As the Obama and McCain campaigns roll out duelling character attacks based on each candidate's association with a controversial figure in recent US history -- for Obama, former 1960s radical Bill Ayers; for McCain, disgraced banking magnate Charles Keating -- it's worth noting that the current credit crisis bears more than just a passing similarity to the savings-and-loan debacle that ensnared McCain.
We reported last week on McCain's support for suspending so-called "mark-to-market" accounting rules, a move that could allow companies to hide the plummeting value of their riskier assets -- the same sort of shell game that savings-and-loan institutions performed in the Keating years.
But the Los Angeles Times has an illuminating take today on an even more glaring Keating flashback: Darrel Dochow, the banking regulator who was parachuted in to conduct a favourable investigation of Keating's toxic S&L, was the western chief of the current US banking regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, during the failures of IndyMac and Washington Mutual.
For anyone wondering how the bygone Keating affair relates to the present economic meltdown, the Times piece is a must-read.
