You may have seen the new McCain economic ad, which includes this promise, in the narration and the on-screen text:
Tougher Rules on Wall Street
Hmmm. Is this the same John McCain who said this to the Wall Street Journal in March:
I'm always for less regulation.... I am fundamentally a deregulator.
Or this, right after the Bear Stearns collapse later that month:
Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.
Wasn't "removing regulatory impediments to raising capital" one of the principal causes of the global credit crisis?
Well, yes. And, as Josh Marshall points out:
The man most responsible for the financial services and banking deregulation that made today possible, fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm, is the man John McCain wants to put in charge of the whole economy.
But that's not all!
In addition to disconnect between "always for less regulation" and "tougher rules on Wall Street," we have this internal inconsistency:
From the McCain Ad:
Our economy in crisis.
Someone needs to tell the candidate, who repeated this today:
[T]he fundamentals of our economy are strong
As the Daily News notes:
[S]omehow "fundamentals of our economy are strong" just doesn’t jibe with failures of 160-year-old financial titans like Lehman Brothers.
More importantly, it doesn't square with the falling incomes, record foreclosures, rising inequality and unprecedented debt that has characterized the modern Republican economy.