More Democrat cronies who received special Countrywide loan deals
Well, well, well. I guess we won’t be hearing Barack Obama fuming about these cozy home loan deals, either. Portfolio has the scoop on special Countrywide loan arrangements received by Democrat Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Let me repeat that, because it won’t get blaring front-page or nightly news treatment. The recipients were Democrat Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad.
As you know, Obama’s VP vetter Jim Johnson stepped down from the campaign search committee over similar arrangements with Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozila.
Details:
Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members, and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial through a little-known program that waived points, lender fees, and company borrowing rules for prominent people.
Senators Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, refinanced properties through Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program in 2003 and 2004, according to company documents and emails and a former employee familiar with the loans.
Other participants in the V.I.P. program included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Jackson was deputy H.U.D. secretary in the Bush administration when he received the loans in 2003. Shalala, who received two loans in 2002, had by then left the Clinton administration for her current position as president of the University of Miami. She is scheduled to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom on June 19.
Who in the most ethical Congress will push for an investigation? Show of hands?
According to company documents and emails, the V.I.P.’s received better deals than those available to ordinary borrowers. Home-loan customers can reduce their interest rates by paying “points”—one point equals 1 percent of the loan’s value. For V.I.P.’s, Countrywide often waived at least half a point and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing and document preparation. If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free “float-down” to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.’s who bought or refinanced investment properties were often given the lower interest rate associated with primary residences.
Unless they asked, V.I.P. borrowers weren’t told exactly how many points were waived on their loans, the former employee says. However, they were typically assured that they were receiving the “Friends of Angelo” discount, and that Mozilo had personally priced their loans.
The V.I.P. loans to public officials in a position to advance Countrywide’s interests raise legal and ethical questions. Countrywide’s ethics code bars directors, officers and employees from “improperly influencing the decisions of government employees or contractors by offering or promising to give money, gifts, loans, rewards, favors, or anything else of value.” Federal employees are prohibited from receiving gifts offered because of their official position, including loans on terms not generally available to the public. Senate rules prohibit members from knowingly receiving gifts worth $100 or more in a calendar year from private entities that, like Countrywide, employ a registered lobbyist.
Portfolio reports that Dodd received two discounted loans in 2003 through Countrywide’s V.I.P. program. “He borrowed $506,000 to refinance his Washington townhouse, and $275,042 to refinance a home in East Haddam, Connecticut.” Conrad “borrowed $1.07 million in 2004 to refinance his vacation home with a balcony and wraparound porch in Bethany Beach, Delaware, a block from the ocean.”
Privileges, privileges:
Mozilo instructed a subordinate to “take off 1 point,” or $10,700, according to a March 17, 2004, email.
Later that year, Conrad refinanced an eight-unit apartment building that he and his brothers owned in Bismarck, North Dakota. According to the former employee, the loan violated Countrywide’s normal policy of providing loans for buildings of four units or fewer. In an April 23, 2004, email, Mozilo encouraged an employee to “make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a senator.”
The NYPost has more.
Likelihood of congressional investigations and indignant grilling of Sens. Conrad and Dodd: Same as likelihood of congressional probe of deadbeat Democrat defaulter Rep. Laura Richardson.
Ready for Sen. Conrad’s lame excuse?
He didn’t know!
“I have no way of knowing how they categorized my loan…I never asked for, expected or was aware of any special treatment.”
This dunce is chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee–and he didn’t know the own terms of his loan.
But, you know, this is really all just a distraction that is not helping Sen. Conrad and Dodd’s kids…
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The most ethical congress ever strikes again.
Now,now. I’m pretty sure when they say most ethical Congress ever. They meant most “ethical” (wink wink) Congress ever.
Too bad, though, that the Republican Party isn’t offering us any viable alternatives this year.
We still only have a choice between bad and worse.
On June 13th, 2008 at 10:34 am, taylork said:
Now,now. I’m pretty sure when they say most ethical Congress ever. They meant most “ethical” (
wink winkbink, blink, blinkty-blink, blink, blinkerony, blink) Congress ever.Had to.
Pretty sure none of them can even balance a check book so this is not surprise.
It’s not to late to stop the process to award shalala the Medal of Freedom…
And what’s with conrad buying a vacation home in Delaware? You’d think he’d want to spend more time with his constituents back in North Dakota than going to the beach…
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
The behavior is part of the policy in Congress of “don’t ask, don’t tell”
This is a glaring conflict of interest, and violates both the Senate and the Countrywide corporate ethics standards.
I would imagine neither of these “distinguished gentlemen” disclosed these obvious financial gifts on their annual financial disclosure forms like the rest of us working schmucks are required to do.
Senate Banking and Budget Committes, huh? Yeah, no conflict of interest there. I guess they were following FDRs logic of making Joe Kennedy the first chairman of the SEC. It takes a crook to catch a crook.
This is typical. Why does anyone not expect that corrupt politicians will get sweetheart deals or use their status to get something for nothing?
This ethical congress really rubs my bum raw.
Criminals and liars, all of them.
Well, Hmmm….let’s see…..I had to sign my loan documents in escrow, which showed the fees and interest rate I was paying, and I know what I was told these would be…and I knew that I had negotiated a good rate & lower points based upon my good credit, so what…didn’t he sign for his own loan?
With such ignorance, he’s a shoe-in for strong VP consideration. They’d be quite a pair, he and BHO, wouldn’t they?
Unbeleivable. Our politicians are acting more and more like the ruling class of the old soviet regime. My wife is from Czechoslovakia (now Czech and Slovak Republics) and she and her family describe how the the party leaders lived in very lavish homes. They also did things like close the public pool to the public each week so the leaders could swim with their families. This is exactly the way our ELELCTED leaders are acting now. They live a life of privalege and do not live by the same rules we are exepcted to (the same rules they enact for us). Looks like the belief that democracy can not survive as a permanent form of government is accurate.
We’re Screwed
‘08in general.We need a complete overhaul of the system.
On 11 July, Jacques Necker suggested that the royal family live according to a budget to conserve funds. Three days later, the Bastille was stormed.
Other participants in the V.I.P. program included former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.
Guess the medal of freedom was the tchotchke. Most of us get pens with the lender’s logo on it.
And it’s also too bad, tre, that you want to turn a post about democrats getting special treatment by Countrywide … into the usual McCain bashing spectacle.
Laws only apply to us “little people”.
Now stop clinging to your guns and Bibles and shut-up, or we will raise your taxes even higher.
A) Ethics only apply to Conservatives and gun tottin’ Southerners
B)Ethics is subjective… Whose ethics are we trying to impose here.
/Sarc off
Can I still get one of those loans? I’ll become a liberal? Please?
You mean they are not planning to raise taxes yet?
Perhaps we Knuckle Dragging Right Wing Gun Totin God Clinging Hate Mongering Types are forgetting the First Rule of Power:
Special Privilege for Special People.
You get really good rates on home loans from Chicago power brokers that way.
Ethical my a$$! Damned crooks – the lot of ‘em!
SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR V I P sss…
I wonder what other companies offer the same–that the VIPssss do not know about!
P L E A S E give me a break OH noble Senator Conrad and et al.
Michelle,
Preferential loans was but one leg of the Countrywide political octopus. You may want to check our what Countrywide, Mozillo and his executives contributed to the officials in questions, as well as the DNC. Also, Countrywide was perhaps the largest single source of funds for MORPAC, the mortgage industry’s political action committeee. I am sure you will find MORPAC’s involvement interesting.
Of course, information regarding individual fundraisers held by Countrywide execs may be a little more difficult to track, but those activities are also enlightening.
I wish I could say I was shocked by this unethical behavior, but it appears to be the status quo for our Congress critters.
#11 wearyC–you are sooo right on
The Founders of this great country knew the tyranny of having aristocracy or democracy-thus a REPUBLIC.
Their gauntlet and war motto :
WE will have NO king but KING JESUS!!
That is why I shudder every time some idiot equates the Kennedys to Camelot!
No, corruption in the American government?, plleeease. I’m telling ya it’s time for a tea party.
Don’t hold your breath!
The Democrats will never show fiscal restraint or ethical behavior in legislative procedure, for to do so would dry up the flow of money from excess government spending that always manages to find its way back into the greedy hands and back pockets of Democrat representatives.
To be fair, some Republicans do take advantage of their positions to line their own pockets, but not to the grand extent and out-right egregious degree that Democrats do; they’re pros at it!
Is this the hope and change Obama is promising to bring us? More Democrat dunces who can’t even manage their own money running committees that manage our money?
Good point, Jim M.
Dodd is, as you may or may not know, on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee.
Answers may be found here:
open secrets.org
campaign contribution search didn’t come up with much:
link
Meanwhile, the DNC just sort of whistles past the graveyard again. They know its going on, but refuse to confront it. Take care of your own camp before calling all Repubs “corrupt”. Term limits anyone ?
Enough with the damn Dante quote. It gives me the creeps, plus it reminds me of the Democrat tortures to come.
From the LA Times blog
Countrywide’s political donations examined
Not long ago, Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and his Countrywide Finance Corp. were riding high and friends of many politicians. That was before serious problems in the nation’s home mortgage industry and the new investigation by securities regulators into the timing of Mozilo’s sale of $145 million in Countrywide stock in the months before those shares went into a nosedive.
Before all this unpleasantness, Mozilo and his company were good for almost $2 million in federal and California campaign donations dating back to 2000, according to research by Dan Morain, The Times’ resident expert in campaign finances.
Countrywide’s biggest spending has not been countrywide; it’s been concentrated in California, where contribution caps are much less strict: they spent $450,000 for a failed measure to create open primaries and $250,000 on efforts to limit shareholder lawsuits; and gave $150,000 to the California Republican Party and $83,000 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But Mozilo has also played nationally. In the presidential race, Mozilo and a handful of Countrywide executives gave $13,950 to Republican presidential front-runner Rudolph Giuliani, and just to be safe $6,600 to one of his main foes, Mitt Romney.
On the Democratic side, Mozilo himself gave $2,300 to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Countrywide’s political action committee gave $10,000 to Sen. Christopher Dodd’s campaign. Now, why Dodd, you may ask? He’s from far away in that cute little place called Connecticut.
Ah, well, when he’s not running for president and thanks to the new Democratic majorities in Congress, Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which has regulatory authority over home lenders such as, well, will you look at that, companies like Countrywide.
–Andrew Malcolm
I vote, yea!
khan,
Take a look at what other Countrywide execs like Dave Sambol gace as well. My understanding is that Angelo was more than a little demanding when it came to his execs being “team players” in the political contribution arena.
Heh. It was interesting to go to that link and look at all the banking and financing groups that are kicking money into campaigns, even Nancy “The Most Ethcial Congress” Pelosi.
If we do not enact term limits and enact them fast we are going to be in a world of hurt with these idiots WE continue to vote into office!
I am sure that every member of congress and the senate is getting some kind of kick back!
FIRE THEM ALL!
The slippery slide has become an avalanche–hasn’t it?!
LESSER OF TWO EVILS –AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN :
A-N-Y-O-N-E !!!!!???????????????
Okay. I would love to see term limits come about. But, pray tell, how are they going to get enacted. Do you foresee those self-serving slugs in Congress cutting their own throats and their high-end welfare at the taxpayers’ expense? Uhhh? No.
LOL. That would be like bailing the water out of the Titanic with a spoon. That sinking ship (term limits) is sitting on the bottom of probabilities.
Nay.
Term limits? End of congress giving themselves raises? Independent ethics committees? Ain’t gonna happen without a grass-roots uprising.
Repeal the 17th amendment, and term limits will take care of itself.
A Friday Haiku:
Ethics are for fools
Term limits are for suckers
Show me the money
termlimits.org
termlimits.com
Cato Institute Policy Analysis 1995
This discussion has gone on for awhile, time to stop talking and act.
Damn it, you all know it’s Bush’s Fault. Chris Dud was set up.
sarc/
YES!!! Finally this clown gets exposed. The eight unit apt building? He claims that as his “personal residence” in North Dakota, deluding the people of ND into thinking he actually LIVES in the state he represents. And the $1M beach property that got preferential treatment? No Ocean property in ND; Senator, you just got exposed for the hypocrite you are.
I’m headed up to ND for the Father’s Day weekend, we’ll see how the ND media tries to spin this one on the Senator they love.
I believe we are going to see one within the next couple of years and it ain’t going to be pretty.
Every time someone mentions term limits I am reminded that we vote for these people every few years. If we don’t vote them out, we get what we deserve. The excuse that it must be some other Congress member’s fault no longer flies. We have been shafted by our own elected officials, but we have the means to rid ourselves of them.
I do, however, recognize that there is an equal and opposite number on the other side with their hands out and their fingers on the incumbent button. Perhaps we have to get rid of them first. Hmmm…
Hate to interrupt the orgasmic hate-fest we’re having here, but it doesn’t appear that this program is either illegal or all that unusual. Banks and lenders do give better rates and terms to better customers. What’s new about that?
And on the subtheme, term limits are great, as long as they only apply to politicians I disagree with. I wouldn’t want to kick some of our few good conservatives out on a technicality. And if you really, really don’t like your reps, you can always run against them. I never see anybody talking about the other side of the term limits issue – you might get somebody a lot worse – like the current presidential race, for instance.
Conservatives around me keep patting me on the head saying, settle down, you can’t do anything about it so don’t worry about it. That makes me almost as angry as the corruption we keep hearing about. Not worrying about it is THE BIGGEST PART OF THE PROBLEM.
How do we band together to start making a statement if not a difference. Just talking here is good, it relieves some of the stress, but how does one start a true grass-roots movement.
I want America back in the hands of intelligent, thinking people.
I’m not talking conspiracy stuff, I want open and up front conservative voices to be heard. We at least need a voice in the process.
Chris Dodd is the most sanctimonious senator of them all. If his father was not a US Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd would be doing house closings in some small Ct. town. He has been chairman of the Senate Banking Committee or ranking member and never once divulged his sweetheart loans from Countrywide. Rest assured that the NY Times will not touch this story and neither CNN or MSNBC will mention Dodd’s favored treatment or his blatant conflict of interest. Chris Dodd became a certified media good guy way back in the 1980s when he supported the Sandinistas.
Funny, they don’t mention this in the brochure…
.
…and you know they’re good for it…
(wink, wink,nudge, nudge)
Somehow this makes perfect sense.
Rank does have it’s priviledge, and so often is the case where what’s given to priviledge is usually pretty rank.
We just need a lightworker to get us through these dark times…
On June 13th, 2008 at 11:31 am, Christian Soldier said:
For the love cf God, CS, would you PLEASE stop spamming the discussions like this and give it a rest?
Lesser of two evils, yeah we get it… enough already.
Your attention-seeking behavior has become very tiresome… it clutters up the intelligent discussion here, and it makes Ms. Malkin look like an idiot. If you can’t find it within yourself to give the rest of us a break from your endless tirades, then do it for the hostess.
I swear to God, what is it with conservatives on the far-right who feel like they can’t make a point without SCREAMING?!!!!!!
Its’ infantile, and its’ also rude as hell.
With ethics like these . . .
Just two? Welfare for the Senators? Johnson ’stepped down’? Was he ‘working’ for the Obama campaign/search committee? What was he searching for? Integrity? He apparently has not encountered that quality.
Nancy Pelosi on GOP tax cuts:
Nancy Pelosi on honesty, oppeness, integrity and ethics:
Nancy Pelosi on “economic fairness”:
Nancy Pelosi on Democrat leadership:
Drain your own swamp, you hypocrite.
What else do you expect from a typical anti McCain zealot?
Barry and his buddies in the Main Stream Media will be the last to “get it’, but their shtick is so lame that they have become laughing stocks.
Their desperation is amusing.
Morons.
Hey, something’s missing here….oh yeah, where is lgm justifying bad behavior by pointing out bad behavior across the aisle?
“I have no way of knowing how they categorized my loan…I never asked for, expected or was aware of any special treatment.”
And exactly WHY did he refinance then? What a load of bullsh*t.
I spit in the face of these corrupt politicians. Pigs.
This should be a Federal crime.
Michelle, isn’t this simply a distraction from Obama’s pants?
ROFLMAO
Yes, North Dakota has a beach – it looks like Delaware to the uninitiated…
My email today. Now for my blood pressure medicine.
I am so sick of politicians & they’re “special” deals.
Wow khan….. you got a pen? How did I not get one?…. and MNgirl? wave at the airport in Fargo as you drive by… my son is there in between training missions before going overseas( you know where)…… and lastly Irish Rose, I have a problem with McCain , .. but the “lesser of two evils” meme IS getting a bit irritating….lol
Maybe the New York Times won’t touch this story, but the Hartford Courant did.
Link to Article
Guess old Chris made a few enemies in Connecticut.
Link to Bismarck Article
….And a light rap on the wrist for Kent (The article in the Bismarck Tribune puts most of the blame on Dodd)
Oh, whatever…
Corruption like you’ll never know,
will fill no pages,
when the PRESSSident
and oBORGama run the show.
Assimilate now & for the ages…
Off Topic
Here is an average guys opinion on the recent supreme court case. It’s 15 min long
http://thecitytroll.blogspot.com/2008/06/trollcast.html
Re-he-heally! So, Senator, why not use an “established” financial institution like, oh, I don’t know, say, B of A, or Wells Fargo? To have us believe HE or his contacts didn’t shop around for a “great deal” just shows how stupid or gullible our elected officials REALLY think we are!
Will we make them pay for this? Why, yes…yes we will!
They will be re-elected in perpetuity because they have “done such good for our state!”
This does not help Michelle Obama’s kids, nor her baby’s daddy.
In business and our personal lives we are not just encuraged but strictly required by our company to avoid all situations that may give anyone an indication of impropriety. This is simple…protect your image that you have spent years building. I guess congress doesn’t think they have an image that is worth protecting. They just act like kings accountable to no one!
“It’s GOOD to be the king!” – Mel Brooks in History of the World, Part 1.
FIRE’EM, FIRE’EM ALL!!!! EVERYONE IN DC NEEDS THEIR PINK SLIP IN THEIR NEXT ELECTION CYCLE!!!! NO EXCUESSSSSSSSS NO MORE TALK JUST FIRE THEM ALLLLLLLLL!!!!
Remember the old Monty Python skit, Eric Idle telling some gossip, and saying “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what i mean, know what i mean”?
This is just Monty Python in real life.