The Office of Thrift Supervision

[ldzppln]

The Bush Administration's formula for spectacular failure: Reduce staffing levels, slash regulation and trust giant greedy corporations to monitor their own activity.


Banking Regulator Played Advocate Over Enforcer
Agency Let Lenders Grow Out of Control, Then Fail

By Binyamin Appelbaum and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 23, 2008; Page A01

When Countrywide Financial felt pressured by federal agencies charged with overseeing it, executives at the giant mortgage lender simply switched regulators in the spring of 2007.

The benefits were clear: Countrywide's new regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, promised more flexible oversight of issues related to the bank's mortgage lending. For OTS, which depends on fees paid by banks it regulates and competes with other regulators to land the largest financial firms, Countrywide was a lucrative catch.

But OTS was not an effective regulator. This year, the government has seized three of the largest institutions regulated by OTS, including IndyMac Bancorp, Washington Mutual -- the largest bank in U.S. history to go bust -- and on Friday evening, Downey Savings and Loan Association. The total assets of the OTS thrifts to fail this year: $355.7 billion. Three others were forced to sell to avoid failure, including Countrywide.

In the parade of regulators that missed signals or made decisions they came to regret on the road to the current financial crisis, the Office of Thrift Supervision stands out.

OTS is responsible for regulating thrifts, also known as savings and loans, which focus on mortgage lending. As the banks under OTS supervision expanded high-risk lending, the agency failed to rein in their destructive excesses despite clear evidence of mounting problems, according to banking officials and a review of financial documents.

Instead, OTS adopted an aggressively deregulatory stance toward the mortgage lenders it regulated. It allowed the reserves the banks held as a buffer against losses to dwindle to a historic low. When the housing market turned downward, the thrifts were left vulnerable. As borrowers defaulted on loans, the companies were unable to replace the money they had expected to collect.

The decline and fall of these thrifts further rattled a shaky economy, making it harder and more expensive for people to get mortgages and disrupting businesses that relied on the banks for loans. Although federal insurance covered the deposits, investors lost money, employees lost jobs and the public lost faith in financial institutions.

As Congress and the incoming Obama administration prepare to revamp federal financial oversight, the collapse of the thrift industry offers a lesson in how regulation can fail. It happened over several years, a product of the regulator's overly close identification with its banks, which it referred to as "customers," and of the agency managers' appetite for deregulation, new lending products and expanded homeownership sometimes at the expense of traditional oversight. Tough measures, like tighter lending standards, were not employed until after borrowers began defaulting in large numbers.

The agency championed the thrift industry's growth during the housing boom and called programs that extended mortgages to previously unqualified borrowers as "innovations." In 2004, the year that risky loans called option adjustable-rate mortgages took off, then-OTS director James Gilleran lauded the banks for their role in providing home loans. "Our goal is to allow thrifts to operate with a wide breadth of freedom from regulatory intrusion," he said in a speech.

At the same time, the agency allowed the banks to project minimal losses and, as a result, reduce the share of revenue they were setting aside to cover them. By September 2006, when the housing market began declining, the capital reserves held by OTS-regulated firms had declined to their lowest level in two decades, less than a third of their historical average, according to financial records.

Scott M. Polakoff, the agency's senior deputy director, said OTS had closely monitored allowances for loan losses and considered them sufficient, but added that the actual losses exceeded what reasonably could have been expected.

"Are banks going to fail when events occur well beyond the confines of reasonable expectation or modeling? The answer is yes," he said in an interview.

But critics said the agency had neglected its obligation to police the thrift industry and instead became more of a consultant.

"What you had here is a regulatory motif that was too accommodating to private-sector interests," said Jim Leach, a former Republican lawmaker who led what was then the House Banking Committee and now lectures in public affairs at Princeton University. "In this case, the end result is chaos for the industry, their customers and the national interest."

Warning Signs Ignored

On a hot Friday afternoon in June 2001, federal regulators swept into the suburban Chicago offices of Superior Bank and told stunned employees that it had been closed by OTS.

Superior was the largest thrift to fail since the savings and loans crisis in the early 1990s. Its demise foreshadowed the current upheaval. The company had made billions of dollars in mortgage loans to customers with credit problems but boosted profits instead of setting aside enough revenue to cover the eventual losses.

OTS regulators had not questioned the company's assurances about the quality of its loans. They had not required Superior to set aside more money. Even after the problems were identified, several federal investigators concluded that regulators had continued to rely on the company's promises rather than forcing it to take action.

"The whole Superior episode should have served as a warning," Ellen Seidman, then-director of OTS, said in a recent interview. Seidman acknowledged that she should have acted faster and more forcefully to address Superior's problems. Seidman, a Democrat, left her post shortly after the Bush administration began and had little role in revising the agency's approach.

Although the failure and disappearance of Superior triggered minor reforms, OTS did not learn the broader lesson. Thrifts were expanding into high-risk mortgage lending, but OTS was not requiring stronger safeguards.

John Reich, who has been OTS director since 2005, and Polakoff, his deputy, were well positioned to have learned the lesson. At the time of Superior's difficulties, Reich was one of the leaders of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Polakoff ran FDIC's Chicago office. Indeed, Polakoff's office recognized Superior's problems before OTS and pushed for increased scrutiny of Superior's bookkeeping.

In testimony before Congress in the fall of 2001, Reich listed what he considered the lessons of Superior's failure. Among them, he said, "we must see to it that institutions engaging in risky lending . . . hold sufficient capital to protect against sudden insolvency."

But instead of increasing oversight, OTS shrank dramatically over the next four years.

Reducing Regulation

In the summer of 2003, leaders of the four federal agencies that oversee the banking industry gathered to highlight the Bush administration's commitment to reducing regulation. They posed for photographers behind a stack of papers wrapped in red tape. The others held garden shears. Gilleran, who succeeded Seidman as OTS director in late 2001, hefted a chain saw.

Gilleran was an impassioned advocate of deregulation. He cut a quarter of the agency's 1,200 employees between 2001 and 2004, even though the value of loans and other assets of the firms regulated by OTS increased by half over the same period. The result was a mismatch between a short-handed agency and a burgeoning thrift industry.

He also reduced consumer protections. The other agencies that regulate banks review corporate health and compliance with consumer laws separately, which consumer advocates say helps ensure that each gets proper scrutiny from specialists. Gilleran merged the consumer exam into the financial exam.

Gilleran did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this article. But at the time he headed the agency, he defended the consolidation of the exams, saying thrifts would be required to conduct "self-evaluations of their compliance with consumer laws."

Then-Rep. John J. LaFalce (D-N.Y.), who at the time was the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, wrote in a letter to Gilleran that this was "a complete abrogation of the mandate your agency has been given by Congress."

The consumer exam had in part monitored whether thrifts were complying with the law by providing quality loans in lower-income communities. During Gilleran's four-year tenure, OTS cited only one institution for failing to meet that obligation, compared with 12 citations in the previous four years.

John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and other advocates say better enforcement of consumer protections, such as rules against predatory lending, could have kept thrifts healthy because consumer complaints are an early warning of unsustainable business practices.

A Surge in High-Risk Loans

For thrifts regulated by OTS, the option ARM was the rocket fuel of the mortgage boom, the product most responsible for driving profits to record heights and for burning lenders badly on the way back down. Yet even after other bank regulators urged higher lending standards for these mortgages, OTS was reluctant to insist on it.

Simeon Ferguson, an 85-year-old Brooklyn resident with dementia, according to his attorney, signed up in February 2006 for an option ARM. The monthly cost was $2,400, but the terms of the loan from IndyMac Bancorp, a major thrift based in Pasadena, Calif., allowed Ferguson to pay less than that each month, the way people can with a credit card.

Many of the loans made by IndyMac and other thrifts were extended to borrowers without ensuring they could afford their full monthly payments. Ferguson, who lived on a fixed monthly income of $1,100, was one such borrower, according to a pending lawsuit filed on his behalf in federal court. The suit alleges that IndyMac never checked on his income or assets.

In 2006, at the peak of the boom, lenders made $255 billion in option ARMs, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. Most option ARMs were originated by OTS-regulated banks.

Concerns about the product were first raised in late 2005 by another federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The agency pushed other regulators to issue a joint proposal that lenders should make sure borrowers could afford their full monthly payments. "Too many consumers have been attracted to products by the seductive prospect of low minimum payments that delay the day of reckoning," Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan said in a speech advocating the proposal.

OTS was hesitant to sign on, though it eventually did. Reich, the new director of OTS, warned against excessive intervention. He cautioned that the government should not interfere with lending by thrifts "who have demonstrated that they have the know-how to manage these products through all kinds of economic cycles." Reich, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed for this article.

The lending industry seconded Reich's concerns at the time, arguing that the government was needlessly depriving families of a chance at homeownership. IndyMac argued in a letter to regulators that in evaluating loan applications it was not fair to rule out the possibility that a prospective borrower's income might increase. "Lenders risk denying home ownership to qualified borrowers," chief risk officer Ruthann Melbourne wrote.

The proposal languished until September 2006, when it was swiftly finalized after a congressional committee began making inquiries.

The long delay in issuing the guidance allowed companies to keep making billions of dollars in loans without verifying that borrowers could afford them. One of the largest banks, Countrywide Financial, said in an investor presentation after the guidance was released that most of the borrowers who received loans in the previous two years would not have qualified under the new standards. Countrywide said it would have refused 89 percent of its 2006 borrowers and 83 percent of its 2005 borrowers. That represents $138 billion in mortgage loans the company would not have made if regulators had acted sooner.

Risks Ran Rampant

Even after the guidance was issued, some banks interpreted it as permission to maintain old habits because the regulatory agencies had stopped short of issuing a binding rule.

Washington Mutual, for instance, said in a December 2006 securities filing that it was continuing to qualify borrowers based on their ability to afford a teaser interest rate. In August 2007, the bank was still qualifying borrowers at a 2 percent teaser rate instead of the full rate of 5 percent or higher they would eventually face, according to a shareholders' lawsuit filed by Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann.

As early as 2003, the company set up credit risk teams at more than a dozen offices around the country to assess the growing flood of applications for option ARM loans. The basic job was to "make exceptions" to the bank's standards so loans could be approved, said Dorothea Larkin, a former Washington Mutual credit risk manager and a witness in the Bernstein Litowitz suit.

"As we kept making the same exception over and over again, what was an exception in 2003 and in 2004 became the norm in 2005," Larkin said in an interview.

It was clear to some Washington Mutual employees that the company was making loans that borrowers could not afford and that the bank could suffer as a result. In 2005, a small group of senior risk managers drew up a plan that would have required loan officers to document that borrowers could afford the full monthly payment on option ARM loans.

The plan was shared with OTS examiners, according to a former bank official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bank's practices are the focus of a federal investigation as well as several lawsuits.

"We laid it out to the regulators. They bought into it. They supported it," the former official said. But when a new executive team at the bank nixed the plan, the former official said, "the OTS never said anything."

In addition to taking more risks, Washington Mutual was setting aside a smaller share of revenue to cover future losses. The reserves had steadily declined relative to new loans since 2002. By June 2005, the bank held $45 to cover losses on every $10,000 in outstanding loans, according to financial records filed with federal regulators. Average reserves at OTS-regulated institutions had declined by about a third since June 2002, but Washington Mutual's reserves had fallen even further. They were 25 percent lower than the average for OTS-regulated thrifts.

OTS did not force the company to address the problem with reserves, though agency examiners worked full-time inside Washington Mutual's Seattle headquarters.

Polakoff said OTS closely monitored the company's allowance for loan losses and considered it sufficient. "They had good models in place calculating expected losses on the loan portfolio," he said.

But the agency did not fix a basic problem with how Washington Mutual predicted future losses. According to a confidential internal review in September 2005, the company had not adjusted its prediction of future losses to reflect the larger risks associated with option ARM loans. The review described those loans as "a major and growing risk factor in our portfolio." As a result, the company was not setting aside enough money to cover future losses.

Management responded in November to the internal review with a memo promising to update its risk assessment by June 30, 2006. During the nine months before the risk model was revised, Washington Mutual issued about $32 billion in new option ARM loans. OTS officials said in an interview that they were unfamiliar with the company's internal correspondence but would consider nine months an unacceptable delay.

"Nine months to get that model into compliance?" said Dale George, a former WaMu risk manager and a witness in a lawsuit. "I found that astounding."

Known for Being 'Lenient'

Countrywide Financial's decision to reconstitute itself as a thrift and come under the OTS umbrella was a victory for Darryl W. Dochow, the OTS official in charge of new charters in the Western region, home to Washington Mutual, IndyMac and other large thrifts.

In the late 1980s, Dochow had been the chief career supervisor of the savings-and-loan industry, and federal investigators later concluded he played a key role in the collapse of Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan by delaying and impeding proper oversight of that thrift's operations.

Dochow was shunted aside in the aftermath and sent to the agency's Seattle office. Several of his former colleagues and superiors say he eventually reestablished himself as a credible regulator and again rose in the organization. Dochow did not return a phone call requesting an interview, and OTS said he declined to give one.

As early as 2005, Angelo R. Mozilo, then the chief executive of Countrywide, approached OTS about moving out from under the supervision of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national commercial banks. In 2006, Dochow and his OTS colleagues met with Countrywide at its headquarters in Calabasas, Calif., in a room decorated with color photos of the company's float entries in the annual Tournament of Roses parade. One depicted a big bad wolf, with arms outstretched, huffing and puffing on a brick house.

Senior executives at Countrywide who participated in the meetings said OTS pitched itself as a more natural, less antagonistic regulator than OCC and that Mozilo preferred that. Government officials outside OTS who were familiar with the negotiations provided a similar description.

"The general attitude was they were going to be more lenient," one Countrywide executive said. For example, he said other regulators, specifically OCC and the Federal Reserve, were very demanding that large banks not allow loan officers to participate in the selection of property appraisers. "But the OTS sold themselves on having a more liberal interpretation of it," the executive said.

Winning Countrywide was important for OTS, which is funded by assessments on the roughly 750 banks it regulates, with the largest firms paying much of the freight. Washington Mutual paid 13 percent of the agency's budget in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, according to OTS figures. Countrywide provided 5 percent. Individual firms tend to make a larger difference to OTS finances than other bank regulators because the agency oversees fewer companies with fewer assets.

Polakoff said in an interview that the main reason Countrywide sought a new charter was that OTS was a better fit because it regulated banks that focus on mortgage lending. He said he challenged Mozilo: "If you're looking for a weak regulator, and if you're calling us because you think we're a weak regulator, stop now. We will walk away."

Polakoff said Mozilo told him, "That is absolutely not the reason we're even talking to you about a charter." Mozilo declined to be interviewed for this article.

(there are a couple more paragraphs but the forum software limits each post to 20k characters)

[spoc22]

Democrat formula for spectacular failure:
A) Point to "greedy big business" as the source of all that is evil (except for those evil things caused by Bush) while ignoring the following:
1 - All of us non-government and/or non-profit organization employees are employed by one of those "greedy big businesses"
2 - All of us who have invested in the stock market or have an IRA or have a 401(k), etc. want the "greedy big businesses" we've invested in to grow and prosper
3 - All of us who enjoy our things (HD TVs, cars, boats, furniture, etc.) have those things because some "greedy big business" made them
4 - The only way most of us wishing to accumulate sufficient wealth to be able to live life comfortably will have to form our own "greedy big business" to do so
B) Point to EVERY regulatory problem that can be attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Repubs while simultaneously denying all blame or even knowledge of all the Dem sponsered/caused regulatory snafus (e.g. Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac)
C) Force more and more strict regulation on the use of fossil fuels, prohibit exploration for new fossil fuel sources, and demand the use of alternative fuels all the while overlooking the fact that it will take years to develop the technology to replace fossil fuel usage and at the same time fighting the development of nuclear power plants and preventing the deployment of wind power sources (read Ted Kennedy).

[Chin Music Express]

Not that GOP formula is any better.

1. Big business is good and bigger is better, actually most people work for small business owners.
3. Greedy business tend to lie about their finances to get more people to invest in their company or fund, etc.
4. Most things we buy are made in China including the computer you are using (mine is).
5. Spend all their time blaming the Demos for everything instead of fixing things when they were in charge.
6. Change is evil, especially if the greedy business actually have to do what they claim they are doing.

[StockTrader]

Originally Posted by Chin Music Express

Not that GOP formula is any better.

1. Big business is good and bigger is better, actually most people work for small business owners.
3. Greedy business tend to lie about their finances to get more people to invest in their company or fund, etc.
4. Most things we buy are made in China including the computer you are using (mine is).
5. Spend all their time blaming the Demos for everything instead of fixing things when they were in charge.
6. Change is evil, especially if the greedy business actually have to do what they claim they are doing.

I missed the forumla?

Nick

[Bill Shaw]

Originally Posted by Chin Music Express

Not that GOP formula is any better.

1. Big business is good and bigger is better, actually most people work for small business owners.

And Obama must raise taxes on every last one, big and small.

Republicans also adhere to the use of the number "2". Apparently, this list does not.

Originally Posted by Chin Music Express

3. Greedy business tend to lie about their finances to get more people to invest in their company or fund, etc.

Lying is never good for anyone. Who's responsible if you fail to investigate the companies you (theoretically) invest in?

Originally Posted by Chin Music Express

4. Most things we buy are made in China including the computer you are using (mine is).

You may want to thank unions for that one.

5. Spend all their time blaming the Demos for everything instead of fixing things when they were in charge.

The next time Democrats succesfully "fix" something, let us know.

6. Change is evil, especially if the greedy business actually have to do what they claim they are doing.

Like the greedy (small) business you work at?

[Chin Music Express]

Originally Posted by Bill Shaw

And Obama must raise taxes on every last one, big and small.

How else are we going to pay for the 7 to 10 trillion debt the federal government is in. You can shut down the government for a couple years that might help.

Republicans also adhere to the use of the number "2". Apparently, this list does not.

Actually there was a number two but it was too Troyish for me So I, deleted it and forgot to adjust my numbers. But I do have problem with companies who cook the books aka Enron, Tyco, etc.

Lying is never good for anyone. Who's responsible if you fail to investigate the companies you (theoretically) invest in?

Tell me how can you and I investigate a large company books, especially those companies that own several other companies. I can access the reports that are posted on the internet. I am drawing a blank (old age I guess) on the type of reporting that some business use. It is basically a guess (so they say) but later ( after prefered stock dividends hand out) the reports are adjusted usually lower.

You may want to thank unions for that one.

When unions were first created to help the workers deal with unsafe work condition and insure fair wages. Unfornately, some unions leaders have forgot what their job is.

The next time Democrats succesfully "fix" something, let us know.

Unfornately we can say the same about the Republicans. The only time they seem to really do anything good is when the congress is split evenly.

Like the greedy (small) business you work at?

Companies in general are not greedy but some people who run it are.

[StockTrader]

Originally Posted by Chin Music Express

How else are we going to pay for the 7 to 10 trillion debt the federal government is in. You can shut down the government for a couple years that might help.

I do not know, cut spending on government programs?

Or, how about spending $64,000,000,000 on a WPA-type project. Yeah, lets spend more money, good thinking, Obama. Loving the change!

Nick

[hork]

Originally Posted by StockTrader

Or, how about spending $64,000,000,000 on a WPA-type project. Yeah, lets spend more money, good thinking, Obama. Loving the change!

Nick

while spending money to fix a deficit seems a bit counter-productive, i doubt anyone would argue that paying people to work as did the WPA is far better than paying them to sit on their butts in hopes that the economy works itself out.

[spoc22]

Originally Posted by hork

while spending money to fix a deficit seems a bit counter-productive, i doubt anyone would argue that paying people to work as did the WPA is far better than paying them to sit on their butts in hopes that the economy works itself out.

I think it is better to CUT taxes on companies and let them expand and create new jobs as opposed to letting the gov't create jobs for the sake of creating jobs in order to put more people on the gov't dole thereby giving the gov't even more control over the economy.
The economy ALWAYS works iself out except when outside forces meddle with imagined necessary fixes. The banks haven't even begun to employ their "bailout" funds here in CA and already mortgage companies are swamped with requests for funding for buying a home. The gov't never did slap the "evil oil companies" for raping the consumer and now prices are down to $40 per barrel and I paid $1.64/gal at the pump yesterday.

[hork]

Originally Posted by spoc22

I think it is better to CUT taxes on companies and let them expand and create new jobs as opposed to letting the gov't create jobs for the sake of creating jobs in order to put more people on the gov't dole thereby giving the gov't even more control over the economy.

in a perfect world but given trends over the course of the last 20+ yrs we all know that's not likely to accomplish much. all we'll be doing in that case is employing more foreign workers abroad and paying even higher prices as a result of the stipulations in great treaties like cafta and other similar brilliant legislation.

[spoc22]

But one thing is for sure. Every time (from JFK to W in my lifetime) taxes are reduced, federal revenues increase. What is also sure is that after the last Repub run Congress, both parties will find new and stupid ways to spend the increase rather than pay down the debt

[P562045]

Originally Posted by spoc22

What is also sure is that after the last Repub run Congress, both parties will find new and stupid ways to spend the increase rather than pay down the debt

The congress does have to get reelected every two or six years right?

And paying down the debt was part of the reason why we had surpluses last decade.

But paying down the debt is so boring and does not get people elected. A cat museum is much more likely to get a member of congress elected than having surpluses.

Voters are so into what have you my representative done for me lately. Why does a person think they wanted to build a Woodstock museum in New York. And no it was not because it would be a good idea really. Members of congress when a person really looks at what happens with their members of congress they are always looking for ways to buy a person's vote. That is part of the way they get elected in the first place.

Plus things can happen that can turn surpluses into deficits in an amazingly fast time.

I am trying to remember what happened in New York that in a very brief time frame made the surpluses of the 90's turn into huge deficits all of a sudden.

Now as spoc mentioned in his last post tax cuts do bring in more revenue when compared to raising taxes. I am going to watching to see what Obama does with taxes because it is very important for several reasons.

Democrats always want us to believe that raising taxes will bring in more revenue. So I just do not believe Obama for a second when he says he will not be raising taxes for 95% of taxpayers. So raising taxes even a little bit will mean less money coming into Washington because I do not care what income level a person is at they will always try to find ways to lower there taxes. It is just a little thing called human nature. And then there are all of these promises Obama gave during his presidential run.

As I have said more than once this year I truly believe that these promises that Obama makes will happen within the next four years at the very latest. So I am trying to figure out gargantuan new spending Obama even comes out and says it plain as day with his little I will get people back to work scheme. As a side note are these jobs going to be around forever or will they just be temporary and people will just be looking for work yet again. So where does less revenue and gargantuan new spending lead us to. It is even larger deficits than we have now. But there are several huge problems with this. Inflation will go up which just means prices of products that people buy each and every day will go up as well. The money will have to come from somewhere but as I just mentioned there will be less money to spend in Washington and we do not exactly have the ability to borrow money because we have been doing that up the wazoo for a little over seven years now. The only alternative is to print money to pay for all of this new spending we will have.

Another little Obama scheme is that we so need involves alternative energies to fuel our vehicles. So I guess this money to expand a technology that barely exists now won't cost us very much money at all and I am just talking about the production aspect of these vehicles. Then when we have a bunch of people plugging their cars into an outlet will the demand for electricity be more or less? It will be more I guess we just give big electric some much needed subsidies so that we don't have to pay for the increase in electricity prices. But who exactly will be paying for these subsidies it is none other than the taxpayer. So one way or another a person will be paying more for the electricity to make their car go one way or another.

Then as I have mentioned before several times this year the actual production of these alternative fuel cars. Is this going to cost us a lot of money to even get started? What percentage of automobile factories can produce one of these types of cars in the first place. Now this becomes important because it will cost consumers more to buy these cars because we are either going to retooling existing plants and even maybe make a few new plants and these additional costs one way or the other will just be passed onto the consumer as well.

And I will mention just one last thing. Has Obama told us every last one of his little this so needs money plans for us or will there be many more to come. Just very recently we have had huge financial institutions want money, then several states say we so need money as well, then automobile manufacturers need some money as well etc.. And I am very sure more industries will be in line as well to come.

And I put what I have just mentioned on the president we have now and the congress as well. This is classic Washington at its worst actually. Make situations that could be manageable and turn them into a crisis. We have to look no further than the financial meltdown for just one example and the one that comes to mind right now. Why do I think this financial situation turned into a crisis during a presidential election year. I am going to be very blunt about this. It was in order to get Obama elected.

[spoc22]

Could you summarize that. I hate reading long posts.