The Mortgage Thieves Return
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on January 7th, 2009 5:35 am by HL
The Mortgage Thieves Return
First come the shady operators, then comes the collapse, then comes the bailout, then come the shady operators. That, too often, is the sad history of financial meltdowns and their cleanups. The closing days of the Bush administration offer the familiar spectacle of bad actors descending on a government program fat with new money and starved of oversight. The object of plunder this time is a Federal Housing Administration program recently empowered to extend an additional $300 billion in loan guarantees, so reports BusinessWeek.
A Question for My Friend Alan Dershowitz
Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is that rare individual who is both a highly respected academic and well known to the general population. But in another regard he is even rarer. He regards himself as a man of the left, yet on one of the defining moral issues of our time, attitudes toward Israel, he has nothing in common with the left. He is not only one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, he spends much of his time defending Israel. He has written innumerable articles and four books defending Israel: “The Case against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace,” “The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved,” “The Case for Israel,” and “What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists.”