The sub-prime mortgage fiasco has helped to detail the US economy. Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of New York State with a penchant for expensive call-girls. He was one guy who saw the economic train-wreck coming. One guy who tried to speak out before it was too late. Was it mere bad luck that he got caught with the call-girl? Greg Palast doesn't think so:Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’. . . when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.
But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.
. . . It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:
“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”
. . . Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer – rarely done in these cases - was made at the ‘discretion’ of Bush’s Justice Department.
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Greg Palast, h/t Ten Percent
I find it amazing that no matter what a Democrat does in office, the Bush-haters can always find a way to make Bush responsible for it. Was it Bush that gave Spitzer the appetite for having sex with girls young enough to be his daughter? Was it Bush that made Spitzer spend over $80K on whores while he was becoming famous for prosecuting prostitution rings? Was it Bush that forced Spitzer to hide this spending such that it looked like he was taking bribes?
ReplyDeleteSpitzer is a hypocrite with a disgusting habit who apparently thought he was above the law. Nothing that the administration has done will change that.