The bill approved by the senate last week was ostensibly aimed at providing relief to the sagging real estate market. We can debate the pros and cons of such a plan, but I don't think there's much argument about how dumb some of the stuff that ended up in this bill is: tax breaks for automakers, airlines, and alternative energy producers.

What do tax breaks for car companies have to do with the Foreclosure Prevention Act? I can't even imagine. Perhaps lower car prices will help out evicted home owners reduced to shacking up in their Kia Rios.

The New York Times reports that the pork tossed into the housing bill "shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients' interests."

Add the FBI to the growing list of law enforcement officials probing the subprime mortgage scandal.

The New York Times is reporting that the agency is "looking into possible accounting fraud, insider trading or other violations in connection with loans made to borrowers with weak, or subprime, credit." The FBI wouldn't disclose to The Times the names of any of the companies involved but it shouldn't be that hard to guess.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and attorneys general from in Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois and Connecticut are also investigating the industry as is the Securities & Exchange Commission. Mortgage fraud is a serious and growing problem that deserves the attention.

You can bet that in an election year some huge settlements and perhaps even indictments are in the works. The Gucci-loafer wearing Wall Street bankers who made millions selling CDOs are no doubt ringing up their lawyers as we speak.

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Forget crooked mortgage companies. Forget greedy speculators. Forget lax credit ratings agencies. The real reason for the housing crisis is the media.

Toll Brothers Inc. (NYSE: TOL) Chief Executive Robert Toll seems to think that the housing crisis would improve if the media didn't write about it so much.

"Perhaps as the presidential campaign heats up and moves to the front page, negative articles about housing will move off the front page," the New York Times quotes Toll as saying.. "Then, hopefully, the positive underpinnings of low interest rates, low unemployment and a decent economy will raise new-home-buyer confidence."

Fat chance of that happening.

"The rich are different from you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald once remarked. To which Ernest Hemingway famously responded, "Yes, they have more money." The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) is once again proving just how different the very rich are: the firm is now developing new condos in Florida. It seems that as we ordinary mortals suffer through the crash in the mortgage markets and watch housing values drop in just about every region of the country, the mega-rich are happily shopping for new million-dollar digs at the beach.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Blackstone's Luxury Resorts & Hotels business plans to build 52 condos in Boca Raton, Florida. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) has agreed to finance the $137 million project. Prices for the condos are expected to start at over $1,000 per square foot, which means the cheapest unit will be $2.75 million. The Journal reports that 24 of the units are already under contract.

Given the current state of the housing market, you might expect that condos in Florida would be the kind of project that even Blackstone would back away from. By most reports, there is very little new development going on in Florida, especially in the Miami area, where thousands of overpriced condos sit empty. And at $25 a share, Blackstone's stock is still well below its initial offering price. But Blackstone clearly operates in a different universe -- one in which the very rich buy new vacation houses even as the economic outlook darkens for the rest of us.