Doddering Chris Dodd On The Electronic Stump Today

As I write this, I am listening to CNBC's coverage of doddering Senator (D-CT), and Presidential candidate Chris Dodd, demagogue the current mortgage finance situation as only a liberal can.

Dodd had taken a meeting this morning with Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, due to his role as Senate Banking Committee chair.

While inserting the odd, but incorrect, statement that the current Bush administration has 'run up more debt than all the previous 42 administrations combined,' Dodd is trying his best to look like a populist.

He's for forgiving some of the borrowers who, being adults, freely borrowed money for housing using rather dangerous sub-prime loans. Dodd is on the warpath against the ratings agencies, as if they are the only sources of information on the creditworthiness of borrowers or debt instruments. He's also clearly pushing for easy money, via a Fed rate cut.

On his way by the Fed, he also lashed out at what he implied has been lax regulatory oversight of banks, by the Fed, in the area of home loans. Too bad Chris doesn't realize that many of the institutions now lending in the mortgage market are not supervised by the Fed.

Time to go back to school, Chris, and learn something about the sector which is the focus of the Senate Banking Committee which you so ineptly chair.

Lastly, he's putting heavy pressure on Bush's administration to allow the inept and poorly-run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac organizations into the jumbo loan business. This is, of course, in answer to those institutions blithely offering to buy jumbo loans in the marketplace, thus setting a precedent for them to begin crowding out private lenders, and moving into the jumbo origination business.

It's unfortunate that Dodd, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is being so totally political in his reactions to the current fixed income markets turbulence.

If you need any evidence of Dodd's unfitness for the Presidency, this act of playing politics, and inciting more worry and panic among homeowners and investors over current the housing finance situation, ought to be sufficient.