Obama's Economic Adviser on the Crisis

“The core issue is pretty easy to understand,” Obama’s senior economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told Politico. “We've just spent the last eight years operating on the premise that the government shouldn't be in the business of setting the rules of the road. We're going to make clear that this is what happens when you follow this philosophy, and it's the same philosophy,” he said.

Goolsbee called an ad McCain released Monday promising “tougher” regulation “pretty cheeky.” “McCain spent the last year-and-a-half either saying nothing or espousing sympathy for the viewpoint that government oversight and regulation were the problem,” he said.
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The financial crisis has also raised an uncomfortable specter from McCain’s past: The last American financial meltdown, the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then, McCain fought regulation while cultivating friends in the savings and loan industry, and narrowly escaped an end to his political career in the indictment of a wealthy supporter, Charles Keating.

Democrats Monday were eager to recall the scandal. “Obviously McCain got his Ph.D. in market meltdowns from Professor Charles Keating,” said Jim Jordan, a Democratic consultant.