By CARL CAMPANILE, AP
Last updated: 9:04 am
October 7, 2008
Posted: 3:40 am
October 7, 2008
John McCain went nuclear on Barack Obama yesterday, charging that the Illinois Democrat "abetted" the mortgage meltdown.
McCain's harshest attacks on Obama's readiness for the White House came on another disastrous day on Wall Street, with stocks plummeting despite Washington's approval last week of a rescue plan for troubled financial firms.
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With the economy worsening, Obama has opened an 8-point lead over McCain - the largest of the campaign - according to two separate polls by Gallup and Rasmussen Reports.
Obama countered the attacks by rehashing McCain's role in the "Keating Five" savings-and-loan scandal two decades ago - the last major government intervention in troubled financial institutions.
But McCain insisted he's the man to fix the economic mess, not Obama, whom he mocked as a typical "Chicago politician."
"Whatever the question, whatever the issues, there's always a back story with Senator Obama . . . Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. The crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them.
"Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread," McCain said during an event in Albuquerque, NM.
"This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama."
McCain said he raised the alarm and called for tighter borrowing rules on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, which could have helped stem the crisis.
By comparison, he said, Obama was "silent" while congressional Democrats fought efforts to rein in the mortgage giants.
"As recently as September of last year, [Obama] said that subprime loans had been, quote, 'a good idea.' Well, Senator Obama, that 'good idea' has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," McCain said.
For his part, Obama pounced on a statement from a McCain adviser that the Arizona senator's campaign was "looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis."
"I have got news for the McCain campaign, the American people are losing right now," Obama said, referring to the loss of homes, jobs and health care, during a speech in Asheville, NC.
The Obama campaign also retorted that McCain had twisted the Illinois senator's remarks on the subprime-mortgage crisis.
In the same speech McCain cited, Obama also blasted mortgage lenders for lowering borrowing standards, which made homeownership "just too good to be true."
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