While the rest of America was being buggered with sub-prime loans, senators Dodd and Conrad were getting sweeheart deals. What was the quid pro quo?
Don’t get me wrong. The people who actually signed on to to the horrible loan packages that Countrywide offered have no one but themselves to blame for their financial mess. This piece relates to the consequences for the rest of us.
Under a program called friends of Angelo senators like Chris Dodd (among others) benefited from choice mortgage deals offered by Countrywide. Well, some companies offer better deals to better qualified applicants. What’s the big deal? The deal is, that if you weren’t a friend of Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo, you got stock shit deals. Those were the deals that helped collapse the real estate market in America. Countrywide had to have known the the type of loans they were offering couldn’t possibly be appropriate for the people they were offering them to. They did it anyway. What were the consequences? Well, Angelo bailed out at the last minute with his golden parachute, and Dodd, with his position as chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was in a position to make sure his hack friends survived the Countrywide meltdown by having Bank of America buy up Countrywide, even though we now know they couldn’t afford it. B of A was subsequently bailed out. Are you going to tell me that Dodd didn’t use his influence to push that along? Right, we can only speculate.
Dodd and Conrad were accused of accepting gifts in violation of senate ethics rules. In fact, the Countrywide hack that handled the loans testified that they knew they were getting special treatment. It didn’t matter. Of course they were cleared of any wrong doing. Look at Washington folks. It’s like Machine gun Kelly declaring that Al Capone did nothing wrong. The function of those ethics rules is to make sure senators could not be bought off.
Well, Dodd and Conrad were bailed out by their buddies in Washington. Can they be saved from angry voters? How many scandals can a guy like Dodd absorb?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the panel is dropping the investigation but I am disappointed. This just goes to show you that these people put themselves above the average American. Do as I say, not as I do. There are different rules for them.
You said it. A completely different set of rules. If I received gifts from a client and then proceeded to pull strings for them…No I would have been canned just receiving the gifts.