Joe Conason addresses Phil Gramm's legislative history:

Take Phil Gramm, the former Texas Senator whose proud authorship of the Reagan tax cuts in 1981 was immediately followed by severe recession—and then by the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. Among Mr. Gramm’s final speeches in the Senate was an impassioned rant warning that the Clinton economic program would lead to disaster and higher deficits. He could not have been more wrong, of course, an embarrassing historical footnote that is only significant because he now serves as chief economic counselor to the McCain campaign.

Let's not forget Gramm's lobbying efforts on behalf of UBS, known for its commitment to furthering the subprime mortgage crisis and helping the wealthiest Americans avoid paying their fair share of taxes:

The host of the exclusive gathering was the Swiss bank UBS, whose elite private bankers built a lucrative business in recent years by discreetly tending the fortunes of American millionaires and billionaires. As the wine flowed and Mr. Loyrette spoke of the glories of France, UBS bankers courted their affluent guests.

... Under pressure from the authorities, UBS is considering whether to divulge the names of up to 20,000 of its well-heeled American clients, according to people close to the inquiry, a step that would have once been unthinkable to Swiss bankers, whose traditions of secrecy date to the Middle Ages.

Federal investigators believe some of the clients may have used offshore accounts at UBS to hide as much as $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service. Doing so may have enabled these people to dodge at least $300 million in federal taxes on income from those assets, according to a government official connected with the investigation.