John McCain calls for change and decries the “greed” of Wall Street in his latest ad. But what would McCain be calling for change from? Is he signaling that the Bush economic policies have failed the country? Does he now call for additional regulation of Wall Street after he voted in favor of the massive deregulation of Gramm-Leach-Bliley? And what is Gramm-Leach-Bliley anyway? Lets further look at that law, and what it changed. From Daily Kos:

Gramm-Leach-Bliley effectively repealed the second Glass-Steagall Act which, among other things, barred investment banks and retail banks from merging. Gramm-Leach-Bliley effectively removed this restriction, allowing a single institution to both create a debt-based investment, and then facilitate its sale. Previously, with two institutions involved in that process (Three if you count the investment rating company – Moody’s for example), there would have to be a high degree of clarity involved. One institution (Investment bank) wouldn’t just buy, repackage, and re-sell another institution’s (Retail bank) products without first understanding exactly what it was. It would also be far less likely to hold those assets and count them as capital.

With a single institution operating on both the commercial and investment banking fronts, the motive for clarity was eliminated.

I guess McCain was for the change embodied by Gramm-Leach-Bliley. I am not sure what change he advocates for now. Even some of his strongest supporters over at the Wall Street Journal editorial page are cringing over McCains description of Wall Street “greed”. From the ed page of the Journal:

One whiff from Barack Obama about “the mountain in Sedona where he lives,” and by day’s end Senator McCain was ranting about “corruption” and how he was going to “reform the way that Wall Street does business.” Yesterday Senator McCain’s inner populist had cooled enough to admit the existence of “honest people on Wall Street,” but it still sounded as if this week’s version of the McCain Presidency would be more about restructuring private financial markets he doesn’t understand than fixing the Washington he knows.

Flip-flopping between assertions that the economy is fundamentally strong and populist promises to rip apart its financial plumbing creates confusion about what exactly Mr. McCain really thinks. His opponent, meanwhile, stayed on message, explaining Monday’s events with the sort of dogged persistence reflected in the headline across the front page of yesterday’s New York Times: “Wall St. in Worst Loss Since ’01 Despite Reassurances by Bush.”

The Journal is correct about something that John McCain has candidly acknowledged: He does not understand financial markets.