The Real Reason Why Phil Gramm Bailed on McCain?

Because UBS AG, the bank for which Gramm is a senior executive, is being nailed for facilitating tax evasion.

That might be a good reason for having Gramm disappear from public view. I guess it was not enough that Gramm was one of the people who did his level best to break the power of regulators and who knowingly set the stage for the current financial mess.

Bush is wrong: It's not just "Wall Street" that got drunk at making easy money, it was the banking industry. Phil Gramm, along with Alan Greenspan, had his fingerprints all over the removal of meaningful regulation of the banking industry. It was Gramm who made sure that the federal regulators were demoted to approving the location of bank branches (a job they did with an "approved" stamp, which is why bank branches are more common than Starbucks stores).

The current financial mess is a direct result of the ideological polices of the so-called conservatives. But they are conservatives whose principles only go half-way; they have privatized the profits, but socialized the losses. The fat cats reap the benefits of the good times and the taxpayers get stuck with the bill when closing time is called.

(H/T to Blue Girl)