“There were a lot of time constraints and emotions going on…but people who are trying to dismantle it are wasting their time.”– Senator Dodd on Dodd-Frank.
Chris Dodd
Paul Volcker, President Obama’s special advisor on financial regulatory reform, appears to have endorsed the main bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Although details are still being worked out, Congress is moving to pass the bill by the end of the month. Continue reading »
Senator Dodd Characterizes Suggestions That Timing Of Goldman Case and The Financial Reform Bill Are Anything But A Coincidence As “Ridiculous”
By Bess Levin
And frankly, it’s insulting. Not unlike the fact that the Cliff Asness donated $71,600 to Republicans this year and $409 to the Senator from Connecticut.
Well, here’s a fun twist to Sen. Chris Dodd’s proposal to castrate the Federal Reserve: Big Ben Bernanke is set to travel to the Hill at some point after Thanksgiving for a few rounds with the gentleman from Connecticut, who heads the committee considering Bernanke’s renomination as chairman of the soon-to-be-inconsequential Fed.
Now, Dodd is saying all the right things, telling Bernanke he’s “doing a terrific job” and that his bid to give most of the Fed’s power to others is “not about individuals and personalities.” But then he turns around and says Ben’s Boys have been an “abysmal failure” when it comes to regulating banks.
One of Bernanke’s minions has already spoken out against doing anything to trim the Fed’s authority, with the Kansas City branch warning that messing with the F.R. “could lead to delays or second-guessing of supervisory recommendations and greater political interference.” And it was talking about Rep. Barney Frank’s proposals for financial regulation reform, which don’t go nearly as far as Dodd’s in cutting the Fed down to size.
It turns out that the housing bailout bill really is “exactly what Bank of America and Countrywide wanted.” A memorandum dated March 11, 2008 has surfaced, and it seems to support the idea that BofA essentially wrote the bailout section of the bill. “Almost all of BofA’s preferences are mirrored in the Dodd-Shelby legislation,” Stephen Spruiell writes.
The BofA document even offers tips on how to manipulate the public’s reaction to the bill: “We believe that any intervention by the federal government will be acceptable only if it is not perceived as a bail-out of the bond market.”
This news should hurt the bill’s chances. It has already been tainted by news that its most prominent supporter, senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd, received massive campaign donations from Bank of America executives and sweetheart loans from Countrywide. The president has to veto the bill on the grounds that it would “unfairly benefit lenders who made bad loans.”
BofA-Scripted Bank Bailout Looks Awfully Similar to Dodd-Drafted Housing Bill [The Corner]
Chris Dodd, the US senator who introduced the mortgage bailout bill this week, has received approximately $70,000 in campaign contributions from Bank of America in the last year-and-a-half, Tim Carney reports in the Washington Examiner.* The mortgage bill would allow banks such as Bank of America and mortgage lenders like Countrywide, which BofA is in the process of acquiring, to push their worst performing loans onto government agencies. It is such a give away to mortgage laden banks that it is being mocked by Republican staffers as “the Bank of America bill on steroids.”
Dodd, of course, chairs the senate’s banking committee. It may seem obvious that the banking committee chairman would receive lots of money from one of the nation’s largest banks. But it wasn’t always so. Richard Shelby, who headed the banking committee while Republicans controlled the senate, received only $7,000 from Bank of America employees during his four-year chairmanship. When the going was good, no one needed to own a senator.
But these are difficult times for banks, especially banks buying the nations largest home lender. And so Bank of America has opened up its coffers to buy a little influence on Capitol Hill.
Bank of America PAC money behind Dodd’s Countrywide loan
*Full disclosure: Blah, blah, blah. You already guessed it.
