McCain's Keating Five Comes Back to Bite Him in the Ass: "You're a Liar"

The $700 Billion Wall Street bailout debacle should remind you (and McCain) of something. McCain's proposed "fix" is basically a rehash of the Resolution Trust Corporation that came about because of the S&L disaster in which McCain was a central figure. The RTC was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush and poured $400 billion into hundreds of faltering savings and loan institutions in the late 1980's and early 1990's. About $3 billion was used to bailout Charles Keating's Lincoln Financial. McCain was investigated by the Senate when he interceded with federal regulators on Keating's behalf.

McCain met Keating in 1982 when McCain ran for Congress. McCain began accepting offers from Keating to fly McCain's family on Keating's corporate plane to Keating's house in the Bahamas at Cat Caye. McCain did not pay for most of the trips until years later, when the matter became public.

Keating, meanwhile, complained regularly to McCain that a proposed regulation would hurt his business. Known as the "direct investment" rule, it limited the amount that S&L's could invest from their assets. In 1985, after having "heard frequently from Charlie on the matter," McCain decided that Keating's complaints "were sound enough to warrant our assistance." So McCain cosponsored a resolution sought by Keating, but it was too late to postpone the regulation.

By then, Keating was one of McCain's most important benefactors; McCain received $112,000 in campaign donations from Keating and his Lincoln associates, mostly between 1982 and 1986.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.

"You're a liar," McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating.

"That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot," McCain said later in the same conversation. "You do understand English, don't you?"

He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating.

"It's up to you to find that out, kids."

Why is it that all these financial crises (Great Depression, S&L Scandal, Black Monday 1987, Credit Crunch 2008) happen when the Republican Party is in charge?

And let's not forget about McCain's son, Andrew. I wrote about Andrew McCain back in July.
Andrew K. McCain, son of John McCain, has resigned two high posts in the banking industry.

Andrew McCain stepped down from the boards of Silver State Bancorp and Silver State Bank of southern Nevada for "personal reasons". Uh-huh, like he doesn't want to be dragged down with a failing bank that the American Taxpayers will have to bail out.
Families lost $20 million in the Silver State failure (becuase they had over the FDIC insured $100,000).