Tentacles

At TPMMuckraker over the last few days we've been digging into the story behind the grand jury investigation of Bill Richardson. Whether Richardson himself is in any trouble -- and there's no clear evidence he is -- there's a very big story in the background. That is widespread fraud, pay-to-play corruption and bid-rigging in the municipal bond business. Here's a piece from the Times today on the same topic. This is one of those stories that's weedy and a bit hard to understand. But it looks like a big deal -- a sort of broad ranging fraud in which the financial services industry was leeching cash away from city and state governments for years.