Chris Dodd and Senator Shelby

 

There were some high moments and low moments at the Joint Economic Committee hearings. One of the low moments was provided by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, posing with studiously "knitted brow" even while he took lower than market rate interest loans from pal and Countrywide Bank CEO Angelo Mozilo. Countrywide Bank was a chief subprime lender until it went bankrupt in the current credit fraud crisis. Mozilo was a big Democratic party contributor who made millions from pushing loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back. It pays to have Congressional connections though. When Countrywide found out it had all that dead money and soured loans sitting on its balance sheet, who did it go to? Democrats like Jim Johnson, Frank Raines, and Jame Gorelick, all of whom were grateful to take the bad paper and repackage it into "attractive" commercialized debt obligations or "CDOs".

That's Alabama's Senator Shelby on the right. He asked some serious questions, without prancing around. Congress should drill down into the facts but the Chairmanperson (:)) should tell some of those people prating about all and sundry and politics as usual to just shut up.