John McCain

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

The McCains

"Amid the current economic meltdown Senator McCain is calling for regulation in Washington and on Wall Street... Sounds a little like what Barack Obama was saying back in March when he outlined a plan for revamping the regulatory system. But John McCain, a man who once supported a moratorium on almost all federal regulations, he's been in Washington for 26 years and he's only supported increased regulations now for about 26 hours."

Ronald Reagan

In an article on consortiumnews.com, entitled "America Pays the Piper, Big Time Pt.1", Robert Parry says: "After a 28-year binge of drunken optimism and blind nationalism often punctuated by chants of 'USA, USA' and 'We're Number 1', Americans are waking up with a painful hangover, facing a grim 'morning in America,' not the happy vision that Ronald Reagan famously sold them on."

Robert Parry: "Reagan was a complicated figure in certain ways but he did credential the neocons. It's very important to understand that what Reagan did was he brought the neocons in a he essentially gave them Central America where there were a number of conflicts underway..."

House of Representatives

Rep. Peter DeFazio D-OR): "This is at it's core the same deeply flawed Bush-Paulsen plan. Borrow $700 billion in the name of the American taxpayer. Give Paulsen unrestrained unprecedented authority to buy anything he deems a troubled asset from anyone at any price."

Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH): "There was little investigation and they asked the Treasury, 'Where did you come up with the number $700 billion?' Well, they answered it last week in Forbes magazine and here's the Treasury spokeswoman's quote: 'It's not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.' Well they succeeded. $700 billion is a really really big number. Then the bill left the House and it went over to or good friends in the Senate who are of course very fiscally conservative. They're wiser than we are because they have 6 year terms, we only have 2 year terms. Do you think that they were just happy sending it back to us at $700 billion? NO! They sent it back to us at $850 billion and the added such wonderful things like $192 million for rum..."