UBS, is under hot water after it was revealed today that they allegedly helped hide up to $20 billion belonging to their richest American clients

UBS, is under hot water after it was revealed today that they allegedly helped hide up to $20 billion belonging to their richest American clients in European and off-shore banks to avoid paying taxes to the IRS.The news has many in Washington up in arms, and a senate committee has called a hearing for Thursday. They want to meet with UBS representatives, who allegedly "set up sham entities for the US clients in tax havens, such as Panama or the British Virgin Islands, and pose as the owners of the entities." One UBS banker has pled guilty to smuggling cash and diamonds to Europe so U.S. clients could avoid paying taxes.Phil Gramm has worked for UBS since leaving the U.S. Senate immediately after using his position as a Senator to remove six-decade-old consumer banking protections in place since the Great Depression. The 1999 Gramm law, called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, is the main cause of the subprime mortgage meltdown that has crippled the U.S. economy. Gramm deregulated the banking industry, quit the Senate to leave for UBS, then lobbyied George W. Bush on behalf of UBS to remove remaining state laws that protect consumers from predatory lending.
Scandals are nothing new to the Gramm family. Around the same time Gramm was lining his pockets by laying the groundwork to destroy our economy, his wife Wendy used her power as a government official to delay investigations into Enron wrongdoing. Wendy Gramm then quit to take a position on the Enron board of directors. Wendy Gramm later was sued for her part in insider trading and paid a $13 million fine with her own money.Phil Gramm is also the same person who last week said that America was not in a recession, that the problem is that "America is a nation of whiners". John McCain tried to distance himself from Gramm after a firestorm erupted over that comment, even going so far as to claim Gramm would take a smaller role in his campaign.If the mainstream press connect the dots and put UBS and Phil Gramm together it could and should mark the end of any major influence Gramm has on the McCain campaign. Some people from UBS, and some U.S. tax dodgers will likely go to prison as well.A scandal like this would historically be a crippling blow to a presidential campaign, but don't expect much negative coverage tying McCain to Gramm and UBS. The war profiteering defense contractors who own the media today refuse to eat their own