Kanjorski a major lobbyist to save the financial industry billions

Pocono Record/WSJ ^ | 6/8/09 | Susan Pulliam and Tom McGinty

[Born Conservative]

WASHINGTON — Congressman Paul Kanjorski is among the largest beneficiaries of a lobbying effort by the financial industry aimed at changing an accounting rule that will save Wall Street billions of dollars in losses from mortgage securities.

Kanjorski, D-11, whose district includes Monroe County, received $18,500 early this year from a coalition of lobbyists representing 31 financial firms and trade groups who succeeded in having the accounting rule changed in April.

Kanjorski heads the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets, insurance and government-sponsored enterprises, which pressed for the accounting change. The Wall Street lobby's contribution to Kanjorski was the second-highest total among committee members, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Over the past two years, Kanjorski received $704,000 in contributions from banking and insurance firms, the third-highest total among members of Congress, according to the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics.

At issue for the financial industry was how to value mortgage securities after the bottom fell out of the market last fall. The rules, as set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, required banks, securities firms and insurers to use market prices to help assign values to mortgage securities and other assets that don't trade on exchanges — to "mark to market."

Wall Street was content with mark-to-market accounting as long the market was going up. But with the meltdown, these accounting rules have forced the industry to report billions of dollars in losses from mortgage securities.

[Born Conservative]

Kanjorski is a career Dem politician, and is known for his C Span appearance where he told of a $550 Billion draw down on money market accounts last September.

[SJSAMPLE]

It wasn’t only DemocRATS that wanted the “mark to market” rules change.

Even over at FNBC and FoxNews, the preferred pundits and on-call “experts” wanted this change.

[Ikemeister]

If I’m not mistaken, his constituents had a chance to replace him with Lou Barletta last election, but Lou lost by a slim margin.

[gussiefinknottle]

Kanjorski looks and sounds like a real thug.

[Bokababe]

"Kanjorski looks and sounds like a real thug."

Kanjorski is more of a corrupt good-ole-boy than "a thug". He steals from the big government trough, but not at gunpoint like the Chicago Dem crowd.

[Buckeye McFrog]

guess this is why Jim Quinn is suddenly cranking up the heat on him to appear on the Quinn and Rose show.

[Born Conservative]

IIRC, the margin of victory was 3% or so. Had Monroe County (Pocono region) not been for Kanjorski so heavily, Lou would be in Congress. There are hints that Lou may run again next year. I hope he does.

[Born Conservative]

Kanjorski ping

[HighlyOpinionated]

This can be used as an example of why the 17th Amendment MUST be repealed and the Senators must be chosen according to the US Constitution Article 1, Section 3, as the Founding Fathers wrote and as the USofA followed until 1913, the year of the Progressives and Woodrow Wilson.