following the paper trail

I'm definitely not the most economically educated person out there and even I could have told you the bail out wouldn't do a whole lot of anything for awhile. I'm not saying it was or was not a good idea (I would have voted no, but that's because I'm a cynical gal and it torks me that I'm paying for that type of thing).

Any rate, via Fatale Abstraction, I followed a link to yet another article (this one from across the pond no less) ... as I read the thing one paragraph jumped out at me as I'd read something similar in several different places. (I dutifully highlighted the pertinent sentence for you if you don't feel like going to read the entire article. I'm just saying... ... ...

"It's true that the improvident lending was not initiated by Fannie and Freddie: their role in this was to buy these loans and sell them on – but then the music stopped. Cynical students of the American political system will note that the biggest recipient of campaign contributions from the munificent duo of Fannie and Freddie over the past 20 years was one Christopher Dodd, Democrat Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee.

Rather surprisingly, given that he has only been in the Senate for four of those years, the second biggest beneficiary was Barack Obama. In August the Washington Post reported that Obama's presidential campaign team had sought the advice of Franklin Raines "on mortgage and housing policy matters". Perhaps Mr Obama's team just wanted to know where all the bodies are buried – there are rather a lot of them. "