[Posted July 12, 2008 to Krugman's NYT blog]
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/follow-the-malek/
Follow the Malek
It's just a glancing mention in this Times piece on how Fannie Mae won
friends and influenced people:
Fannie's board once included Frederic V. Malek, a longtime friend of
the Bush family and a former business partner of the current
President Bush.
There's a bit more to who Malek is:
He was Nixon's Jew-counter: he counted Jews at the Bureau of Labor
Statistics at his boss's behest -- you see, Nixon believed that a
"Jewish cabal" was distorting the economic statistics to make him look
bad.
He was the deputy chairman of the RNC during the elder George Bush's
presidential run in 1988, but resigned when the Jew-counting story came
out.
A year later, he helped the younger Bush purchase the Texas Rangers
-- a supreme case of crony capitalism.
And now he's John McCain's finance co-chairman.