Greed? Or Just "Helping Americans"?

You be the judge.

Largely ignored in this crisis is the key role played by Herbert and Marion Sandler, founders of Golden West Financial (GDW), one of the largest savings and loans in the nation. Wachovia purchased GDW for $24 billion dollars in 2006. This was one of the worst merger and acquisition deals of all time for the buyer, and remarkably excellent timing on the part of the seller. In essence, Wachovia bought a financial time bomb ticking away, one that exploded this year, bringing down yet another former financial titan and further wrecking Wall Street

All just Helping People, of course:

Herbert and Marion Sandler, a New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst respectively, bought a small California thrift in 1963 and built it into GDW -- one of the largest thrifts in the nation. The company's business was built on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs. These were mortgages offered at low "teaser" rates that ratcheted upward as interest rates increased. They were often sold aggressively to unsophisticated home buyers who did not comprehend the vast financial risks they were taking, or who assumed that housing prices would rise high enough to provide a profit to them when they sold their houses. They were targets for lenders peddling mortgages that should have been stamped with a skull and crossbones, for these were among the most seductive and dangerous types of mortgage.

This book of business is the core reason for Wachovia's current difficulties

Well. If you think they are greedy opportunists, that's fine. You're entitled to your opinion. The Sandlers only hauled in $2.4Bn of that sale price.

Just don't call them "Republican" greedy capitalists:

The Sandlers have started to invest their billions of dollars politically, in the manner of George Soros...527 groups include the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.Org, Human Rights Watch, Media Matters and a slew of other like-minded groups

...The top four donors to these 527 groups in the last Presidential election cycle (2004) were Soros, Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance, Steven Bing, and Herbert and Marion Sandler . Collectively they gave 78 million dollars to left-leaning 527 groups. That was just in 2004. They have become much more ambitious over the last few years.

These 527's are generally more Lefty than even the Democrat Party. We're talking EXTREEEEEEEME Left, here.

Soros, Lewis, and the Sandlers form a core group of billionaire activists and Democrat partisans who have formed a group called The Democracy Alliance.

How Lefty are these guys?

Ask Hillary Clinton, who was not extreeeeeeeme enough for them.

The SNL skit which brought this to the attention of the world is (supposedly) here. That is, if it isn't pulled again...