Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. Fannie Mae handbook: Illegal actions in a gray area?

   By Bill Allison Sep 30, 2008 7:16 p.m.

   This is largely gratuitous, but while tooling around Fannie Mae's Web site, I came across their Employee Code of Conduct, revised in 2007. The opening includes this passage:

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2. Financial Bailout: K Street hurting too?

   By Bill Allison Sep 30, 2008 6:11 p.m.

   The Hill reports that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are dissolving their formidable lobbying operations (when the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was investigating their shady accounting practices, Fannie Mae was spending $8 million a year on lobbyists, some of whom were working with Congress to derail the investigation).

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3. Financial Bailout: Correlation in contributions and votes in House

   By Bill Allison Sep 30, 2008 3:10 p.m.

4. Financial Bailout: Fannie Mae announces subpoena

   By Bill Allison Sep 29, 2008 11:11 p.m.

   Fannie Mae announced <a href="http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/310522/000129993308004533/0001299933-08-004533.txt">today</a> that it's gotten more subpoenas from the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York:

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5. Financial Bailout: Citigroup purchasing Wachovia

   By Bill Allison Sep 29, 2008 1:13 p.m.

   Just curious: Is Citigroup, in purchasing Wachovia and absorbing up to $42 billion in losses, making a good investment? Are they looking at Wachovia's red ink, or is there estimation of the bank's worth based on the notion that its balance sheet will soon be brought into the black co

6. Financial Bailout: Comparison of plans

   By Bill Allison Sep 28, 2008 3:34 p.m.

   Mark Tapscott of the D.C. Examiner posts a comparison of what was in the original plan submitted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and what congressional negotiators have arrived at now.

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7. Financial Bailout: A look at the House GOP negotiators

   By Bill Allison Sep 28, 2008 3:20 p.m.

   Continuing the theme of last night's post (and of several prior posts -- just scroll down), we're taking a look at some of the key players in the financial bailout negotiations, looking at their career contributions from and personal interest in the industry. Thanks to Open Secrets, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, all this information is easily accessible online.

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8. Financial Bailout: Deal hammered out?

   By Bill Allison Sep 28, 2008 5:49 a.m.

   That's what a series of members are saying on a press conference I happened to tune into a few moments ago -- there's an agreement, but details have to be worked out (including getting it all down on paper).

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9. Financial Bailout: 102 pages and counting

   By Bill Allison Sep 27, 2008 2:36 a.m.

   This Associated Press report is a little like the early going of an Eric Ambler thriller: a tantalizing hint of the complexity to come, but very little detail about what the twists and turns will be. The market meltdown measure, which began its life as a 3-page bill, has grown:

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10. Financial Bailout: Who are the big investors?

    By Bill Allison Sep 27, 2008 2:08 a.m.

    The data is somewhat out of date -- from the end of 2006 -- but here were the top owners of some of the firms that stand to gain the most from a bailout of the financial system, courtesy of the personal financial disclosure database at the Center for Responsive Politics. Here were the top holders at that time:

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11. Financial Bailout: Are congressional leaders invested in the crisis?

    By Bill Allison Sep 26, 2008 8:10 p.m.

    Members of Congress continue to debate the bailout package that may well affect the bottom line of every taxpayer in the country, as well as those of big banks, brokerages, and other financial firms. While they hear from numerous experts, including distressed Wall Street titans, on the dangers facing their firms, what sort of exposure do members themselves have if those firms fail?

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12. Financial Bailout: Who do McCain and Obama see at their fundraisers?

    By Bill Allison Sep 25, 2008 3:37 p.m.

    Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are returning to Washington today to lend their legislative talents to the bailout bill working its way through Congress. So let's take a look at the biggest contributors to their presidential campaigns, courtesy of our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics.

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13. Financial Bailout: Who's minding the store?

    By Bill Allison Sep 24, 2008 10:31 p.m.

    As Congress begins wrestling with the Bush administration's financial industry bailout legislation (and Sen. Christopher Dodd's alternative), perhaps it's worth asking who are these folks who may well be deciding the economic fate of the nation? In this post (which took me about five hours longer to put together than I'd anticipated; hint to Labs: we need to design a tool to do this stuff faster), we take a look at the Senate Banking Committee and the House Finance Committee. Specifically, we look at how much of the campaign cash raised by members of those committees has come from the industries at the epicenter of the crisis -- finance, insurance and real estate -- over the course of their careers.

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14. Financial Bailout: Who does Frank see at his fundraisers?

    By Bill Allison Sep 24, 2008 8:52 p.m.

    Among Rep. Barney Frank's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: American Bankers Association (wants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to continue paying dividends, despite going bust), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns), National Association of Realtors (working to "assure a robust secondary mortgage market"), UBS AG (which hopes the bailout will include foreign banks), Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (hopes Congress will "hastily approve" the administration's plan), Credit Union National Association (members are included in any bailout plan), Bank of America (acquired Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial, once the largest mortgage lender in the U.S.), and the Mortgage Bankers Association (opposes efforts to allow bankruptcy judges to alter mortgage terms).

Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Bill Allison