We have now learned that the other [the one not yet purged for lobbying ties] general co-chair, Phil Gramm, was working as a lobbyist for a foreign bank here in the United States, that is, the former Texas Senator was paid to lobby Congress specifically about the mortgage crisis at the exact same time he was helping to craft Senator McCain's economic policies, and home mortgage crisis policies, as an unpaid McCain economic advisor.... Gramm was simultaneously being paid by UBS to lobby the United States Senate about the mortgage crisis, opposing government regulation, helping to kill a 2006 anti-predatory lending bill, that would have tightened consumer protections and might have mitigated the current crisis. As recently as December 31 of last year, still working for Swiss bankers, specifically to help kill the Emergency Home Ownership and Mortgage Equity Protection Act and the Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act.... The McCain campaign confirmed that Gramm had input on the speech and that McCain consulted Gramm specifically on the housing issue. Some economists blame Gramm in part for the crisis itself. As Senate Banking Chairman, Gramm simply weakened federal regulations. His deregulation of energy commodities first helped his wife's employer [Enron], then killed it. In 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which McCain voted for, broke down the decades-old wall separating commercial banks, heavily regulated, from the wild and woolly world of investment banking, a wall erected in 1933 to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression.... Gramm's deregulation helped set the stage for an explosion of banks slicing up subprime mortgages, bundling them with other mortgage slices to hide the credit risks, and selling mortgage stew to other investment firms. That gave lenders powerful incentive to make as many loans as possible, regardless of risk, because they could still turn around and sell those mortgages almost immediately.... McCain has hinted he might make Gramm his treasury secretary, but Gramm's track record worries even McCain's own advisors.... One economist has said 'McCain is counting on people having very short memories and not connecting some pretty obvious dots here.' [59]