This is not normally a statement which would raise eyebrows - Corzine being a liberal Democrat; but Corzine's love seems a bit stronger than most:

TRENTON, Aug. 3 - Senator Jon S. Corzine provided a $470,000 mortgage to the president of a union that represents thousands of New Jersey state employees in late 2002, then forgave the debt two years later.

The union president, Carla Katz, was Mr. Corzine's girlfriend at the time. The senator said on Wednesday that an investment company he owns gave her the mortgage, then canceled it in December 2004, several months after they had stopped dating.

It is a New York Times story, so it is pitched in the nicest manner possible - oddly saying that Corzine cancelled the loan when what he did was forgive the loan..."cancel" making it sound more like he stopped it from happening, you see?. Imagine if this were a GOP Senator who loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars to his girlfriend who worked as an oil industry lobbyist, and then forgave the debt. It does raise a few questions:

1. Banks, in the issuance of loans, are highly regulated by both State and Federal law. As a credit underwriter for one of the world's largest banks, I have to take care that all manner of regulations are obeyed just in issuing a $5,000.00 credit card - sending out a nearly half-million dollar loan is not something you just willy-nilly do. What we need to know is what is the law on this - the company may be owned by Corzine, but he has an obligation to his clients to engage in sound business practices. Making a large loan and then forgiving it cannot be sound business practice. Under US and New Jersey law, can a financial institution just loan out money to whomever they wish and then forgive the loan, no questions asked?

2. Is it allowed in law and Senate rules for a Senator to provide a loan to an official of an organization which does a great deal of business with government?

3. The news story says most the money was used to buy out the husband of the union official from his interest in their marital residence - it appears that both Senator Corzine and the union official were engaged in a relationship while both of them were married to other people. Was the loan actually a means of buying the silence of an outraged husband?

Corzine is running for Governor of New Jersey and the election is in November - I think that the people of New Jersey have a right to answers to these questions prior to that vote.