Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

 Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime
    By Eliot Spitzer
http://www.truthout.org/doc s_2006/021408C.shtml

As one can see,  like the "signing statements" The Bush Administration used to negate the powers of Congress,  so too were the various government agencies using their own equivalent versions of signing statements to negate,  either their own missions,  or the missions of state or local agencies seeking to fill the void.

  Now here is a window into the "crime" part of it all:

26 indicted on mortgage scheme
http://money.cnn.com/2007/0 7/10/real_estate/subprime_f raud/index.htm

Where you'll note that it is not the borrowers who committed fraud...  How could they?  They merely were seeking loans,  loans that should have been denied.  So then,  the real question becomes: "How did these loans make it past the banks internal controls?"  And that is exactly what the FBI and many State Attorney Generals have begun to investigate.

 You see,  once someone develops a "connection" inside a bank,  they can waive the rules and accept any loan that comes to their desk.  Thus paving the way for unscrupulous people, to use "straw" buyers or sellers,  falsify documents and
thereby pocket the banks money.  Leaving behind a new owner who can't carry the loan (they've discovered that homeless, drug dealers and ex convicts were used on one or the other side of a deal,  so that the real crook(s) could walk away with bank funds).

 Hopefully there's enough here to pique your curiosity enough to spend some time reading into this particular Republican lead Government failure.

Obwon2