Obama's Finance Chair: Another subprime lender problem
By Soren Dayton
The Pritzkers are one of the leading business families of Chicago. They run Hyatt and have a reputation for particularly cut-throat business practices. (sometimes outside of honorable) So it isn't entirely surprising to find Penny Pritzker at the center of Barack Obama's hypocrisy over his relationship to subprime lenders. Earlier today, I wrote about Jim Johnson, who got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide which Obama had attacked. And then there was UBS, which his campaign shopped a story about, and the reporter didn't point out that the CEO of UBS has raised a quarter million for Obama.
And then there is Penny, Obama's Finance Chair. She was the former Chairwoman of a bank that failed, according to regulators via a 2001 Chicago Tribune article, due to "poor oversight by its board." The depositors felt so screwed, that they filed a RICO suit against Penny and other directors. The Pritzker family eventually settled with regulators for $460m.
So Obama is attacking CEOs of subprime lenders. And his Finance Chairman was the Chairman of a subprime lender that went under because of poor oversight. One of his major donors is the CEO of another one. And the person making his VP recommendation got a sweetheart deal from another.
