Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said he’s not a target in a Justice Department [investigation] of Countrywide Financial.
NBC News recently reported that the FBI is investigating Countrywide’s VIP program – which gave special mortgage deals to government officials.
Conrad was among those officials who received a mortgage.
The senator told WDAY Radio News that neither he nor his office have been contracted by federal investigators.
The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating Conrad’s relationship with Countrywide, and Conrad has denied he ever received preferential treatment.
The other Democrat on the chopping block here is Senator Chris Dodd (D-Bailout Package) - but there are others, and one of the first tests of the Obama Justice Department will be on whether or not they are prepared to see a fairly large number of Democrats brought down by this scandal. My bet is that its a test Obama will fail miserably, given the Democrats’ penchant for simply not caring about corruption unless they can tag a Republican with it at election time.
What the Congressional supporters of this bill fail to comprehend is that this bill bails out Wall Street AND Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the fiscally irresponsible unpopular President.
Tell me again why the House GOP should support this bill? And I write this as someone who supports its passage. If it’s that obvious to me, how freaking blind are Congressional leaders?
Here’s a 10 minute video that is worth every second to watch:
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Senator Bunning injects a note of reality into the debate:
I also strongly disagree with the Senators who have come to the floor and declared that this crisis is a failure of the free markets. No, the root of this crisis is a failure of government. It comes from a failure of regulation and, most importantly, monetary policy. In the long term we certainly need to update our financial regulation to reflect the realities of our modern economy, but it is just plain wrong to blame failures of our regulations and regulators on the markets…
…I want to mention a few more failures of government that directly contributed to this mess. Federal regulations require the use of ratings from rating agencies that have proven to be wrong on the biggest financial failures of the last decade. The Community Reinvestment Act forces banks to make loans they would not otherwise make based on the credit history of the borrower. The Securities and Exchange Commission under former Chairman Donaldson failed to establish meaningful oversight and leverage restrictions for investment banks.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used the implied backing of the government to grow so large that their takeover by the government effectively doubled the national debt. And they were pushed by their executives and the Clinton Administration to loosen their lending standards and write the loans that drove the companies to the point of being bailed out by the taxpayers.
Finally, the same individuals who have come to this building to ask for the latest bailout set the stage for the very panic they are using to justify the bailout.
