SUBPRIME SIX UPDATE: At HousingWire, not buying Kent Conrad’s defense: “What we’re seeing this Monday morning from North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad is nothing less than either blind stupidity or record-setting hubris.”

Plus, Let me call you sweetheart … loans: “We’re not talking graft on the level of the Whiskey Ring or Teapot Dome or Halliburton. But consider this: Countrywide was one of America’s primary purveyors of subprime mortgages, the dubious, lucrative loans that got the country into our current housing crisis. Almost no one paid attention. . . . Campaign cash registers and the politicians who love them rule.”