MBNA

I guess I have to take a break from following my own senior senator Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide) since he skeddalled off to Ireland and may have slipped back into the country while eluding the press.

Now I have another ethically challenged Senator out there, and I can share my knowledge of the financial services field to explain this latest faux pas.

The line in the title is from The Graduate, but plastic in the form of credit cards has made many young men in Delaware (a hotbed of finance) very rich. One, of whom, was Senator Joe Biden's son. 

 A son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that "after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking."

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

"He was not a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing," said Wade. 

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080825/ap_on_el_pr/biden_mbna