Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

Financial Bailout: A Look at Gregg and Blunt

Financial Bailout: Are congressional leaders invested in the crisis?

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?

Financial Bailout: Lobbyists' Donations to Senate Banking Members

In-house lobbyists and other major Washington lobbying firms hired by eight investment and securities companies have given Senate Banking Committee members more than $380,000 in campaign donations in the first six months of 2008, according to the LD-203 lobbying disclosures filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.

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

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.

Financial Bailout: Who's minding the store?

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.

Financial Bailout: Who does Frank see at his fundraisers?

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).

Financial Bailout: Who does Bachus see at his fundraisers?

Among Rep. Spencer Bachus's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns), Credit Suisse Group (which misled some investors about its auction rate securities), UBS AG (which hopes the bailout will include foreign banks), the National Assn of Realtors (working to "assure a robust secondary mortgage market"), Citigroup Inc ("written off and lost $53.6 billion through the credit crunch so far, which is more than any other bank or broker,"), Bank of America (acquired Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial, once the largest mortgage lender in the U.S.), American Bankers Association (wants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to continue paying dividends, despite going bust), Credit Union National Association (members are included in any bailout plan) and Regions Financial (acquired healthy part of distressed bank thanks to FDIC).

Financial Meltdown: FBI on the case?

Yes, according to this:

Financial Bailout: Who does Shelby see at his fundraisers?

Among Sen. Richard Shelby's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: Citigroup ("written off and lost $53.6 billion through the credit crunch so far, which is more than any other bank or broker,") JPMorgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns) and First American Corp. (a subsidiary of which appraises home values).

Financial Bailout: Who does Dodd see at his fundraisers?

Among Sen. Christopher Dodd's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: Citigroup ("written off and lost $53.6 billion through the credit crunch so far, which is more than any other bank or broker,") Bear Stearns ("Bear Stearns's mortgage business, a big driver of profits, has been eviscerated,"), SAC Capital Partners (vehemently denies charge that they helped bring down Bear Stearns), American International Group (saved by an emergency $85 billion rescue), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (each of which are morphing into bank holding companies), Greenwich Capital Markets ("a top issuer of mortgage-backed securities in the subprime market, Royal Bank of Scotland (which owns Greenwich Capital Markets), Credit Suisse Group (which misled some investors about its auction rate securities), Merrill Lynch (which needed Bank of America to rescue it), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns) and Lehman Brothers (which failed).

A compendium of mortgage bank failures

The Mortgage Lender Implode-o-Meter has a useful list of companies that have gone belly up in the subprime mortgage crisis that appears to be more the trigger than the overall cause of the current financial meltdown. I was looking at it Friday, browsing the stories, and some of it is pretty incredible (the list of 285 failures is pretty incredible). Reading about the first failure, Merit Financial, gives a flavor of just how freewheeling these firms could be: