"People Say You're On A Witch Hunt Congressman, I Say More Power To You": Countrywide VIP Subpoenas

http://tinyurl.com/4je5qt3

Where are the Wall Street handcuffs.

Video - Ratigan with Darrell Issa, Chairman of House Oversight, discussing his first committee subpoena: Countrywide's VIP loan program for friends of CEO Angelo Mozilo - Feb. 17, 2011

Full story from the Washington Post inside. According to Issa, besides Senators Chris Dodd, Kent Conrad and likely others still unnamed, more than 150 fannie, freddie employees got sweetheart loans.

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New subpoena seeks records on sweetheart loans

WASHINGTON -- A House committee chairman renewed efforts Wednesday to obtain names of current and former federal, state and local policymakers - including congressional colleagues - who received sweetheart mortgage deals from the former Countrywide Financial Corp.

The subpoena by Rep. Darrell Issa of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee makes it more likely that the records could be made public.

A subpoena in 2009, when Democrats controlled the committee, specified that information on discounted loans to members of Congress and their spouses go only to the House Ethics Committee - with all names deleted. The ethics committee has never revealed the information it obtained.

Issa did not favor the restrictions but agreed to them as a compromise so that the committee's former chairman, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., would issue the subpoena.

"Countrywide orchestrated a deliberate and calculated effort to use relationships with people in high places in order to manipulate public policy and further their bottom line to the detriment of the American taxpayers even at the expense of its own lending standards," said Issa.

"This subpoena will allow us to obtain the information needed to answer the outstanding public interest questions regarding the full size and scope of the VIP program," he said. "The American people have a right to know the totality of who participated in the Countrywide's VIP program and what they did in return for access to it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021604808.html

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