Does the Keating Five have any relevance to the current financial c

It is funny that so many are so worried about the slight association Obama had with Ayers and the same time see nothing wrong with McCain’s VERY close association and friendship with Keating.

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. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln. Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over $3 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many elderly investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions that Keating had made to each of the senators, totalling $1.3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention.

McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981, and McCain was the only one of the five with close social and personal ties to Keating. Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates. In addition, McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in the Fountain Square Project, a Keating shopping center, in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet; three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. In 1989 Phoenix New Times writer Tom Fitzpatrick opined that McCain was the “most reprehensible” of the five senators.

After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised “poor judgment”.

It is amazing to me that the Senate Ethics Committee publically declared McCain to have exercised “POOR JUDGMENT” and none of the McCain supporters on this site will see anything wrong. In fact, they will say that it was in the past.

I believe that Congresspersons in their greed, lust for power, and ‘secure my re-election’ mindset forced banks/creditors to loan to persons they knew were not qualified, couldn’t make the paymenton those mortgage loans - it blew up - as usual they’ll point to everyone else to blame when it was they who had oversight, ignored warnings Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were in trouble at least 2 years before the bust, and benefitted handsomely - business as usual.

Source for what?… I provided a source for the quote… and the contributions can be found almost anywhere. The opening statement is my opinion… as was the closing.

The WHATREALLYHAPPENED quote is from a comment on an article in an earlier version of the website… so it is impossible to provide an exact url… but if you go to the site and look in the search bar under S&L scandal… you can look through the archives and find the quote.

miscegenymiser, thank you for your input, but it would hold more weight if you could show your source.

And yes, I think most financial decisions made have brought us to the crisis we are currently in.

amblessed, please for once in your life do some research that does not solely include right wing websites, and FAKE News.