McCain Calls Economy ‘Bad,’ Decries ‘Casual Oversight’

A day after John McCain said that the economy’s fundamentals are “strong,” the Republican said Tuesday that the country has a “bad economy,” reports The Page.

“It is a bad economy,” McCain said during a campaign event in Tampa, Fla.

McCain, according to prepared remarks, also railed against the excesses of Wall Street and called for regulations that would make financial firms’ dealings more transparent.

“In short order, we are going put an end to the reckless conduct, corruption, and unbridled greed that have caused a crisis on Wall Street,” McCain said.

He added: “Under my reforms, the American people will be protected by comprehensive regulations that will apply the rules and enforce them to the full. There will be constant access to the books and accounts of our banks and other financial institutions. By law, it will reduce the debt and risk that any bank can take on. And above all, I promise reforms to prevent the kind of wild speculation that can put our markets at risk, and has already inflicted such enormous damage across our economy.”

Like Barack Obama did during his own speech Tuesday on the financial markets, McCain touted his previous calls for reform. He said that he raised questions years ago about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failing mortgage firms seized by the government last week.

But though McCain has long been a supporter of deregulation, he decried the lax oversight of Wall Street.

“Too many firms on Wall Street have been able to count on casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington,” he said. “And there are so many of those regulators that the responsibility for oversight is scattered, unfocussed and ineffective… But for all their big and impressive sounding names, the fact is they haven’t been doing their job right, or else we wouldn’t have these massive problems on Wall Street. At their worse, they’ve been caught up in Washington turf wars instead of working together to protect investors and the public interests. And we don’t need a dozen federal agencies doing the job badly — we need the best federal agencies to do the job right.”