John McCain's plan to ignore the economy

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"I will not play election year politics with the housing crisis," declared John McCain in a "major" speech on the economy to be delivered Tuesday morning in the Republican-friendly confines of Orange County, Calif. The implication being, of course, that his opponents are engaged in doing precisely that -- taking advantage of the nation's deepening economic woes to score political points. Exhibit A: Hillary Clinton's "major" speech on the economy delivered in Philadelphia on Monday.

It is instructive to compare the two speeches. Clinton's speech was larded with references to previous statements she has made concerning the housing crisis and Wall Street's credit crunch that date as far back as a year ago, and was packed with specific proposals for tackling the foreclosure crisis and associated ills. One can criticize or disagree with her analysis or approach, but the record is clear: the senator from New York has been engaged with the deteriorating economy in real time. McCain, in contrast, has no such record to fall back on, and made only two substantive policy proposals in his speech.

First, it is time to convene a meeting of the nation's accounting professionals to discuss the current mark to market accounting systems. We are witnessing an unprecedented situation as banks and investors try to determine the appropriate value of the assets they are holding and there is widespread concern that this approach is exacerbating the credit crunch.

We should also convene a meeting of the nation's top mortgage lenders. Working together, they should pledge to provide maximum support and help to their cash-strapped, but credit worthy customers. They should pledge to do everything possible to keep families in their homes and businesses growing.

That's it. John McCain's economic plan is to convene a couple of meetings. Oh, and some more tax cuts. What's that I hear? The sound of Ohio voting Democratic? It's one thing to make a high-minded pledge to eschew "election-year politics." It's quite another to act willfully ignorant of the pressing concerns of millions of Americans.

The bulk of McCain's speech's recaps the broad outlines of what has transpired in the housing sector and Wall Street over the past year and reads as if cribbed from various state-of-the-economy reports previously delivered by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke. It's hard to see any of it coming as news to his audience, since Orange County was ground zero for the subprime lending industry.

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Also:
John McCain Just Doesn't Get It on Mortgage Crisis
Go to Trading Markets original
WASHINGTON, March 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- -- In his remarks addressing the housing crisis today, John McCain once again failed to outline any new proposals to help millions of struggling homeowners keep their homes or address the larger issues local communities are facing as a result of the crisis. McCain's speech comes on the same day one leading indicator reported a 10.7 percent drop in single-family home values, the steepest decline in the history of that index. [New York Times, 3/25/08]

McCain clearly sought to use the speech to demonstrate his understanding of the issue by reviewing the causes of the crisis. Instead, McCain demonstrated how out of touch he is and how little he understands the complexities of the challenge by minimizing its impact and blaming it on speculators and Americans who "bought homes they couldn't afford." At one point, McCain even asked "how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?" The fact is, those 4 million mortgages account for more that the entire 3,002,048 population of Orange County, where McCain gave the speech, and roughly two-thirds the entire population of his home state of Arizona.

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