In my view, the stated reasons behind those actions, cannot be separated from the actions themselves... anymore than they can be separated from their consequences.

You bring up some interesting points here, perhaps the most interesting one is what part the government had in forcing institutions to finance individuals of marginal credit status and approving loans for people who could not afford the houses they applied to get financed.

Wasn’t the government specifically responsible for forcing those organizations to be performing a certain level, a certain percentage, of high risk loans particularly to minorities? Imagine the charges of racism flying around, were the banks to turn down such loans.

Further, let's face facts:

It’s not the bank’s faults that the government insisted on playing arbiter on what constitutes “equal housing” lending.

It’s not the bank’s faults that as a direct result that said borrowers following a major disaster were unable to pay the loans they signed for.

It’s not the bank’s fault that Katrina came along. It’s not the bank’s fault that the people who were asking for loans lived in an area that is prone to storm damage.

And finally, it’s not the bank’s fault the John Edwards is hip deep in such businesses, and has piles of cash invested in making such loans, essentially profiteering from the governmental requirements to make such loans, in the first place.

And the question of honesty arises; He's got 16 million bucks invested in this company that he charges with "Predatory lending practices." I don't know about you, but if I had $16 million invested in a company, I think I might remember that. Is Edwards so rich that that $16 million worth of investments simply slipped his mind?

Sorry, no sale. Half of John Edwards time, of late, is spent making statements he's got no business making, and the other half is spent backtracking from them while pointing his finger of blame elsewhere. The only logical conclusion to draw from all of this is Edwards is a snake in the grass.

I lay my bets on the America where he makes money.

"Former Sen. John Edwards has exploited the middle of his famous three H’s." Let us make that the four "H's" with the addition of Hubris.

Many of these sub-prime loans were almost no money down. That would provide a benefit to people who want to buy a house, but don't have the 20%. The majority of the people who continue to pay and stay in their homes are better off, but won't be interviewed by the media.

Hillary Clinton wants to remove prepayment penalties. That increases the risk to the lender and will increase the cost of loans to all borrowers. You can always count on politicians to make a bad situation worse.

So if the subprime component of Fortress's activity wasn't big enough to make it to the summary pie chart, there's no reason to think Edwards knew anything at all about it.

And seriously: 34 homes? For a hedge fund? That's gotta be around 1/10 of 1% of their holdings.

I don't think there's any hypocrisy involved in this but it does provide a nice illustration of thought patterns. Individual action vs. group action. Sen. Edwards isn't saying that individuals shouldn't pursue their most lucrative opportunities; he's saying that the government should foreclose the opportunities (presumably for their own good).