I’m leaning towards Slade’s “Green Shades” summary (@ 125)

Bush appeared particularly involved in relations with Germany at the time TARP1 was distributed. The flurry of transatlantic activity suggests his administration was priming certain nations’ banks to receive the funds.

Here at home, to echo Mr. Larsen, the key banks are under pressure to avoid publicly naming individual sub-prime borrowers, which is what foreclosures do (making Barney Franks’ recent public appeal for banks to stop them a semantic feint). If the system works properly and holds the individual delinquent borrowers accountable (they are fiduciary adults, after all) then the entire CRA/Fannie/Freddie gambit falls apart.

If Law asserted the primacy of the original mortgage contract, then folks’d be asked to pay their own bills or forfeit their homes, which, while tough, is par for any normal home-loan and an option that all of the signers knew about up front. In addition to this, the sub-prime lending market may reveal some sticky racial favoritism in government-mediated lending that will need explaining if it sees the light: certainly not what Clinton, Raines, Gorelick et al had in mind when they lit the fuse on this thing.