McHenry Wants to Investigate Why the Bush Admin. Didn't Bail Out Wachovia

Congressional Oompa Loompa Patrick McHenry of the NC-10 has been appointed chair of a (self-) important Congressional subcommittee to investigate the government's bank bailout, which happened, O my brethren, during the last gasps of the Bush administration.

One of the top priorities for investigation, McHenry sez, is why the Bush administration did NOT bail out Wachovia too.

McHenry's not about to lift the scummy skirts on the Bush administration's decision to give all the money to the banks. No, he wants to know why in the hell they didn't give MORE money to the banks, particularly one located in Charlotte.

Another top priority for McHenry is to "re-examine" the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, which imposed strict new rules on the banks and which McHenry happily voted against. According to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, two of McHenry's biggest donors are the political action committees of Bank of America and the American Bankers Association.

Evidently, this is what the Tea Party meant when they screamed about the bailouts -- give Wachovia some of that loot too and don't make the banks follows any rules.

Generous

Even as Wachovia, the fourth-largest bank in the country, was announcing some $9 billion in losses and was cutting over 11,000 jobs and turning down most loan requests, it was also lending the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $8 million to try to save GOP gonads in the upcoming elections. Facing South has the details.

The timing of this Wachovia loan to the NRCC raises obvious questions. At the same time that Wachovia had cut off loans to some 1,000 colleges and while it was in the middle of "precarious and bitterly-contested buyout negotiations" involving federal guarantees to cover billions of $$ in losses ... it doles out money for partisan political activity.

This is an especially troubling loan because the NRCC has been wracked with scandal. It borrowed $9 million from Wachovia in 2006. It has been revealed that the NRCC's Treasurer, Christopher Ward, embezzled as much as $725,000 from the org. "Among other misdeeds, to cover up his tracks Ward and the NRCC submitted forged audit reports to Wachovia in 2006 to obtain their loan." Before the Ward embezzlement came to light, the NRCC had failed to conduct an independent audit of its activities since 2003.

And so it goes.

Whoa, Nellie

"Wachovia reports huge loss, will cut 10,750 jobs"

"Wachovia Corp. announced a whopping second quarter loss of $8.9 billion this morning"

"Wachovia announced this morning that it plans to cease making mortgages through third-party brokers"

"The change in strategy is part of a larger plan to rein in mortgage losses, which have been on the rise since Wachovia's $24 billion purchase of Golden West Financial Corp., a troubled California mortgage lender, in 2006"

Said Lanty Smith, the Wachovia board chairman, "...we at Wachovia accept responsibility"

We also accept our inflated salaries and whopping bonuses, he might have added.

Mighty Close to Home

Wachovia, on the sick and injured list.