John McCain: Town Hall 10/02/08

John McCain
Town Hall Meeting
Denver, CO 10/02/08

MCCAIN: I do believe that there are many occasions where the nature of the media is to exaggerate things and perhaps not be as accurate as we would like them to be, but let me say very seriously, I think that one of the biggest causes of this problem was not so much the media. In fact, I don't think that the media was responsible for what happened at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I believe that there was, in all seriousness, I love to bash the media all the time, but the point is the beginnings of this crisis were such a corrupt system in Washington that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac basically got completely out of control.

Their executives got exorbitant, huge amounts of pay packages. Meanwhile, they encouraged all this risky behavior in the real estate market and the crisis built larger and larger and meanwhile, members of congress--not just lobbyists, but members of congress were complicit in not trying to rein in--not only not trying to rein in, but encouraged this kind of behavior and that I really believe was the major, catalytic factor in bringing about the crisis that we are in, which, as you know, has spread and that combined with the greed on Wall Street--in all due candor, I cannot blame that on the media.

I have to blame that on failure to oversight [sic], failure of transparency, a failure of congress and watchdog agencies to enforce existing regulations that exist and it's a failure, frankly, of many of us in congress--many members of congress. By the way, I proposed two years ago legislation that would have reined in Fannie and Freddie. I said that this was gonna get out of control. So, again, a serious answer--I'd love to blame the media. I'll blame them for a lot of other things, but not on this one.

LABEL: JM CO 10-02-08 (RAD#10) USG - clipH

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• tracking
• john
• mccain
• media
• fannie
• freddie
• economy
• meltdown
• mortage
• jobs