An opinion piece on today's Wall Street Journal Online reminded Wall St. & Maine that it was Andrew Cuomo who was running HUD when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac invented the subprime mortgage market and when FHA standards were loosened to the point at which an eggplant could get a government-guaranteed home loan.
This, of course, is the same Andrew Cuomo who has filed suit accusing Bank of America and two former executives with fraud in the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch. There is more than a hint of disingenuousness here.
Not to defend BofA or its former CEO and CFO, but that deal was done with the gun of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pointed at their heads as they were assured that either their signatures or their brains would wind up on that contract (hyperbole intended). Not to mention the specter of global financial collapse if they didn't sign.
It is abundantly clear that Cuomo, who is apparently running for Governor in New York this year, is grandstanding. He is looking to both deflect attention from his role in the housing bust and resulting financial crisis (see this Wayne Barrett story from the Village Voice for more on that) and to curry favor with nitwit voters for whom businesses are the enemy (there are quite of few of them in New York).
Cuomo is a man of remarkably modest achievement given his pedigree as the son of the honorable Mario Cuomo. Before winning the state attorney general race in 2006, he'd been little more than a minor political operative and appointed bureaucrat. Besides the obvious failure of the policy he promulgated at HUD, his first stab at the New York Governor's office in 2002 ended in failure at the primary level. His 1990 marriage to Kerry Kennedy (daughter of RFK), which was viewed in Democrat circles as more of a merger than a marriage, failed in 2003. His tenure as NY AG, following the disgraced Elliott Spitzer, has been marked by a continuation of Sptizer's virtual war on banks and Wall Street.
Wall St. & Maine is hopeful that Wall Street, bankers and perhaps a home builder or two will pump some big cash (now that it's okay to do so) into the New York state elections this year and run ads pointing out Cuomo's many failures. It would be good for all, save perhaps eggplants, if he were dispatched and doomed to the ignominy he so clearly deserves.