Republican Mavericks

Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better.

And last night they came very close. The Federal Reserve decided at the last minute to extend an $85 billion secured loan to AIG, the nation's largest insurer. This is just the latest government bailout, and it won't be the last. Had they not stepped in to save AIG, there's a good chance the financial system would have collapsed.

Most of this is just too complex to understand, and this gives the McCain/Palin ticket a chance to keep voters focused on Sarah Palin's designer glasses. With all their efforts to portray themselves as "mavericks," one can almost forget that John McCain has been in the U.S. Senate for 22 years, and has been a tireless advocate for reducing government regulation. As recently as last March, McCain told the Wall Street Journal "I am fundamentally a deregulator".

But with recent turmoil in financial markets, McCain sharply criticized "greed by some based in Wall Street," and is calling for reform (and regulations) to “replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight."

What he fails to point out is that much of the problem stems not just from the fact that regulation of our financial system is "outdated," but that many regulatory safeguards were removed or weakened over the past 8 years, including some regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression. Where was Senator McCain while all this was going on?

So now we have McCain/Palin ticket scrambling to portray themselves as "mavericks" that will clean up the damage done by the Republican Party, and take on Wall Street. The "deregulator" is now calling for more regulation, and saying nothing about his role in advocating reduced regulation of our financial system.

It's not difficult to see that this is all smoke and mirrors...even without designer glasses.