Harry Reid has threatened to start forcing the Democratic financial overhaul bill through the Senate early next week. The bill would create yet another new bureaucracy, the “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” with the power to impose new government regulation on millions of financial transactions. President Obama’s rumored pick to run the CFPA is a Treasury official with a disturbing history of ties to shady lending, bank bailouts, and massive donations from subprime mortgage billionaires.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Eric Stein is the former senior vice president of an activist and lobbying group called the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). While Stein was running CRL in 2007, he received a $15 million donation from hedge fund manager John Paulson. Paulson is notorious due to his central role in the SEC’s case charging Goldman Sachs in a complex mortgage fraud scheme. In 2007, at the same time that Paulson was betting billions against the US housing market, his $15 million donation to CRL enabled the group to hire more lobbyists to push its radical agenda. Paulson took home $3.7 billion that year, even while hundreds of thousands of American homeowners lost their houses to foreclosure.
John Paulson isn’t the only subprime magnate Eric Stein shares a special relationship with. CRL also received at least $15 million from Herb and Marion Sandler. The Sandlers pioneered so-called “Pick-a-Pay” mortgages, and made $2.4 billion when they sold their subprime lending business to Wachovia in 2007. Wachovia ended up losing billions of dollars on the sale, and the SEC and Justice Department have been investigating allegations that the Sandlers’ company made fraudulent claims to investors. Time Magazine featured them in a story titled “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis.”
During his tenure at CRL, Stein advocated for increased lending to borrowers with bad credit histories, and his “Self-Help” organization sold those mortgages on the secondary loan market. A primary purchaser of CRL-linked loans was Stein’s previous employer, Fannie Mae, which has received at least $76 billion in taxpayer bailout funds.
Eric Stein has shown a disturbing willingness to do business with people who have devastated the nation’s economy. Putting him in charge of the CFPA would give him tremendous power and control over a $400 million bureaucracy.
We need a real shepherd to watch the flock, not another Wall Street wolf in sheep’s clothing. You can make a difference – visit goldmanexposed.com or call your senator now.
No comments:
Post a Comment