RSSMore Change We Can Believe in … Penny Pritzker, Obama’s National Campaign-Finance Chairwoman was a Subprime Mortgage “Queen”
More Obama change we can believe in … Think the media will ever cover this 
subprime mortgage embarrassing story? As Protein Wisdom states, “So I am not holding my breath waiting for the follow-up reportage.” As we can see MSNBC, one of the primary water carriers for Obama, they devoted one sentence to the story. One!
It is a story with the potential to dwarf that of Obama’s ex-Veep vetter, James Johnson. But it would require the media to do some legwork to uncover whether — and to what extent — Penny Pritzker profited from the very financial wheelings and dealings Obama condemns on the campaign trail
The following statement regarding the accountability of sub prime mortgage is from BarackObama.com. Obama has long railed against the sub-prime mortgage industry and criticized the predatory subprime mortgage lender practices.
Ensure More Accountability in the Subprime Mortgage Industry: Obama has been closely monitoring the subprime mortgage situation for years, and introduced comprehensive legislation over a year ago to fight mortgage fraud and protect consumers against abusive lending practices. Obama’s STOP FRAUD Act provides the first federal definition of mortgage fraud, increases funding for federal and state law enforcement programs, creates new criminal penalties for mortgage professionals found guilty of fraud, and requires industry insiders to report suspicious activity.
Really? I guess it would come as a surprise to Barack Obama and his campaign that their National Campaign-Finance Chairwoman, billionaire Penny Pritzker served for a time as failed subprime Superior Bank’s chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company. Superior Bank was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators.
Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family’s 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her — and perhaps to the campaign.
Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior’s chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.
Change? Obama is a candidate of change? Between dealings with convicted felon Tony Rezko and other Obama associates like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, domestic terrorists like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, former PLO flack Rashid Khalidi and now subprime mortage queen Penny Pritzker … can someone please question this man’s judgement and associations? PLEASE!!!
Obama claims he is a different kind of Presidential candidate. One not from inside the Belt way; however, his excuses are par for the political course when it comes to his association with Pritzker. Obama claims to be a change; however, by reading the campaigns statement, Obama is just like all the others. Actually, he is worse because he claims to be something that he is not. That would be a change and a breath of fresh air. Obama is nothing more than hot air.
In a prepared statement, the Obama campaign noted that Ms. Pritzker was never accused of wrongdoing by regulators in connection with Superior, and that her family agreed to pay $460 million to help defray the costs of Superior’s collapse.
In a written response to questions, Ms. Pritzker said the reasons for Superior’s fall “were complex. They include changes in accounting practices, auditing failures, reversals in regulatory positions and general economic conditions.” During her tenure at the thrift, she said, she believed it followed “ethical business practices” and complied with “fair lending laws.” For years, she said, Superior’s financial statements were found to be acceptable by regulators. (WSJ)
Posted July 21, 2008 by Scared Monkeys Barack Obama, Bizarre, Corruption, Media, Media Bias, Politics, Presidential Election 2008, WTF | 6 comments |
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6 Responses to “More Change We Can Believe in … Penny Pritzker, Obama’s National Campaign-Finance Chairwoman was a Subprime Mortgage “Queen””
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I see your “change you can believe in” and raise you a “straight talk express”:
“It could come down to lying or losing. I chose lying.” John McCain, Faith of My Fathers.
60 Minutes:
Interviewer: There was a political issue; a local issue, about whether the Confederate flag should fly over the Capitol.
McCain: (Murmurs in assent)
Interviewer: You – waffled on that.
McCain: Yes. Worse than waffled.
Interviewer: What do you mean?
McCain: Well, I said that it was strictly a state issue, and clearly, knowing that it wasn’t.
Interviewer: That’s not what you believed in your heart.
McCain: No.
Interviewer: What did you believe in your heart?
McCain: That it was a symbol to many of a… a very offensive symbol to many, many Americans.
Interviewer: Why did you say that?
McCain: I’m sure for all the wrong reasons.
Interviewer: And those wrong reasons would be?
McCain: For ambition.
Interviewer: For ambition.
McCain: Sure.
Choo Choo, all aboard the straight talk express!!!
Phil Gramm anyone? Anyone remember John McCain’s campaign co-chairman and top advisor? It was just a couple of days ago McCain tossed him away…Anyone? lol.
This is too easy.
Sorry YOYO ,,, but Obama has not discarded this subprime lender.
Although Gramm’s comments were insensitive … there are plenty of whiners. Many people in the US should look abroad and over the world and they would soon learn what real poverty was.
Are times tough, yes they are.
However, I have never seen an economist yet that suggested socialism was the way to end a perceived recession.
Obama’s judgment is terrible. He states is is different. He is no different. He is a politician.
Oh that’s right, we are not allowed to criticize Obama’s staff either. That’s on the list, along with his many other failings in personal choices.
I guess if the “subprime mortage queen” is Penny Pritzker, the “subprime mortgage king” would be Phil Gramm.
Ironic, no?
Mayor Richard Daley takes care of the Pritzkers. Or maybe the Pritzkers take of the Mayor. All part of Chicago politics. You won’t find any of Obama’s change there.
Here’s an article for you. The Pritzkers want the Children’s Museum moved to Millenium Park. Many oppose this saying a private facility charging admission doesn’t belong in a public park. Lot of money and it’s been a huge issue. Mayor Daley of course is pushing for whatever the Pritzkers want and the Pritzkers have been saying those who oppose it are racists. Note this is from 9/07, before Father Pfleger went national, but he’s mentioned here:
Friday, September 21, 2007
Gigi Pritzker crawls into Richard M. Daley’s gutter
The Pritzker family has been the bedrock of Chicago philanthropy. To mention just two of their countless contributions, they established the Pritzker Prize, which has become architecture’s Nobel, honoring one great artist each year. If if weren’t for Cindy Pritzker, Millennium Park would be the amiable mediocrity Mayor Richard M. Daley was willing to settle for. Instead, by recruiting Frank Gehry to design the spectacular Pritzker Pavilion bandshell, Pritzker set the park on the path to becoming a world-class sensation.
The Pritzkers are used to being the good guys. They’re also accustomed to getting whatever they want. We are now seeing what happens when they don’t. Chicago Children’s Museum Board President Gigi Pritzker has signed on to the ugly, race-baiting campaign, engineered by Mayor Daley (is that Frank Kruesi in the shadows?) to demonize opponents of the museum’s move to Grant Park. The Sun-Times headline says it all: Board chief: Museum opposition is racial.
“The thing that’s sad,” she told the Sun-Times, “is the loudest voices – it doesn’t mean the whole community – seem to have the component to them.” The tears that Pritzker is shedding are, of course, crocodile tears. Race-baiting is what the museum, whose campaign was falling flat when confined to the actual merits of its proposal, now sees as its ticket to victory.
And the Sun-Times is only too happy to help. How ironic that it’s the Chicago Tribune, the voice of reaction, that’s fighting for Grant Park’s survival, while the scrappier Sun-Times, which just recently declared independence from the dark legacy of Conrad Black and a return to its original progressive roots, has not only been completely silent on Mayor Richard M. Daley’s gutter-politic rants, but has been channeling the most sensational charges, without question or analysis, straight to its front page as a ploy for goosing flagging circulation. (The Sun-Times’ own readers, however, aren’t buying it. A poll of over 3,000 of them had 74% taking the opinion that opposition to the museum was not a racial issue.)
[POSTSCRIPT: on Friday, September 21st, the Sun-Times finally came out swinging, first with a strongly reasoned editorial opposing the museum, and contributions from Mark Brown, Neil Steinberg, Delia O'Hara and Mark Konkol that pretty much demolish every vicious charge and and specious claim put forth by the mayor and the museum. More on this later]
On a Thursday appearance on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, host Phil Ponce pressed Gigi Pritzker to substantiate her claims of the museums opponents’ racism.
What did she have? The same useful dolt that St. Sabina’s Father Matthew Pfleger has been trotting out repeatedly to support his own claims of racism. Oh, and she pointed to the very vocal anger of museum opponents at a September 10th meeting at Daley Bicentennial Fieldhouse.
Remember? That’s the one where the museum hijacked a community meeting called by 42nd ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, cutting in line to fill up the auditorium and forcing the invited neighborhood residents into side hallways where they couldn’t see or or be seen in the proceedings. And yes, they allowed themselves to get a bit rowdy at first, before quieting down as they strained to hear the speakers, with periodic bursts of spirited, mostly good-natured heckling.
So, stack the hall, throw neighborhood residents out of their own meeting – Pritzker has no problem with that. But when they don’t take it laying down, raise your nose high in the air, point your finger, and declaim, “Shame, shame.” It’s the classic gutter politics maneuver – you get to maul, but your opponents must react as pacifists.
Here’s something that is sad, perhaps even tragic: a great Chicago family that has become so obsessed with winning that its willing to trash a deep reservoir of good will, earned over decades, for a specious campaign cynically conceived to inflame racial tensions as a tactic to divert attention from discussion of the real issue: a private institution seeking to replace open, free public space with 100,000 square feet of new construction with an $8.00 admission charge.
Memo to Gigi Pritzker: if you really, as you keep saying, want to refocus the debate over the museum to the real issues and not make it all about race, stop talking nonstop about race.
posted by Lynn Becker at 12:01 AM
http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2007/09/gigi-pritzker-crawls-into-richard-m.html