John McCain Keating Five

After John McCain came out with his latest negative ads, Barack Obama has began striking back by saying "Hey John, weren't you one of the Keating Five, who ripped off thousands, mostly elderly?" The answer, yes in fact he was....

Barack Obama’s campaign plans to release an Internet ad Monday morning that will highlight Republican John McCain’s involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The campaign says it will email its supporters a link to a new Website called KeatingEconomics.com that features a 13-minute documentary on the savings-and-loan scandal. The Website also includes a timeline and newspaper articles explaining in detail the nearly twenty-year old scandal.

The Web ad shows footage of the senate trials of the five senators, including McCain, all of whom were accused of improperly aiding Charles Keating, chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and a political donor who went to prison for fraud that led to the bank’s collapse.

McCain has long associated with criminals of this type. Keep in mind this crime affected mostly elderly folks.

The failure of California-based Lincoln Savings led to more than 20,000 mostly elderly investors losing their life savings and at the time was one of the largest financial failures in history. In 1991 the Senate Ethics Committee cleared McCain of acting improperly but said he exercised “poor judgment.”

The campaign says that McCain’s involvement in the Savings and Loan crisis directly impacts the current economic problems and is indicative of a mindset of deregulation and lack of oversight that led to the financial industry meltdown.

“His involvement with Keating is a window into McCain’s economic past, present, and future,” says Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer.

“The Keating Five involved all the things that have brought the modern crisis. Senator McCain has not learned the lesson, and has continued to follow policies that are going to produce a disaster,” former bank regulator William Black says in the Obama campaign’s new documentary-style Web attack.

John McCain is not the answer to America's problems. In fact, it's crimes like the above that have helped cause the current financial crisis we are facing in America. McCain will not fix it, he will only make it worse.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

Do those words in bold sound familiar, sounds just like this current financial crisis doesn't it?

What is the Keating Five?

From wikipedia...

The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

They were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).

Senators John Glenn and John McCain were criticized by the Senate ethics investigation for having exercised "poor judgment".