Romney campaign cash scandal bypasses names of big finance, housing donors

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been[ hammered](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/18/herman-cain-mitt-romney-campaign-funds_n_1017568.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HP%2FPolitics+(Politics+on+The+Huffington+Post)) for using campaign funds to promote personal projects, but the real scandal may be the finance industry cash he is taking to fund these efforts, and how it influences his anti-regulation stances on finance and housing.

The revolving door has been swinging in the Romney campaign. One of his funders, T. Martin Fiorentino, has lobbied against anti-predatory lending legislation for a foreclosure mill called Lender Processing Services, according to the Boston Globe.

In his most recent FEC filings, one of his largest individual contributors was a Dallas area realtor, Ebby Halliday of Ebby Halliday Inc., who donated $10,000 to the campaign. In Dallas, foreclosure rates have been steadily but slowly increasing.

Romney’s position on fixing the housing crisis has been to reject any course of government regulation. Visiting Nevada, a state leading the nation in foreclosures, Romney told the Las Vegas Review’s Journal Tuesday that “as to what to do for the housing industry specifically… don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”

A former executive at Bain Capital, a company focusing on “venture and expansion capital for private companies,” Romney has also opposed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, which would regulate America’s financial institutions. Many say that stance is what led to his becoming the one recipient of Wall Street cash, having received more than $7.5 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sector since he launched his presidential campaign, which accounts for 23 percent of his war chest.

In particular, he has recorded more donations than any other candidate from employees of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase – financial firms which have all faced federal investigations in the past two years.

However, it’s still big banks that win most from loose regulations and continuing foreclosures.

Many of Romney’s big Wall Street donors have been accused of shady mortgage practices – Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley are all under investigation for concealing troubled mortgage loans.

Romney also brought lobbyists supportive of private interests onto his campaign as foreign policy advisors. These included an advisor that works for a German bank opposed to cap-and-trade environmental regulation, according to The Boston Globe.