Danny Schechter - ColdType

CHAPTER 18
THE TESTOSTERONE
FACTOR
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Would the Wall Street crime wave have been checked
earlier if political leaders like Eliot Spitzer, once considered
“the Sheriff of the Street” had still been a
prosecutor as he was as Attorney General of New York State?
He was known then as a terror to many in the finance
industry, who cheered when he got caught up in a sex scandal
that led to his resignation as Governor.
Just two days before his exposure as “Client Number 9” of
a high priced call girl ring he had been testifying in Congress
and writing an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that the
Bush Administration was a “partner in crime” with predatory
lenders.
“Several years ago, state attorneys general and others
involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked
increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage
lenders,” he wrote.
“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect
consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented
campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents
from the very problems to which the federal government
was turning a blind eye.”
The thrust and reality of his charges were buried and then
forgotten in the storm of sensation that followed the “Gotcha”
coverage of his affair in a Washington hotel. It was later
revealed that he had been a regular patron, if not a sex addict,
spending thousands of dollars in the pursuit of discrete pleasure.
This more personal morality play displaced the political