- Source: San Francisco Chronicle, July 15 Center for Public
Integrity
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- McCain Advisers Pushed 'Dow 36,000' and Financial Deregulation
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- Three years ago, before the crash, the Nasdaq was climbing
off the charts, and John McCain's top economic adviser for his 2000 Presidential
campaign was Kevin Hassett, the co-author of {Dow 36,000,} notes today's
San Francisco Chronicle. Hassett was arguing, even as the Dow soared above
11,000, that stocks were not overvalued, and that "Stock prices could
double, triple, or even quadruple tomorrow and still not be too high."
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- "McCain, who once, like every other politician in
Washington, sought the money of Silicon Valley industrialists to finance
his ambitions, today dons the mantle of Teddy Roosevelt, the populist Republican
Trust Buster," the article points out. "McCain is out-Democrating
Democrats in his lust for a corporate crackdown, becoming the first to
publicly attack the icons of Silicon Valley. He now demands new laws that
did not occur to him when his economic adviser said stocks would quadruple."
-
- Hassett, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute, was indeed McCain's top economic adviser. Hassett also brought
into McCain's campaign Charles Calomiris of AEI, who founded an AEI project
promoting decreased regulation of the financial sector.
-
- Still another McCain economic adviser was David C. John
of the Heritage Foundation, who promoted the repeal of the New Deal Glass-Stegall
Act, so as to allow banks, insurance companies, and investment companies
to enter into each other's markets -- all of which measures have contributed
to today's debacle in financial markets.
-
- [Source: NYT, July 15, page 1, "Coke to Report Stock
Options as Expense," by Floyd Norris and Sherri Day]
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- HOW LIEBERMAN PRESERVED PHONY ACCOUNTING OF STOCK OPTIONS.
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- In the course of a related story, the New York Times
reports "In 1994, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which
sets accounting standards in America, retreated from its proposed rule
to require options to be expenses. It reacted to heavy political pressure
directed by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who had
pushed through the Senate a resolution opposing the plan on a vote of 88-9.
He then proposed legislation to all but put the board out of business,
but dropped that proposal after the board backed down.
-
- "The board surrendered on the private advice of
Mr. [Arthur] Levitt, then the SEC chairman [who supported the proposed
rule].
-
- Yesterday, he said that was the worst mistake he had
made at the commission."
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