Apparently, no one noticed Eliot Spitzer's article in the Washington Post ironically published the morning of one of his trysts with his $4,000 an hour hooker. Everyone should read it if for no other reason than it is Spitzer's Last Hurrah.
There, Spitzer describes how George Bush personally contributed to the meltdown in the financial sector by interfering in the states' enforcement of anti-predatory lending laws. Spitzer referred in the article to litigation in which he participated as the NY attorney general, one part of which was against Ameriquest. The Ameriquest settlement is located here.
The Settlement Document details the misdeeds of Ameriquest by detailing what Ameriquest was agreeing to no longer do. The discussion of fraudulent appraisals starts at page 22 and continues through page 29. I think the section on fraudulent appraisals is particularly important because it was through the use of these false appraisals that Ameriquest tricked tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people into taking out loans they had no business participating in.
In many states, including New York, when a loan officer uses a false appraisal to make a borrower think his or her property is worth more than it is and thereby make a loan so as to extract exorbitant fees, it is larceny by false pretenses. Some of you might know this crime as theft. It is quite reasonable to conclude that Ameriquest committed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of thefts using false appraisals. It sounds ludicrous now, but one should remember the housing bubble was in full swing and people were predisposed to think the values of their homes were increasing. And bubbles are funny things. We should know. Ameriquest just nudged the bubble along, extracting thousands of dollars in fees each time.
Now, here is the kicker. Ameriquest was owned by Roland Arnall. Arnall was one of Bush's biggest fundraisers. See the wiki. What is known publicly is almost certainly dwarfed by what has been kept hidden. After all, this is the Bush/Rove pattern - erase, burn, shred, and deny. I also suspect this is actually what has put that pained look on Bush's face the last month or so, as he has frantically spent $400 billion of our money propping up the financial sector. He even made Paulson work over the weekend.
Someone recently said, "Now we have two points, and two points make a line." I forget who said that. But here, the line points at George Bush, which brings me back to the title of this diary.
It looks from here like Bush caused the collapse of the financial sector so that his criminal friends could continue their criminal enterprises, so that he and his party could get a cut. If this is what happened, how is this not like what the Mafia does? If there is some other way to see this, I would like to know what it is.
Lastly, that arrogant fool Spitzer sure came down hard and fast, didn't he? Ouch!
Update: here is the link to the WP - http://www.washingtonpost.com/...