While most of Washington fixates on the $700 billion bailout package now being debated by the House Finance and Senate Banking Committees (Rep. Frank has added his own version of a bailout to the ones proposed by the administration and Sen. Christopher Dodd), our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are paying attention to some $600 billion in spending that Rep. David Obey, D-Ohio, concocted in secret, or, as he put it to Bloomberg News, operating "the old fashioned way by brokering agreements in order to get things done and I make no apology for it." Taxpayers has posted searchable ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Who does Bachus see at his fundraisers?
Among Rep. Spencer Bachus's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns), Credit Suisse Group (which misled some investors about its auction rate securities), UBS AG (which hopes the bailout will include foreign banks), the National Assn of Realtors (working to "assure a robust secondary mortgage market"), Citigroup Inc ("written off and lost $53.6 billion through the credit crunch so far, which is more than any other bank or broker,"), Bank of America (acquired Merrill Lynch and ...
Continue readingFinancial Meltdown: FBI on the case?
Yes, according to this:
The FBI is investigating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG - and their executives - as part of a broad look into possible mortgage fraud, sources with knowledge of the investigation told CNN Tuesday.The sources would not speak on the record because the investigation is ongoing.
FBI spokesman Special Agent Richard Kolko had no comment on that information, but said that 26 firms were currently under investigation as part of the bureau's mortgage fraud inquiry.
I laughed at Megan McCardle's reaction ....
Is stupidity a federal offense? And if so, when do they investigate ...Continue reading
A compendium of mortgage bank failures
The Mortgage Lender Implode-o-Meter has a useful list of companies that have gone belly up in the subprime mortgage crisis that appears to be more the trigger than the overall cause of the current financial meltdown. I was looking at it Friday, browsing the stories, and some of it is pretty incredible (the list of 285 failures is pretty incredible). Reading about the first failure, Merit Financial, gives a flavor of just how freewheeling these firms could be:
The 42 complaints received by state agencies and the Better Business Bureau give insight into Merit's problems. Addressed individually, none was ...Continue reading
CRP tracks beneficiaries of belly-up banks
Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics have been doing yeoman's work compiling lists of the politicians who've received the most money over the years from political action committees and employees and their family members of the big financial colossi that are seeking (or having imposed on them) federal help to stave off collapse. Their Lehman Brothers list is here while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are ">here.
To see who in Congress invested in these operations, CRP has compiled an analysis of Freddie and Fannie holdings here; you can also dig into search results for Lehman ...
Continue readingTracking earmarks from Obama and Biden
Taxpayers for Commons Sense rolled out a pair of new databases on earmarks of presidential candidates, this time covering Sen. Barack Obama's requests from 2006 to 2008, and his funded earmarks for 2008. The databases are online here.
A list of the earmarks Sen. Joe Biden requested for fiscal year 2009 is available here. Robert Bluey at Red State is calling on Biden to disclose all his earmark requests--can't argue with that. But for those who want to dig around in the press release archives of his site, there are plenty of releases like this one from prior ...
Continue readingTCS, Post examine Palin’s pursuit of earmarks
The most interesting story on Alaska Gov. and Republican nominee for Vice President Sarah Palin is the Washington Post's report that, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin "employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents." Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense provided the earmark analysis. Note who Palin hired:
As mayor of Wasilla, however, Palin oversaw the hiring of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska's most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July ...Continue reading
Due diligence in the Biden family lawsuit
In a comment to this post pointing to some resources for getting acquainted with the Republican vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, I noted this Washington Post story on a lawsuit involving Robert Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, James Biden, the Senator's brother, and plaintiff Anthony Lotito, who is the former business partner of the two non-elected Bidens in a deal that didn't work out. Both sides charge one another with cheating; hence the lawsuit. It turns out the New York State Supreme Court (where the case ...
Continue readingAre the parties over?
Republican presidential nominee John McCain has apparently cancelled all but the most essential official convention activities due Hurricane Gustav's menacing approach toward the Gulf Coast. That means Monday will have none of the normal convention hullabaloo -- the customary succession of speeches (President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had already cancelled their appearances) will be foregone.
That leaves me with two questions: 1) Will the unofficial parties -- those events sponsored by private interests that occur outside the arena -- still go on as planned? And 2) will curtailing a lot of the rhetoric, including the endless parade of ...
Continue readingTracking Gov. Palin
Apparently, Republican presidential nominee John McCain has selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. For those looking for more information, her 2007 state personal financial disclosure form is online here (via the Center for Public Integrity). Via the excellent National Institute on Money in State Politics, here's campaign finance information from her unsuccessful 2002 race for Lieutenant Governor, her 2006 primary campaign for governor, and her 2006 general election campaign for governor. I'll update with more links as I come across them. I'm not going to dig into these myself today, but others should ...
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