Sen. John McCain, at the helm every time the nation has experienced a financial crisis, now claims that he is the one that will fix this problem.  McCain was in Congress and was implicated in the Keating Five scandal or more popularly known as the savings and loan crisis.  You know, the crisis that resulted in a government bailout of  $126 billion dollars. 

McCain was also one of the Senators who helped pass the deregulation bill that caused the current crisis.  McCain had this to say about the bill’s passing on 60 Minutes last night:

Q: In 1999, you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?

McCAIN: No. I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.

If you had any doubt as to how a McCain administration would handle the current financial crisis, the above quote is your answer. Incompetence and denial, denial, denial, denial.  McCain is a pure free-market ideologue.  He believes that the government should get out of the way and let the private sector regulate itself….well it is that exact ideology that is directly responsible for the greatest collapse of the financial industry since the Depression.  To put the cherry on top, the McCain campaign refuses to rule out that Phil Gramm, architect of the deregulation bill that caused this crisis and referred to Americans as a “nation of whiners,”  will be the Treasury Secretary in a McCain administration.  Also, remember McCain’s plan, until last Friday, to privatize social security?  Imagine the state the nation’s social security program had we followed McCain’s advice and invested in stock market.  Thanks for everything Senator McCain but it is really time to turn the page.