subprime lending

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd has identified the villain in the recent financial crisis gripping the globe.

The Press.

Dodd scolds media, says blame for mortgage crisis is misplaced

Sen. Chris Dodd effusively praised advocates for affordable housing in an afternoon speech here Wednesday.

He took a much dimmer view of the reporters waiting for him just outside the door.

The Democratic senator's frustration has reached a low boil with what he - alongside many housing experts - sees as the scapegoating of federal laws requiring banks to lend to minorities and the poor in the ongoing search for a cause of the nation's mortgage and foreclosure crisis

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=505ec8f7-c80e-47b9-a399-23f8fcfabb52

See, it wasn't federal policy that mandated the massive amount of lending to previously noncreditworthy borrowers that tanked our economy, says the esteemed Senator.  That's the press just getting it all wrong.

Of course, giving a speech in front of 700 people all of whom earn their living in the "affordable housing" business, what was Dodd going to say? Of course, the solution to Dodd is to get going and have the Feds make even more uneconomic loans.

Evidently after giving his absolution to the home state people who helped create the housing mess, Dodd went down to DC to hold what Redstate. com termed a "show trial"  . http://www.redstate.com/diaries/redstate/2008/oct/16/chris-dodds-show-trial/ Here's what one of the biased members of the press, the Wall Street Journal, had to say about the fiasco

Mr. Dodd has shrewdly selected a series of witnesses who, like him, contributed to the mess, and have every incentive to point fingers elsewhere.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122411797796038903.html

Dodd has made a mantra of acting as if he was the only one in Washington sounding the alarm while "the Bush adminstration was asleep at the switch"  Now there are numerous facts contradicting these chant of innocence, including Dodd's failure to support GSE reform in 2005.. 

But as late as 2007, Dodd didn't think the subprime problem warranted a reaction.  His reaction after a hearing which featured testimony from a top Countrywide Lending executive.. 

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the banking committee, said he did not know if new legislation was necessary, saying regulators could addresses most excesses under existing laws.

 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01EEDE1530F930A15750C0A9619C8B63

This was your switch Senator...mind explaining the snoring?

Perhaps this explains it!

The Banker's Candidate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/15/AR2007021501555.html

Yep, the "Banker's Candidate" was all over his benefactors....right!  The guy who called the subprime mortgage market "one of the great success stories of all time."  was really racking down on it all along.

Paging Mr. Orwell.

By the way, remember those documents about Dodd's sweetheart loan from Countrywide? Not gonna see 'em, not now, not ever. 

 U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd hedged Wednesday on whether he will release documents on two mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corp. that sparked an ethics inquiry.

When asked after a speech in Hartford whether his mortgage documents ever will become public, Dodd replied, "Not right now. No." http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-dodd1016.artoct16,0,1032594.story

Perhaps the new channeling of Richard M. Nixon's "stonewall" strategy is because the big lawsuits over Countrywide's unethical lending practices were quickly settled by new owner Bank of America before the politicians in the "Friends of Angelo" club were questioned under oath.  http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?Q=424350&A=2795 

Whatever. Chris Dodd has no credibility on the financial crisis and he is planning to go off to Washington to "fix the crisis". If rewarding the likes of ACORN with billions of dollars the taxpayers don;t have is your idea of "fixing the economy", Dodd will be just swell.

For the rest of us,  well, I hope Chris Dodd enjoys the press he is getting. He deserves  it all, and more

The racebaiting has turned from tragedy to farce.  Barney Frank...

Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated. [...] "They get to take things out on poor people," Frank said at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston. "Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people."

 I hardly know where to begin.

• Yes, "subprime mortgage crisis" is obviously just code for "minorities".
• Yes, it's obviously inappropriate to suggest that extending mortgages to people who can't afford them is somehow responsible for this financial crisis of people unable to afford their mortgages.
• No, it's not at all ridiculous for Rep. Barney Frank to say these things just weeks after he had praised Bernanke's new rules that restricted mortgages that were "inappropriate" for unqualified borrowers.
• No, it's not at all hypocritical for Barney Frank to say it's racist to point out the problems with loans made to poor/underqualified people just weeks after he had said we need regulation that says "Do not lend money to people who can't pay it back."
• No, it's not at all contradictory for Barney Frank to say "They get to take things out on poor people" just weeks after he had said "we have made a mistake in this society" by "push[ing] and encourag[ing] people into home ownership - people who, in some cases, weren't ready for it."

I keep thinking these people are going to get called out on this obvious, laughable crap, but they keep saying it and - with a few noteworthy exceptions that do "fact check their ass" about the mortgage crisis - the media keeps transcribing it. 

The CT press was trying to make sense of the utter collapse of confidence in our financial markets this weekend.

So they went seeking the story from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, who proceeded to make no sense at all.

  http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localnews/ci_10580864

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=6170c810-d216-4cf1-af4d-64b821153459

Now Chris has a rather difficult task, since as I was told long ago being honest is easier than being deceitful, since it's hard to keep track of all your prior false statements.

Let's start with this one. 

   At the end of my tenure on this committee, I want it to be said that the safety and soundness of our financial institutions was not weakened on my watch," Dodd said.

These people who did high fives about the wonderful bailout bill last week http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073002950.html?referrer=emailarticle   will soon eat a whole nest worth of crow.

from this morning's New Haven Register

http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=19873971&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=624602&rfi=8

CHRISTOPHER HEALY: Has Sen. Dodd lost his bearings? And at what cost to us?

But the details are elusive - were other costs forgiven, who approached whom to get the loans and whether these deals could qualify as a gift above the $100 federal ethics limit.

Dodd could clear it up by showing us the paperwork. He refuses. Why? What information is in these documents that would cause anyone to question his integrity?

Yet, Dodd is submitting financial information to Sen. Barack Obama for consideration as his vice presidential running mate. It seems odd that Dodd would share this information with Obama, but not offer these facts to the people who elected him.
 

What is more troubling is Dodd's leadership as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the banking meltdown. Storm clouds were gathering last year when Dodd began his quest for the presidency and moved to Iowa.

While the Federal Reserve propped up a teetering economy, Dodd was visiting pig farmers. When he returned to Washington after the Iowa defeat, the mortgage industry was in flames. ...

Last night's evening news broadcasts included warnings that the collapse of IndyMac bank is likely only the first of a series of such failures. NBC Nightly News reported, "Luckily, most Americans don't know much more about bank failures than we all learned from watching the Christmastime classic 'It's A Wonderful Life' with Jimmy Stewart. ... So when a big bank failed in California just a few days ago and, given some uneasy rumors about others, there are worries in this era of mortgage meltdowns that there could perhaps be more on the way." CNBC's Erin Burnett added, "IndyMac is the bank which has failed. It's the second largest banking failure in American history. ... I just came from the stock exchange where the question isn't whether another bank will fail but which one and when." NBC added, "On Wall Street today, the bank that everyone was talking about was Washington Mutual. ... The stock fell 35% just today." Also on NBC Nightly News, CNBC's senior economics reporter Steve Liesman said, "Look, this is a banking crisis. This is a mortgage meltdown. There are going to be bank failures." And ABC World News reported, "Not all banks obviously are in trouble. Most are on very solid ground, but IndyMac's failure Friday has got rumors flying about what other banks could fail."

from U.S. News & World Report

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080715.htm

from the Hill 

My money is on reality, especially since Larry Kudlow figured out that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are involved with $1.4 Trillion in subprime loans  http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LawrenceKudlow/2008/07/15/the_saga_of_fannie_and_freddie?page=2

What do we suggest happen to the dissembling Democrat?

The mainstream media acknowledge the probable futility of expecting the toothless Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a serious investigation.

But as we well know, the Senate Democrats are enamored of another form of investigation---the use of the special prosecutor.

So what bothers the Senate Democrats more....whether a few U.S. attorneys got fired for partisan reasons or whether special interests unethically engineered a hundred billion dollar plus raid on taxpayer's funds? 

Ironman has diligently monitored the news wires and blogs. Now certaintly someone selling "hope" and "change" would be expected to sound off on this sort of sleaze, you would think.

The usually liberal Hartford Courant unleashed this one on the Senator

From this morning's Danbury News-Times

When challenged about the "Friend of Angelo" mortgage, Dodd's response: 

"I don't believe I did anything wrong," Dodd said. "We negotiated a mortgage at the prevailing rate."

http://www.newstimes.com/ci_9643434

Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green hasn;t had his judgment clouded by spending 34 years in the House and the Senate 

It gets worse. Dodd said he thought he got the deal "because they had been with Countrywide since 1999 and had two mortgages."

Oh please. This is embarrassing.........

Which brings up the other thing about VIPs. They think they can do whatever they want.

http://www.courant.com/hc-rgreen0620.artjun20,0,5217350.column

The Waterbury Republican-American places the onus for Dodd's arrogance on his lineage 

 Chris Dodd was 8 when Papa Dodd was elected to Congress in 1952. For 56 years, because of his father's station and later his own, Chris Dodd has lived the VIP life. No one knows, and he can't possibly remember, how many doors his VIP status has opened; how many prime tickets to sold-out plays and sporting events, how many free junkets and trinkets, how many nights on the town, etc., he got; and how many scrapes he got out of because he's Chris Dodd. Rest assured: Every time he got the VIP treatment, he knew he got it because of who he is.
 

By his own admission, Sen. Dodd was "born at night, but not last night," yet after a half-century of living the VIP life because of his congressional affiliations, it never occurred to him Countrywide's VIP treatment might be connected to his position on the Banking Committee.

"We literally just assumed it was a courtesy," which it turns out was extended by Mr. Mozilo, linked to their excellent credit rating (Aside to Sen. Dodd: What's your number?) and their many years as faithful Countrywide customers. Four years, to be exact. And as the average homeowner knows, all lenders shave interest rates and waive fees for borrowers not named Chris Dodd who have been good customers for four years, and they do it even when borrowers don't "seek or expect" it.
 

http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2008/06/19/opinion/349083.txt

The Senate has excellent health benefits. Should the Senator get checked out for this disease?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder 

Chris Dodd may have been a close ally of former President Bill Clinton, but he really shouldn;t try the same verbal mind games the former President excelled at. Dodd is simply embarassing himself. This morning the light bulb went off at 1600 Pennsylvania that maybe this President Bush might not want to emulate dad on signing off on a Democrat drafted banking bailout bill, so the veto threat came over the wire. And Dodd's response?

. Dodd was visibly angered at the bailout suggestion today. "It's quite the opposite," he insisted on the Senate floor. That, he said, "is the last thing we're doing." The lenders take a loss on each of the loans, he said.

http://blogs.courant.com/on_background/2008/06/bush-doesnt-like-dodds-ho...

As an attorney who spent a decade dealing with bad loans as an in-house counsel, let me educate the dear senator (who has no clue what the present interest rate is)

 If I lose well over 30% of the principal and unpaid interest foreclosing on homes in a plummeting market,( these loans lacked FHA insurance)  getting 87 cents on the dollar by signing the loan over to the feds is.....guess what......a bailout!

Two unrelated related developments occurred today. Bank of America leaked that they plan to complete the Countrywide buyout by July 1.

And why the rush to complete that transaction, as well as pass the housing boondoggle?. A site entitled "Dealbreakers" explains why haste makes government waste

Chris Dodd: The Senator From Bank of America
Posted by John Carney, Jun 19, 2008, 3:34pm
Chris Dodd, the US senator who introduced the mortgage bailout bill this
week, has received approximately $70,000 in campaign contributions from Bank
of America in the last year-and-a-half, Tim Carney reports in the Washington
Examiner.* The mortgage bill would allow banks such as Bank of America and
mortgage lenders like Countrywide, which BofA is in the process of
acquiring, to push their worst performing loans onto government agencies. It
is such a give away to mortgage laden banks that it is being mocked by
Republican staffers as "the Bank of America bill on steroids."
 

http://dealbreaker.com/2008/06/chris_dodd_the_senator_from_ba.php

There you have it. There is no bailout of big mortgage banks, and Bank of America contributed massively to make sure the banking bill wasn't a bailout

 Yep, Chris Dodd is still selling that darn bridge, isn;t he?