Never let it be said that there’s a crisis too big for Chuck Schumer to try to exploit.
New York’s senior senator released a letter Wednesday that he and two Democratic colleagues sent to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson regarding the $700 billion economic rescue plan.
Their point: Direct capital injection into troubled financial institutions will be ineffective unless those banks are forced to put that money straight into the lending market – complete with “goals based on previous lending activity.”
Uh-oh – here we go again: Last time Schumer publicly released a “warning” letter, it triggered hysteria in California: an 11-day, $1.3 billion run by frantic depositors at IndyMac, ending in the third-biggest bank failure in US history.
Schumer insisted back then that he was just a “bad-news messenger.” But as The Wall Street Journal rightly noted, what he did was “more like shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded bank than calling 911.”
And let’s not forget that Schumer, like other Democrats, has precious little credibility regarding the meltdown.
He and his buddies deserve a big chunk of the blame for the subprime mortgage meltdown, given their encouragement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“Fannie and Freddie over the years have done an incredibly good job . . . of making America the best-housed people in the world,” Schumer said in 2003.
And then there’s one of the Democrats’ proudest achievements: the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed banks to make more home loans to those with disproportionately risky credit.
In fact, we suspect that the strict mandates of that act are precisely the kind of “previous lending activity” goals that Schumer & Co. have in mind.
It seems Schumer is no longer satisfied with saving his publicity schemes for news-light Sundays and has decided to branch out to weekdays.
Heaven help us.
Paulson and his staff have been tasked with implementing the economic rescue plan and ensuring that it works. Why doesn’t Chuck Schumer give the responsible parties a chance to do their jobs?