Gramm Out

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John McCain's chief economic adviser has finally been given the boot. So what exactly did former Senator Phil Gramm do which cost him his job?

Was it the $1,000,914 he received in campaign contributions from the Securities and Investment industry while chairing the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Repairs from 1995 to 2000? Nope.

Was it that his wife, Wendy Gramm, served on Enron's Board of Directors after pushing through a key regulatory exemption for the company on Jan. 14, 1993 when she was Chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? Not a problem.

What about Gramm's role in creating the Enron loophole (read my previous article about that here) by slipping it into an 11,000 page report just hours before the Congressional Christmas break in 2000? Given its impact on the current gas crisis, you'd think so, but no.

How about his work as Vice Chairman at UBC, the British company which wrote off $39 billion of American subprime and other mortgage debt in the past year-- the company that is now under FBI investigation for tax evasion involving some 20,000 US citizens, and the same company which took over the majority of Enron's assets? Wrong again.

According to this PBS interview, Phil Gramm was fired for calling the current US economic predicament "a mental recession" and saying of America, "we have sort of become a nation of whiners." That's it. Gramm's history bothered the McCain camp not a whit, but his embarrassing statement to the media lead to his swift removal.

As McCain's chief economic adviser, Gramm helped to forge the candidate's economic platform, and that is what matters most today. Perhaps with Gramm out of the picture, the platform can finally receive the scrutiny it deserves.

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Comments

[JollyRoger]

Oh this is just plain beautiful. Flip-Flop Johnny has to get rid of another wingtard.

[Jeff]

Strong, strong article... I loved it. It seems odd that he'd been hired for the job in the first place. John McCain has been around long enough to know that stuff is coming out. I guess those kinds of things just did not seem relevant at the time of hiring.