Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Subprime Six Feel Effects of Deflation

So I finally had a moment to sit down and read the article upon which JJV built his case for/against the so-called "Subprime Six." Now that various sites have started flogging this, let's run down the list and consider the cases individually.

Dodd - Yep, this was a no-no although it does not appear to have affected his actions in the Senate. Please present your wrist to the Ethics Committee and get out the special checkbook used to give stuff back.

Conrad - Please get in line behind Dodd.

Jackson - Got the nice deal while a private citizen. Too bad about the whole HUD thing though.

Shalala - Ditto on the private citizen thing although she was president of the U of Miami at the time of the loan - aha, corrupt lefty academia strikes again! Whew, that was close. And by the way, where are all the short jokes? It's not just cutting and pasting out here, fellas, you have to do some heavy lifting from time to time.

Holbrooke - Again, private citizen. The Serbs probably cold-called Countrywide and got the ball rolling on this one.

Johnson - Head of Fannie Mae but when you're talking multi-million-dollar properties a rate cut isn't going to lose you that much.

What I find hilarious is the hordes of free-market capitalist types finding fault with a private company acting in its economic interest (throwing a bone to rich people to gin up additional/future business). Sure, Countrywide screwed up elsewhere but my guess is that it wasn't their VIP program that sank them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great post, Mr. S. Bravo!

Thanks for the heavy lifting. As a customer in good standing at Merrill Lynch, they offered me and my spouse "preferred" rates on many mortgage/line-of-credit products, as did my previous broker, Smith Barney, a part of Citigroup. Giving good customers good or slightly lower rates is common practice. And I doubt that any of the politicians mentions demanded a reduced rate but simply got one because Countrywide was trying to court their business, a practice I am sure every mortgage lender practices, for good or bad, and both Republicans and Democrats have happily taken advantage of.