Gamblers who bribe the table fix their house first‏

A staggering report just issued by the IMF 'A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis', http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/wp09287.pdf demonstrates the extent to which the banking and finance sector lobbied and bought their way out of trouble courtesy of the US taxpayer.

Lenders taking on the most risk were the most active in campaigning against laws and regulations related to mortgage lending.

The IMF said lenders that spent millions of dollars lobbying also expect preferential treatment, no surprise there. 16 of the 20 lenders that spent the most on lobbying between 2000 and 2006 received financial bailouts from Bush’s Emergency Economic Stabilization Act set up by the his administration to rescue banks from their own failure.