Posted on 06/13/2008 7:54:09 PM PDT by mdittmar
When Senator Kent Conrad wanted a mortgage for his beach house,he turned to a Washington insider, Johnson, former head of Fannie Mae, the government mortgage giant, who then put the senator in touch with Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.
The ensuing telephone call between Mr. Conrad of North Dakota and Mr. Mozilo led to two Countrywide mortgages, including one in which the company bent its rules to give Mr. Conrad a loan.
Those loans are among a number of Countrywide mortgages at the center of an examination into whether a number of top politicians in Washington — members of Congress, the cabinet and celebrated advisers — received favorable deals from a company whose lax lending standards are at the center of the subprime mortgage crisis.
This week, Mr. Johnson, whom Mr. Conrad turned to for help, was forced to step down as head of Senator Barack Obama’s vice-presidential selection committee in part over Countrywide home mortgage loans that Mr. Johnson had received at favorable rates.
At the center of the scrutiny are the activities of Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program, also known as the “Friend of Angelo” program, in which Countrywide appeared to bend its lending rules for prominent people. Now, many of those receiving Countrywide home mortgages say they were not aware the company might have been working behind the scenes to give them favorable loan terms.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a leader in the effort to help homeowners caught in the subprime mortgage crisis, denied on Friday that he received preferential treatment for his two Countrywide loans.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Dudd, Conrad and the other Senators are trying to BURY us in DEBT of a HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS??????? It’s time for PITCHFORKS and MARCHES!!!!!
(from Senator Conrad, one of the most liberal and vicious members of the House of Lords)
"I felt I was getting special treatment, but not that I was getting a special rate."
Leni
Nothing will actually be done about it, but it's important to note.
That was, no doubt, an almost insurmountable problem. Apparently, in Delaware they have no banks on every corner, no Yellow Pages, and the internet must have been down so searching "mortgage" on Google would not have brought up 230,000,000 hits.
After the phone call with Mr. Mozilo, a Countrywide loan officer called Mr. Conrad.
So just like everybody else, Conrad personally calls the President of this huge mortgage company and gets personal service and major waivers of company policy and specially reduced rates directed by the CEO himself. What's wrong with that? Golly. It's not like he was calling Jack Abramoff for financial favors or something.
Where's the FBI? (weekend of 6/14) [more on sweetheart Loans to prominent Democrats!]
Headline of course does not include ‘Democrat’ senator. You have to read through the story to get that. Filthy Rats and Rinos.
Note the use of the passive voice when the supposed crime is done by Democrats.
...especially considering his Syrian fiend, Rezco, and his sweetheart real estate deal.
TERM LIMITS!!!!!
I hope Drudge and Rush will hammer this for weeks...
“Okay. Explain how you, yes you, can change this....”
could always print out the article....take it by hand to every little local daily/weekly rag, radio station in your neck of the woods.....
IMHO, this, in fact should precipitate a Washington “crisis”...a system so broke it needs citizen intervention.
Agreed. A third party to attract "non-Rat" votes would only divide the "non-Rat" votes.
The only solution that will work is to rid the Republicans of the RINOs. Anything else will just guarantee that the Rats win and protect their criminal members.
We need another Reagan for President and no RINOs in the House and Senate.
I don’t know if Jackson is a Demoncrat, but I can tell you that he is Black.
He is, if the only other choice is Barack Obama.
bump
bump
When James A. Johnson walked out of his office as chief executive at Fannie Mae for the last time, in December 1998, the longtime Democratic Party operative and investment banker could look back at his nearly decade-long tenure at the helm knowing the company had lived up to his promises of double-digit earnings growth. The value of its assets had also tripled, and its share price had risen sevenfold.
"Without good numbers, nothing else can get done," he told The Post in 1998.
Good numbers kept Wall Street happy. They paid the light bills for more than 50 partnership offices that represented Fannie Mae around the country. And they made top executives multimillionaires. Johnson received $21 million in his last year as chief executive and a consulting contract worth $600,000 a year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301751.html
I’m pretty sure that Jackson was not a holdover. If memory serves me right, he was only in as head of HUD for about 2 yrs. in this second term.
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