Sixteen days ago Senator Charles Schumer of New York, Senate Banking Committee Chairman publicly released previously private correspondence discussing, among other things, the possible failure of Indymac, a California bank and so-called "Alt-A" mortgage lender.  This warning was picked up by the west coast press, and reported widely.

The already weakened bank was pushed over the edge by Schumer's reckless, classically self-promoting, chicken little act.  After Schumer went public, the bank experienced a text-book 1930's style run on the institution, with some $100 million in withdrawals per day up to a staggering 1.3 billion in withdrawals, forcing the FDIC to seize the bank to prevent total collapse.

The estimated cost of the collapse to the beleaguered American Taxpayer - 4 to 8 billion dollars.  Maybe we can send Schumer the bill, and have his fat Senate salary garnished for the next 64,000 years.  We hope there is a legal way for people whose deposits exceeded $100,000 to sue Schumer for gross negligence.

This incident is yet another anecdotal example of how the Democratic Party has a talent for precipitating failure and then evading responsibility for their own seditious actions.  Just as we predicted in our Enemy Within piece, Schumer didn't accept responsibility for pushing a weakened large bank over the edge, instead he blamed the bank for causing him to write the correspondence which caused the bank to fail.  That may work for nine year olds in a school yard argument, but it doesn't fly in the adult world.

In the famous United States Supreme Court Case Schenck v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. coined a term that has become embedded in free speech legal doctrine right up to this day - free speech does not give citizens the right to falsely shout fire in a theater causing a panic.  And this is precisely what Schumer did - falsely shout fire and cause a panic.

Acts of stupidity, or acts of deliberate malevolence depending on your viewpoint, should cost Schumer his Chairmanship at the very least.  If TheStupidNation.com were in charge, we would move to impeach the Senator and have him thrown out of the Senate, if we could.  And good riddance to bad rubbish would that event make.

Senator Schumer is a disgrace, and the sooner The Stupid Nation awakens to the reality in Washington, DC the better. 

Democrats - we hope you're immensely proud of your Poster Child.


13-Jul Update - And so the spin begins.  Chuck Schumer, the egregiously negligent Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, whose recklessly published comments about IndyMac triggered it's collapse, was at it today pinning the collapse as the Bank's fault, the OTS regulatory agency's fault, and the Bush Administration's fault.  But not HIS fault - oh no, it was just a freakish coincidence that immediately after he publicly outed the struggling bank, 1.3 billion up and waltzed out of the Bank on it's own accord.  Perhaps it was a brilliantly executed heist perpetrated by a rogue Wizard from Harry Potter's Hogwarts.  A mischievous Leprechaun?  The Oceans 11, 12, 13 etc. crew?

It's a fact that the bank was on the ropes.  It's a fact that almost everyone that mattered was asleep at the controls during the mortgage "bubble" - including Schumer and his Senate Banking Committee.  It's also a FACT that Schumer, and his grossly irresponsible BRAIN DEAD BIG FAT MOUTH, doomed the bank.  Whether IndyMac would have failed anyway we will never know, that Schumer saw to it that the Bank died a flaming death is an incontrovertible eight billion dollar FACT.  We also speculate that the premature collapse of IndyMac this past Friday, right smack in the middle of the media-hyped frenzy regarding bad but NOT fatal news about mammoth Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae forced the Fed's hand in acting today to ram liquidity down their throats that they did not yet need in order to prevent all out financial system panic. 

As we hinted at in our Enemy Within piece - in the middle of a crisis, We The People expect Democrat and Republican to close ranks, and work together to remediate that crisis.  Just as with the crisis in Iraq, the Democratic Party, in this case Schumer, deliberately poured gasoline on the fire for it's own myopic political advantage.  It's vile and disgusting.   Another brain dead Democrat - Harry Reid - has declared the Democrats are now ready to work with the Bush Administration to do what is necessary to salve frayed nerves.  Our message to Reid is:  As Party leaders, you and Pelosi can start by firing Chuck Schumer from his posh post as Chairman of the Banking Committee.