Spitzer twister: He was after GW Bush

Greg Palast has an interesting twist to the Spitzer-hooker scandal.

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

Three weeks before the FBI leaked information to the New York Times, Spitzer wrote a Washington Post piece titled:

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers

Spitzer was after how Bush was stopping States Attorneys General who wanted to sue loan-sharking banks. They had engaged in illegal 'predatory' loans: this is 'the mortgage crisis' which hit Northern Rock and may lead to an economic downturn.

Spitzer:

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably.

As in the UK, Banks have been bailed out with hundreds of billions of dollars and the White House stopped the states from pursuing the lenders through the courts.

I posted about how a booker for a 'high class escort agency' in her reflections had noted:

Show me a rich and powerful man between the ages of 35 and 60 who has never paid an escort for sex, and I will show you a man who is a very rare exception.

Interesting how Spitzer is the one exposed: via the FBI ...

• More from Palast