like a cat on a tile floor is to A: refinance to try and make the sweetheart deals go away, and B:
At least he did if you were a fast reader and were one of the few reporters he invited to his Hartford office yesterday to review -- but not copy or take -- more than 100 pages of documents related to his 2003 mortgage financings through Countrywide's "Friends of Angelo" program.
Heck, we'd all love the kind of courtesy that would have saved Mr. Dodd $75,000 over the life of the two loans he refinanced to the tune of $800,000, according to an analysis by Portfolio magazine. The savings came from rock-bottom interest rates and a free "float-down" -- the right to borrow at a lower rate if interest rates fall before you've closed on the loan.
So he came clean? Not exactly:
We don't know whether the documents Mr. Dodd briefly showed yesterday illuminate this mystery or not, because he didn't release them to us, or to the public or his constituents. Perhaps the reporters he allowed to take a quick peak will tell us more. What he did release to everyone was a set of fact sheets that purport to show there was nothing favorable about the terms Mr. Dodd and his wife received from Countrywide, along with a consultant's report that reaches the same conclusion. Mr. Dodd's office did not respond to our request for the documents themselves, which he promised to release more than six months ago.
But consultant reports -- prepared at the behest of a law firm hired by Mr. Dodd to help him through the Countrywide mess -- tell us nothing about what Mr. Dodd knew and when he knew it. Instead, they are an attempt to change the subject. Mr. Feinberg has said that Friends of Angelo were regularly reminded that they were getting special treatment -- otherwise, what was the point? And he claims to have Countrywide documents that prove that Mr. Dodd was aware that Countrywide had done him favors. Those documents may or may not be among those that Mr. Dodd played peek-a-boo with Monday, but we still don't know. Mr. Dodd said he's "sorry" he didn't release the documents sooner -- just not sorry enough to actually release them, apparently.
'Most ethical Congress' my ass.
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