Hank Paulson, Ezra Merkin--chronic shame, the results of poor parenting

"GMAC, the auto financing arm of General Motors that's half owned by Cerberus Capital, is

• spooling up its own bid for a federal bailout. GMAC wants to mimic American Express, Goldman Sachs and others that converted to bank holding companies and then tapped the TARP.

Meanwhile, GMAC's chairman, Jacob Ezra Merkin, runs Ascot Partners, an investment firm that

• lost most of its $1.8 billion in assets in the Madoff scandal, according to the New York Times.

So, sure, let's give billions in federal funds to a guy who blows almost $2 billion of his and his clients' money on a Ponzi scheme.

• GMAC got to the point of begging the government for cash because
  

• it was a major peddler of subprime mortgages, many of them through its DiTech division.
  

Now, to borrow from DiTech's annoying marketing slogan, it may be taxpayers who will lose another loan to DiTech."