Posted on 05/06/2009 9:41:44 AM PDT by M. Dodge Thomas
The top 25 US originators of subprime mortgages – the risky assets that sparked the global financial crisis – spent almost $370m in Washington over the past decade on lobbying and campaign donations as they tried to ward off tighter regulation of their industry, an investigation has shown...
Most of the top 25 originators, most of which are now bankrupt, were either owned or heavily financed by the nation’s largest banks, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan and Bank of America. Together, they originated $1,000bn in subprime mortgages in 2005-07 – almost three-quarters of the total...
The banks, which have received the vast bulk of the $700bn in troubled asset relief funds issued since last October, also supported the lobbying effort to prevent tighter regulation of the subprime market.
Nine of the top 10 lenders were in California, one of the states badly affected by the housing crisis that emerged after a surge in lending to riskier, or subprime, borrowers, many of whom were forced to foreclose.
At least eight of the top 10 were backed at least in part by banks that have received bank bail-out money...
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
$370,000,000 / 10 years = $37,000,000 = 69,159/member/year
Surprise, surprise, surprise! NOT!
In ten seconds some fool will post it was the CRAs fault, they made the banks and home builders and realtors lobby to steal money!!
WTH are you saying, the CRAs were pure social extortion.
If that $370M number is anywhere near correct, one thing it does is put things in perspective: that sort of effort would dwarf that of all the other players combined - for example the total lobbying budget of the the National Assn of Realtors - which is considered a Washington Powerhouse - is $5.7 million/year.
Why don’t you ask jorge bush he was a big promoter.
Uh... I think you may want to check you math there....
“Lobbying” is the natural byproduct of regulation in a democratic society - the right to petition the government.
The concern over lobbying and lobbyists is entirely misplaced - it belongs on the public officials.
The natural role of “lobbying” is nothing more than an organized mode of what each citizen has a right to do individually - give your view of legislation, or regulations under consideration, to those in government; which lobbyists do representing groups that have a common interest.
If the particular goal they seek is wrong, or potentially damaging to good order, or an attempt to suborn fraud, they are unable to achieve that goal without naive, or ignorant, or venal or corrupt persons in elective office.
Notice that the source of the FT report is the leftist “Center for Public Integrity” and notice that the basis of the report is to put attention on the lobbying effort and not the individuals in Congress who may have partied with that effort; which, if we are looking at the Wall Street Banks, we already know that Obama, as Senator, was one of their top ten political campaign donation recipients.
Not really. Those are big, big organizations with lots of highly paid employees. Even before Obama their business was driven, for good or ill, by whatever shenanigans Washington came up with next. They were leaned on heavily by current and prospective officeholders in their districts and beyond. And an officeholder shunned could be a dangerous, retaliatory ‘public servant’ indeed.
Exactly. And a bank would be crazy not to pay tribute.
Even smaller companies, like law firms, will press for their most Republican, if primarily Democrat, partner or executive to pony up for the opposition (does Hank Paulson come to mind?) in order to keep things greased on both sides of the aisle.
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