PhillyDeals: PhillyDeals: What kind of a VP would Biden make?

Americans know

Sen. Joe Biden

(D., Del.), one of

Barack Obama's

vice presidential prospects, as a talky foreign-affairs expert.

In Washington and Wilmington, he's also known as a pal of the credit card industry, led until recently by Wilmington-based

MBNA America Bank

, which gave Biden so much money the conservative American Spectator magazine once dubbed him "the senator from MBNA."

Starting in the early 1990s, MBNA founder

Charles M. Cawley

was one of the Bush family's and Republican U.S. Senate candidates' biggest fund-raisers. MBNA executives' gifts, targeted to key races, helped give Republicans control of the U.S. Senate in 1994, blighting Democratic leaders' plans to curb credit card rates.

Biden was a rare Democrat who shared MBNA's senatorial generosity. MBNA executives were his biggest corporate contributors through his last reelection campaign in 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The relationship was also personal, with an MBNA executive's buying Biden's house at a favorable price, and one of his sons taking a job for a time as an MBNA management trainee, as the Wilmington News-Journal reported. Hey, it's a small state.

Biden returned MBNA's favor by delivering key Democratic support for the company's top legislative goal: the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act, which made it tougher for broke people to escape their credit card debt. Biden's staff says he forced lenders to add special protections for low-wage workers and single mothers before he would back the bill.

"Charles Cawley thought a lot of Joe and gave him a lot of money," said

Bill Sahm Sr.

, a former DuPont Co. chemical engineer who is chairman of the Brandywine Hundred Republicans in Wilmington's northern suburbs.

It was a strange pairing, given Biden's liberal reputation, says another Delaware GOP activist,

Jerry Martin

. In his backyard, Biden is not known as a bridge-builder. As vice president, Biden might better fit the aggressive mold of

Spiro Agnew

or

Dick Cheney

.

"Joe Biden has a personality that's quite interesting," Sahm said. "In public forums, he speaks with a golden tongue. But anytime he has something to say about what's happening across the aisle, he is caustic, derogatory, and steps on people. He leaves his footprints. He's an attack dog. That doesn't do any party any good. Especially the business interests."

Biden may be lucky his Wilmington banker friends were in credit cards, not home loans.

Bankers from Wall Street to Main Street are known for keeping lists of VIP borrowers and giving them special treatment.

Sens. Kent Conrad

(D., N.D.) and

Chris Dodd

(D., Conn.), who received low loan rates from

Angelo Mozilo's

Countrywide Financial Corp.

, have lately been beaten up in Portfolio magazine and elsewhere for accepting favors from an ill-regulated industry as it was spinning out of control.

There are signs the credit card industry is getting in trouble like the mortgage industry, with defaults and deliquencies rising, according to banks' bond filings with the SEC. But that doesn't mean we'll be seeing VIP card loan complaints.

Card loans are harder to track than home loans. And unlike troubled Countrywide, the big Wilmington credit card banks, MBNA and First USA, aren't around as whipping boys in the current crisis. They were acquired and are now part of

Bank of America Corp.

and

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

, respectively, which face bigger problems than card loans at the moment.

Average pay for tech jobs rose slightly in the second quarter from a year ago, especially in July, after a first-quarter decline, says

Jim Lanzalotto

, vice president at

Yoh Services L.L.C.

, the outsource-staffing arm of Philadelphia engineering giant

Day & Zimmermann Group Inc.

How does Yoh know? The firm reviews paychecks for 4,500 consultants it places in a variety of technical positions each week, and it has its agents survey 9,000 hiring managers in the course of business calls.

What jobs are most in demand? "SAP is 30,000 consultants short, and in wireless applications we see a lot of demand from customers," Lanzalotto said in an interview. Java developers, Oracle database analysts, and a range of engineers are also widely

sought.