Rick Santorum's powerful finish in the Iowa caucus is bringing fresh attention to his tenure in Congress, including ethics questions that dogged him about a preferred mortgage he received from a bank run by campaign donors, and federal funds that went to a real estate developer who backed his charity.

One of the top donors to Santorum's charity was also the beneficiary of an $8 million Santorum-sponsored federal earmark, according to published reports. Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who filed an ethics complaint against Santorum in 2006 on behalf of a watchdog group, said her organization's website received a tidal wave of visitors in the past 24 hours, and in an interview she said she believes people will discover that the GOP presidential contender is "hardly the moral paragon he purports to be."

"There were several instances in which Santorum appeared to have taken campaign contributions in direct exchange for legislative assistance," said Sloan, whose organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), spent months investigating Santorum's activities while he was in office. "He violated Senate gift rules by accepting a mortgage from a bank in which he had no interest and which otherwise made loans only to its own investors."

Santorum has rarely responded to such attacks, but at one point he wrote a letter to a Philadelphia newspaper criticizing the ethics complaints as a series of "disingenuous innuendo and half-truths." The Senate Committee on Ethics never responded to CREW's complaint, and the two-term senator left Congress in 2007 after losing a reelection bid. A Santorum campaign spokesman has not yet responded to phone messages and email requests for comment.

For months, Santorum's record and background have escaped presidential-caliber scrutiny from rivals and reporters because he never appeared to have traction with voters in the early Republican contests. But as Santorum's GOP rivals have learned, the national spotlight can be searing. Questions about Newt Gingrich's consulting work for Fannie Mae surfaced in attack ads against him. Herman Cain bowed out of the race after reports of sexual harassment complaints dogged him for weeks. If the pattern holds true as the winnowed GOP field heads from Iowa down the rural roads of New Hampshire, Santorum will be the latest to undergo intensified scrutiny from rival campaigns and from the national media.

Perhaps the most jarring detail from his tenure in office is the unorthodox $500,000 mortgage that Santorum and his wife secured on the home in rural Virginia they had purchased for $643,361. According to a series of reports in the Philadelphia Daily News, the mortgage came from Philadelphia Trust Company, a fledgling private bank catering to "affluent investors and institutions" whose officers had contributed $24,000 to Santorum's political action committees and re-election campaign.

In advertising, the lender said it only offered its preferred rates to well-heeled borrowers who also used their investment services. But Santorum's public disclosure forms showed he did not have the required minimum $250,000 in liquid assets and was not an investor with Philadelphia Trust. His ability to secure the five-year loan led Sloan to file a complaint under a Senate ethics rule that specifically prohibits members from accepting a loan on terms not available to members of the general public. At the time, a Santorum spokeswoman told the Daily News that the mortgage terms were set at "market rates," but did not provide further comment.

After leaving Congress in 2007, Santorum sold the house for $850,000.

Santorum Charity Backer Got Federal Earmark

The other issue that captivated Santorum critics involved a non-profit charity called Operation Good Neighbor. Santorum founded the organization to "illustrate compassionate conservatism" but did not take a formal role in its day-to-day operations. The charity was run by his campaign staffers. It operated out of the same building as his campaign headquarters. And its board included several top Washington, D.C. lobbyists who had clients with millions of dollars in business before the U.S. Senate, according to a 2006 report by WTAE, the ABC News affiliate in Pittsburgh.

The chairman of Operation Good Neighbor was Michael O'Neill, CEO of Preferred Real Estate. The company was involved in a waterfront development in Chester, Pa., that, with Santorum's help, benefitted from more than $8 million in federal grants, according to local reports.

O'Neill told ABC News that accusations suggesting the charity work and his development were connected were "crazy."

"My answer is absolutely not," said O'Neill, who is now out of the real estate business. "I was never told, 'If you do this, we'll help with that.' They were completely unrelated."

O'Neill said Santorum was a figurehead with the charity and that the senator derived no benefit from the work the charity performed -- doling out contributions to small groups around the state. "He was proud of the work of the charity," O'Neill said. "Rick helped bring exposure, but other than that, he didn't get anything out of it."

O'Neill also said the former senator should be proud of the waterfront development, which he says has helped deliver 2,000 jobs to downtown Chester, where there is now a soccer stadium, an office building, and a casino.

Santorum also defended the federal grants in a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News, saying his efforts to win federal money for O'Neill's waterfront development represented "a prime example of how, when used appropriately, earmarks can be beneficial."

"When Preferred Real Estate became interested in investing in the region, specifically in the revitalization of a blighted former generating plant, I was ecstatic -- this was exactly the type of project that could kick off a full-scale economic rebirth and help combat poverty," he wrote. "So, working with the city, I helped bring federal money to improve access to the riverfront, renovating roads like Route 291 and Highland Avenue, as well as to better the environment of the riverfront, making it a more attractive place for Pennsylvanians to work and live."

O'Neill has not committed to supporting Santorum's presidential bid, saying he is waiting to see if Santorum can focus on more mainstream economic issues, rather than social issues.

"If he doesn't win it won't be because of his ethics," O'Neill told ABC News. "What's going to kill him is, this country wants someone down the middle."

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“Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don’t make dramatic changes immediately,” writes The Economic Collapse (TEC).

For those unfamiliar with this site, TEC is an economic blog that regularly compiles a comprehensive list of the most startling and unsettling facts about the U.S. economy.

Why? Because Americans need to understand that U.S. economy is precariously balanced on the edge of full-blown collapse.

“If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them. Just ‘tweaking’ things here and there is not going to fix this economy,” the site explains.

Indeed, America’s economic situation has become increasingly unstable. However, what’s arguably more disconcerting than the state of the U.S. economy is the fact many Americans are largely–if not completely–unaware of just how serious things have become.

“America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding,” TEC explains. “If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.”

It might behoove Blaze readers to share the facts listed below with family and friends.

“If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that ‘business as usual’ will result in a national economic apocalypse,” writes TEC.

Here are the 50 economic numbers from 2011 that will shock you (via The Economic Collapse):

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

5. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8 percent once you account for inflation.

8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

11. Back in 1980, less than 30 percent of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40 percent of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

12. Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

14. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

15. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

16. As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

17. The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

18. In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

19. Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

20. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

22. New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

23. 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

24. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

25. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5 percent of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3 percent.

26. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

27. If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

28. The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

29. It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

30. The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5 percent in just one recent 12 month period.

33. Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

35. According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.

36. If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

37. A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7 percent) than has ever been measured before.

38. Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

39. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

40. Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America.  According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

41. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

42. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7 percent of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

43. A staggering 48.5 percent of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

44. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

45. For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

46. If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

47. Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

48. If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

49. The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

50. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Of course, after going through all these numbers, the obvious question is, “how has it come to this?” The Economic Collapse has a simple answer:

. . . the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence.  If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape.  The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based.

But who among America’s leaders has the will and determination to do this? Judging by how the Obama administration has conducted itself thus far, it probably won’t consider (let alone implement) any of the suggestions mentioned in the above. Therefore, that leaves only the GOP candidates.

Who among them has the best chance to restore economic stability? Who is the most likely to return the U.S. to prosperity?

“Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country,” TEC writes.

Indeed, 2012 may be one of the biggest turning points this country has ever seen.

(h/t Zero Hedge)