Keating to McCain: Till Death do Us Part

I doubt that it was meant as a marriage vow towards an unsavory marital partner. Nonetheless, it is a curious way for a banker named Charles Keating to refer to a political candidate of John McCain.

I came across this blog due to a Times (UK) article about the $50,000 in contributions bundled out of the law firm Keating founded. The Times linked to an Oct 9 Washington Times article no less, that includes a jpeg of McCain’s letter of apology on official US House letterhead that Charles keating had the gall to write on top of and send (back!) to Congressman McCain. He even starts it off with “Don’t be silly.”

An odd way of opening — is it meant to be light-hearted? collegial? or chastising?

The opening is followed by “you can call me anything. Say anything. do anything. i’m yours.”

Is that suggestive? or an absolute commitment?

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I did a few quick inflation calculations (thanks to Inflation Calculator) of how much $166,000 of early 1980s money is worth in today’s dollar amounts. $166K from 1986 equates to $310K in 2007 (a convervative figure, as the ‘82 figure would equal $350K )

… which would have made the unname bundler out of the Keating law firm not only a Pioneer in the 2004 Bush campaign but a Super Ranger. Or the elite of the small dollar campaign contribution corralling that has arisen in the post-McCain-Feingold era.

What is the bailout:: Keynes is in, Friedman is out.

This instructive point from Wake Forest professor David Coates:

But doesn’t the bailout represent a fundamental change in government policy?

Yes, it does. It marks the end of an era, but not the end of capitalism. As David Brooks said in The New York Times recently, the real casualty here is the Gingrich Revolution. Given what has happened these last four weeks, it’s unlikely that any time soon a future President will build into his State of the Union Address proposals to partially privatize Social Security, as President Bush did on at least two occasions in the last eight years. For the minute, it rather looks as though Milton Friedman is out of fashion, and that John Maynard Keynes is on the way back in. We don’t face socialism; but we do face a slightly more managed capitalism. But the rest of the industrial world flourishes under such a system. Arguably we will too, if the management is up to the task.