The Cover-ups of John McCain – Saudi Bank Raiders and Junk Bond Kings
Posted by AZBlueMeanie:
Remember the BCCI bank scandal? Charles Keating and the Savings & Loan scandal? Ken Lay and the Enron scandal? These scandals have all but disappeared down the memory hole for our local yokel political reporters who apparently suffer from amnesia. John McCain is hoping that voters also have a short memory or suffer from amnesia.
Part 2 of the report by Mark G. Levey explores "McCain’s 30-Years of Service to Saudi Bank Raiders and Junk Bond Kings." Read the full report here Election Fraud News. Snippets from the report:
"From BCCI, to Milken’s Junk Bond Kings, to Jack Abramoff, Senator John McCain has long provided the clean All-American face to the dirty job of cleaning up after the looting of America.
Senator John McCain has made a career out of serving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its army of lobbyists, bagmen, and corrupt bankers during the last three decades.
In the process, he has done his part to cover-up BCCI’s looting of American banks and S&Ls… and more than anyone else, limited the public’s awareness of Jack Abamoff’s wholesale foreign buyout of the GOP, activities that individually have killed the careers of other Washington luminaries. Yet, somehow, John McCain remains the last man standing. He even appears to keep his hands clean.
The Saudi-Manchurian Candidate
The Senator’s patented role as All-American influence peddler to the world now includes the latest flap over his national campaign finance co-chair’s lucrative deals as a Saudi lobbyist and revelations about possible violations of federal campaign laws.
Tom Loeffler, McCain’s finance co-chair received $15 million from Saudi clients since 2002, is just part of a long conduit in the petrodollar pipeline from Riyadh to the Senator from Arizona. The Loeffler Group, which he founded, has also represented the People’s Republic of China.
Under Loeffler, the campaign has brought in more than $50 million for McCain so far this year, far more than was raised during all of 2007 when the GOP candidate faced a weak field of primary competitors. OpenSecrets.com shows that Loeffler and his wife, Nancy, have made a total of fifteen $2,300 maximum personal contributions to McCain during the past year.
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Loeffler last month told a reporter "at no time have I discussed my clients with John McCain." But lobbying disclosure records reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to "discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations."
Another potential problem: Loeffler’s firm started paying $15,000 a month last summer to one of its lobbyists, Susan Nelson, after she left to become McCain’s full-time finance director, said a source familiar with the arrangement (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters). Campaign officials were told the payments were "severance" for Nelson and that they ended by November. But in "February or March," Loeffler rehired Nelson as a consultant to "help him with his clients" while she continued on the McCain payroll, according to a campaign official who asked not to be identified talking about personnel matters. Federal election law prohibits any outside entity from subsidizing the income of campaign workers.
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McCain is, indeed, in good favor among the Saudi and Gulf elites. Bloomberg reports: Bloomberg.com: Politics ("McCain Iraq, Iran Policies Make Him Favored Candidate to Saudis," By Hans Nichols and Janine Zacharia)
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Like the Bush Family, McCain had his Hand in the BCCI and S&L Scandals
McCain claims that his involvement in the Keating S&L scandal wasn’t really much to worry ourselves about. He was all but exonerated by his Senate colleagues, he says, let off with the political equivalent of a warning at a traffic stop. In fact, the Senate Ethics Committee was rather lenient with all five caught up in the scandal. But, that says more about the nature of the Senate than it does about the actual damage done to the American public by the financial crimes that led to the S&L collapse, itself.
The S&L crisis was all about oil, junk bonds, and deregulation that allowed the two to mix. That volatile brew is still actively bubbling over, and taxpayers are still paying $30 billion annual installments toward the trillion dollar bailout.
Here’s how you got stuck paying the bill, courtesy of the Bush family and John McCain.
In the mid-1980s, world oil prices plunged which set off a long series of bankruptcies and financial takeovers when overvalued Texas and southwestern land prices collapsed. The financial panic of 1988 also followed the “reform” of federal banking rules that had allowed bank managers to trade in risky new derivatives and junk bonds.
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Huge bank holding companies scooped up looted banks and S&Ls (along with their land deeds and oil rights), bought out for pennies on the dollar after they went belly-up. The federal government even subsidized many of these purchases. The American taxpayer was left with an estimated $1 trillion bailout cost. The epicenters of this late 20th Century white collar crime wave were in Houston and Phoenix, home base for two highly ambitious GOP politicians. One was named George H. W. . Bush, and the other John McCain, III.
