As the smoke starts clearing from Wall Street's massive meltdown on the weekend, one question has only begun to be raised: Why did the Bush administration engineer a quick rescue for Bear Stearns earlier this year but allow Lehman Brothers to flame out into bankruptcy?
One compelling explanation is, essentially, that the government's gamble on Bear failed to calm the markets and intervention in Lehman's case would do little but expose the taxpayers to greater risk.
But here's an interesting statistic: Of the political donations given to current members of Congress by Lehman and its employees, Democrats got 72% and Republicans 28%. The company has sent more than three times more money overall to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton than it has to John McCain.
As for Bear Stearns, it was reported earlier this year that Rudy Giuliani was the firm's favoured recipient of presidential campaign donations. Leaving aside this election cycle, when Bear's political action committee raised just $5,000, its giving pattern looks like a flip-side of Lehman: 75% of its donations went to Republicans in 2006, with a 61% Republican share in 2004.
So in Palin parlance, what's the difference between Bear and Lehman? Not lipstick, but perhaps political giving patterns.
