Obama gets his turn with Spanish-language radio and says John McCain’s refusal to meet with Spain’s prime minister is a continuation of the Cheney foreign policy.

Last week I got a mountain of emails asking me to call the McCain campaign out for ‘lying’ about former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines’ relationship with the Obama campaign. It was pretty clear, as Karen Tumulty noted in Time, that the McCain camp was happy to play up Raines’ race. And all the McCain camp could find to justify calling Raines an Obama ‘advisor’ was a stray reference in an article in the Washington Post which reported that Raines had taken a couple phone calls with people tied to the Obama campaign.

Still, in the rough world of politics, this amounted to basically a lie and not the usual McCain standard of 100% lie. But now we learn from the NY Times that McCain’s campaign manager and right hand man Rick Davis bagged more than $2 million running a front group set up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stepped up federal regulation.

Obama pulls out of North Dakota. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Is Ruth Marcus really so desperate to ‘even the scales’ that she’s claiming that the phrase “privatizing Social Security” is “incendiary” language that amounts to deception? Is she so ignorant of this debate that she doesn’t know that it was the preferred language of the advocates of privatization for more than two decades until they found out it wasn’t polling well enough during the first two years of the Bush administration?

And it’s apparently a big lie to say that Florida retirees would be in a big jam right now if John McCain had had his way right now and privatized Social Security because under McCain’s and Bush’s plan current retirees and those a few years from retirement wouldn’t be affected. So in other words, from when McCain instituted the plan five years ago it wouldn’t have affected those now drawing benefits or just entering the system. Or wait, McCain’s not even president yet, right? So, true, presumably it wouldn’t apply right now in 2008 to anyone in advance of McCain’s even being in office and putting through his plan.

The point is that there’s no end of special pleading and candidate hand-holding when the topic is the privatization of Social Security. And even the prestige columnists appear completely innocent of the details of how the proposed changes would work.

The era of the standalone investment bank comes to an end as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley elect to become bank holding companies.

The New York Times reports this evening that “foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the [Wall Street bailout] plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic American mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as United States banks.”

The Times further reports that two of the biggest foreign banks in need of such relief are Barclays and UBS. In fact, my understanding is that UBS is more on the line here than any other foreign bank.

Let’s add this up.

John McCain’s top economics advisor, who is widely believed to be his choice for Treasury Secretary, should he win in November, is former Sen. Phil Gramm. (Indeed, just last night his spokesman refused to say Gramm wouldn’t be McCain’s choice for Treasury Secretary.)

Gramm is both vice chairman of UBS’s US division and a lobbyist for UBS.

If UBS successfully lobbied over the weekend to get in on the bailout, what was Gramm’s role in the lobbying?

President Bush, through Secretary Paulson, have asked for a massive bailout package with minimal oversight and no protection for taxpayers. Sen. Obama has now come back with a response that while imperfect and insufficient, makes clear that any plan must include independent accountability and oversight, some ability for taxpayers to recoup their investment, and more. Speaker Pelosi is making similar sounds, while congressional Republicans are asking for a ‘clean’ bill without oversight or taxpayer protection provisions.

Has John McCain done or said anything so far beside ask for advice from former Sen. Phil Gramm, the guy more singly responsible for creating the mess than anyone else? Which side is he on?

From TPM Reader DP …

As a Wall Street guy I am sort of glad that this bailout is being organized. However, what seems unfair to me is that there are absolutely no provisions for homeowners. Moreover, this morning on Stephanopulous I saw Hank Paulson talking about homeowners taking out mortgages that were higher than they could afford and about them needing to live up to their obligations.

I find it incredible that he would use language like that while asking taxpayers to send a trillion dollars to Wall Street because investment banks made irresponsible investments and aren’t able to live up to their obligations.

In any loan transaction there are at least two parties. If I give my unemployed and uneducated brother-in-law a half a million dollar loan wouldn’t I be just as irresponsible giving it as he is taking it? Moreover, a large majority of borrowers did not have financial training to be able to understand complex mortgage terms and risks of the underlying investments. Investment banks have armies of Ph Ds working for them that helps them analyze market risks and credit exposure. They got it wrong too! It strikes me as strange that unsophisticated borrowers are being held to much higher standard than ultra-sophisticated bankers.

From the NYT …

The financial crisis that began in the United States spread to many corners of the globe. Now, the American bailout looks as if it is going global, too, a move that could raise its cost and intensify scrutiny by Congress and critics.

Foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic American mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as United States banks.