7.30.2009

Friends of Angelo's records all "packed and ready to go"

Update on Friends of Angelo (the sweetheart VIP mortgage deals that average folk like you and I cannot get!!)

Comment: No surprise here:

Democrat resists subpoenaing VIP mortgage records

Excerpt:

House Democrats have declined to subpoena available records that might reveal whether other members of Congress got discounted VIP mortgages from subprime lender Countrywide Financial Corp. similar to the sweetheart deals given Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad.

Republicans say they are willing to risk that the records now held by Bank of America may show that GOP lawmakers were also "friends of Angelo" who got preferential terms on personal mortgages at the behest of then-Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo.

Countrywide, after losing billions of dollars on defaulted subprime loans that triggered last year's financial crisis and the consequent recession, was taken over by Bank of America a year ago.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he has other work to do on the causes of and fixes for the financial crisis and will not interfere with other investigations of the VIP loans.

Towns' committee in recent months has focused on how much pressure the Federal Reserve and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put on Bank of America to take over brokerage giant Merrill Lynch, another financial company with losses in the billions of dollars.

The senior Republican on Towns' committee, California Rep. Darrell Issa, has been trying for months to get Towns to subpoena Bank of America for Countrywide's records. He said in an interview with The Associated Press that he asked Towns again this week to issue the subpoena.

Any subpoena must be issued by the committee's chairman. But because Democrats control Congress, there are no Republican committee chairmen. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said through a spokesman Thursday that neither she nor her staff discussed the subpoena with Towns.

Daniel Frahm, a Bank of America spokesman, said the bank is ready to turn over the Countrywide VIP documents if it receives a subpoena. The bank's lawyer sent Issa the same message in a June letter.

"They have it packed and ready to go," Issa said in the interview.


Comment: Records won't be sought because will embarrass Dems!

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