a bit about Mr. Gramm

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.

For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs."

The 1999 bill that Gramm sponsored overturned the Glass-Steagall Act, which (among other things) separated investment banks from ordinary banks. Gramm's bill was an enormously important piece of financial legislation, and by allowing banks and brokerages to merge, it set in place some of the conditions that hampered scrutiny of mortgage-backed securities, and made the damage from the present meltdown harder to contain.

...

"Mr. Gramm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of Enron largess in the Senate. And he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied with a bright ribbon for Enron.

Wendy Gramm has been influential in her own right. She, too, is a demon for deregulation. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993.

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ''Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.'

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Ya'll really need to read the entire thing. Then sit down and think thbat Mcain has this specimen of humanity as his economic adviser And, of course, the fact that McCain wants to be President.

Quite the Straight Talker, isn't he? How very Maverick of him.

Also, how the hell does he want to kick Russia out of the G8, and then expects them to cooperate on nuclear non-proliferation??

Oh, you didn't see and hear a word about his Speech? Yeah, I know. Rev Wright and flagpins and Rev Pfleger. Here's a breakdown of the Diamond grade BS contained in said speech:

# He wants to work with Russia on arms control and tactical nuclear weapons, but he also wants to kick Russia out of the G-8. Not sure how you get them to play nice on nukes after you kick them in the teeth. Also, Bush adopted a loose standard on counting nuclear weapons and verification. Will McCain (who is now working with John Bolton – father of Bush arms control dogma) be any better?
# I applaud his desire to get tactical nuclear weapons out of Europe, but if we pull nuclear weapons out of Turkey as Iran advances its nuclear program, they are not going to have increased confidence in NATO and the US. This speech, and the references to it, will send shock waves through Europe and and a McCain Administration would start in a hole.

'''

# Why is only the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) going to review nuclear policy? Where are the experts on nonproliferation, diplomacy, history, etc? This is the same line the Bush administration gave. In May of 2000, standing in front of Secretary Kissinger and other republican heavy-weights, then-candidate Bush said he would reduce nuclear weapons to the lowest number consistent with U.S. security. Sound familiar? McCain’s statement is almost an exact quote. The JCS has set the current floor on reductions. The President sets the war guidance for the level of nuclear weapons, and leaving it to the JCS is a recipe for the status quo.

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Either you are for the ban on nuclear testing or you are not. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is the most studied arms control agreement in history. It has been verifiable since the 1960s. McCain voted against it. To play the “let’s study it again” dance is too cute by half. If the President does not support it, it is not going to happen. Also, McCain seems to be suggesting we should re-open the agreement for new modifications. That is the fastest way to kill it. He also talks about limiting testing. We want to ban testing. We have more nuclear expertise than anyone – why we would want to make the world safe for others to test nuclear weapons is unclear. Obama and Clinton have said they are for the CTBT and plan to fight for its ratification. McCain has not. The rest of the world – including the states we need on our side to deal with Iran and North Korea – are embarrassed that we have not ratified it.

Hilzoy from Obsidian Wings also provides even more perspective on his hypocrisy and fuckitude regarding Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

All links provided by Obsidian Wings, The Carpet Bagger Report, Talking Points Memo and Democracy Arsenal.