Toward the end of this very good New York Times article on Senators reaction to finding out just how close we came to complete financial meltdown, there’s a quote from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd that I swear made my jaw drop.
“We have got to deal with the foreclosure issue,” Mr. Dodd said. “You have got to stop that hemorrhaging..If you don’t, the problem doesn’t go away. Ben Bernanke has said it over and over again. Hank Paulson recognizes it. This problem began with bad lending practices. Those are his words, not mine, and so this plan must address that or I’ll be back here in front of a bank of microphones at some point explaining the next failure.”
Well, heck, Senator, why wait? Why not step in front of the microphones right now and explain the current failure?
You can start with telling us about the more than $160,000 dollars in lobbying money you took from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then you can explain where you were in 2003 when your committee was scuttling a bill that would have stopped the worst of this mess. After that, maybe you could give us a rundown on the $775,000 in sweetheart loans you got from Countrywide Financial – a company that benefited greatly from the bad loans FNMA and FHLMC was issuing. You could start that bit of your explanation by telling us what being a “Friend of Angelo” really meant. Then you could finish by telling us about the over $70,000 in political contributions you’ve gotten from Bank of America – the company that swooped in and bought Countrywide Financial for pennies on the dollar.
Maybe if he spent an hour doing that, he wouldn’t have to worry about explaining any future failure, because he wouldn’t be a Senator anymore. That won’t happen, though. Chris Dodd is a heck of a lot more concerned with losing his job than he is about being honest or representing the taxpayers of America responsibly.
Tags: Chris Dodd, Economics, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
Dodd became Chair of the Bnaking Committee in 2006 — 18 months ago. In 2003 when the bill that “his” committee was “scuttling” was being considered the committee, as well as the house, senate and executive branch were under Republican control. Also, to imply that Dodd was the only person receiving contributions from Fannie and Freddie is disengenuous. In the 2006 election cycle, Fannie Mae was giving 53 percent of its total $1.3 million in contributions to Republicans, who controlled Congress at that time.
Finally, Dodd recieved no “sweetheart deal” – he recieved a mortgage that, if you did an ounce of research, you would see was in the ranges being offered at the time.
There’s enough blame to go around — you’re petty and unfair to try and make it all one man’s fault.
I”m not at all trying to make it one man’s fault. I have pointed at a number of people in the past couple of days. Plenty of them are in Congress because it is impossible to look at how we got here and not see that had Congress not meddled in places where it had no business at all, we would not be here.
But Chris Dodd has a lot to answer for and should be doing that instead of shaking his head and clicking his tongue.
For ten years, no one got more money from the GSEs than Chris Dodd. I did not say he was the only one getting GSE money. Clearly, if you follow the link, he was not. But he got more than anyone else. That wasn’t accidental.
And yeah, he did get a sweetheart loan. He paid less for it and had it structured to save him money. He would not have gotten that loan under those terms had he not been a “Friend of Angelo”.
[...] to order him to stay home. Of course there’s the Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum/Tweedle Dummer trio of Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, and Barney Frank about whom I’ve written already. This is not a group who takes [...]