WashingToneLocian Wrote:
>
> First, Penny Pritzker was no longer in charge of
> Superior starting in 1994. Second, the Pritzker
> family settled wit the FDIC in 2001. The sub-prime
> crisis began in 2004. Pritzker had nothing to do
> with the overall mortgage meltdown. In fact, in
> 2001, FDIC shut down Superior's sub-prime
> practice. When Bush took power, apparently
> sub-primes became "okay." Get your facts straight.
Oh - sorry she "moved on" from being the Chair of the bank and instead become one of the owners on the board... nice distinction. Read on...
Quote
“The Pritzkers like to say they did sub-prime lending to help the disadvantaged get into the home equity business, [but] it would be more accurate to state they ran a very large nation-wide predatory lending operation,” Anderson said, citing criticism of Superior’s lending practices in a letter written to the Office of Thrift Supervision on July 3, 2002, by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an association of more than 600 community-based organizations that promote access to basic banking services.
As an owner and board chair of Superior, Penny Pritzker also was named in a RICO class action suit on behalf of the more than 1,400 depositors at Superior, who initially lost over $50 million of their life savings.
http://bfeldman68.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-campaigns-pritzkersuperior-bank-s.html
Quote
“The Pritzkers controlled half the board seats. Penny Pritzker…was on the board, and Glen Miller, a top financial officer in the Pritzker organization, was chairman of the audit committee…Penny Pritzker…was designated…to watch over the Superior investment.”
Yuo guys like getting your facts from Wiki huh? Might want to check the references - Wiki can be changed by anyone.
OTS Regulator Holds Superior Bank Owners Accountable...
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JDE/is_4_6/ai_n25038209
I see she was already familiar with how to walk away from issues:
Quote
In tense testimony on October 17 before the Senate Banking Committee, Ellen Seidman, outgoing director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, stated outright that the former owners of the $1.8 billion Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Ill., which was seized by federal regulators on July 27, basically just "walked away" even "after having promised to put it back together again." Its co-owners, the multibillionaire Pritzker family and Alvin Dworman, a New York developer, had devised a rescue plan last May, approved by the OTS, under which together they would have pumped a total of $355 million into the floundering bank. In addition, the plan called for the Pritzkers to become the sole owners of Superior. Ultimately, however, the plan was not implemented.
A more full look into the family and how they were involved:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2002/Tremors-in-the-Empire/
Quote
To some, however, the Pritzkers were hardly the innocents they made themselves out to be. The family, after all, controlled half the board seats of the bank's holding company, which benefited from all that dividend income, and the Pritzker Organization's chief financial officer, Glen Miller, chaired the bank's audit committee. Although Penny had stepped down as the bank's chairman in 1994, she remained a director of its holding company.
Finally the family offered to pay $460M without admission of guilt.
If you read through the stories you find a lot of interesting information. In the report from the committee investigation (Senate Banking - Chris Dodd Chair at the time) there were even recommendations in strengthening the OTS and other regulatory practices to make sure these kind of problems couldn't happen again...
Like I said, lots of interesting reading. As I have stated a number of times, this is an (almost) all of the above problem. Obama has aligned himself with a number of people that have been recently involved in the formation of many of these issues, and also it appears the Pritzker family and their holding company has been involved for a while.
The debates will tell all - this is just more side fluff.