JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY... ...as usual in Washington. Here's Tim Carney:
Follow the divergent treatment recently of four different financial companies suffering from the mortgage crisis, and you begin to detect a pattern: The well-connected — with big lobbying budgets and generous campaign contributions — get special favors from Washington, while the others get special abuse. Government-backed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are collapsing, and so Congress and the Bush administration are rushing to save them, insisting to the investing public that everything is OK.
Lehman Brothers is upset about negative rumors hurting its stock prices, and so Uncle Sam is investigating who is badmouthing the firm. But IndyMac, a commercial bank and mortgage lender, was pushed over the edge this week by a U.S. senator, Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
The difference: Fannie, Freddie and Lehman are all famously well-connected to Washington, with high-priced lobbyists and burgeoning political action committees; IndyMac, meanwhile, had no PAC at all and only a tiny lobbying budget.
