In May, I reported on the attempt by a coalition of government-corporate-left-wing advocacy interests to shore up the social justice banking poster child, Chicago-based Shorebank. Yesterday, I told you about Shorebank's latest dire financial reports, showing an even worsening capital deficiency than first thought. Today, Bloomberg reports that the bailout deal may crumble: ShoreBank Corp.,...
Read MoreMy column today hits again on Maxine Waters' brewing ethics scandal. Her supporters are ratcheting up the victim-card rhetoric. She appeared on the race-hustling Reverend Al Sharpton's radio show yesterday to stoke the fires and re-cast the ethics probe as an attempt to squelch advocacy on behalf of all black businesses. Another guest bemoaned the...
Read More"Stay out of it."
Over the weekend, I gave you a refresher course on entrenched California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters' OneUnited Bank ethics scandal. It's a textbook case of cronyism of color. Last night, the House Ethics Committee filed three charges against her related to those shady dealings -- specifically, her role in arranging a special meeting between then-Treasury...
Read MoreWell, this is quite a striking contrast to the Arizona ruling today protecting illegal aliens and the feds from "burdensome" ID checks. The government is creating a national registry/fingerprint database for mortgage brokers in the U.S. Priorities: Mortgage loan originators will have to be fingerprinted and sign up to a central registry to do business...
Read MoreAs they say in the military: BOHICA. On ABC's This Week today, tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner championed the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and pooh-poohed the economic impact of tax hikes on the highest earners in the country. It's "responsible" to punish the wealthy, he argued. Because after spending America into oblivion,...
Read MoreCorrupt and corrupter.
I'm the corruptocrat more responsible for creating the banking meltdown conditions. No, I am! As you all know, the Senate passed the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" sham last week (see my post on the GOP-enabled vote here). Today, President Obama will sign the 2,319-page monstrosity into law. The Associated Press calls it "sweeping." My adjectives are...
Read MoreScroll for updates.. With GOP assistance on its drafting and three reported Republican votes all but guaranteeing its final passage in the Senate (Snowe, Collins, and Scott Brown), the Dodd-Frank monstrosity masquerading as "financial reform" is on its way. Read and weep: "Achievement?" How about a different a-word? I like "assault." That's how Heritage describes...
Read MoreThe shady ShoreBank bailout by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2010 "No more bailouts, no more greed, how many profits do you need?" That's been a signature chant of community organizers and Big Labor thugs who have stormed bank offices and financial executives' private homes decrying corporate welfare over the past several months. But now...
Read MoreChicago on the Potomac.
In Chicago politics, there's an old term for the publicly-subsidized pay-offs meted out to the corruptocrats' friends and special interests: Boodle. In the age of Obama, "reform" is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And so it is with the...
Read MoreWhile the market melted down, Securities and Exchange Commission watchdogs were watching...porn. Terrific: The feckless SEC regulators are now trying to distract from their own naked incompetence by abetting Obama
Just wondering...
Hmmm... Reader Daryle wants to know. He e-mails: On Friday tens of millions of dollars, possibly hundreds of millions were made or lost on Goldman Sachs stock and options. Friday was option expiry which meant puts and calls, the right to sell or buy Goldman Sachs stocks at preset prices expired. Goldman Sachs puts -...
Read MoreScroll for updates... My syndicated column today shines light on all the Goldman Sachs company men in the Obama administration's midst. The GOP wants SEC correspondence disclosed. Here's that story. In related news, Goldman Sachs cheerleader and beneficiary Rahm Emanuel met with NYC business elite about the financial reform plan. Listen up: Related must-read from...
Read MoreI've reported many times about the housing entitlement mob over the past several years. Boston has self-proclaimed bank terrorist and housing entitlement shakedown artist Bruce Marks of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA). Baltimore had criminal home invaders masquerading as bogus foreclosure victims. In San Francisco, the housing entitlement mob is led by an...
Read MoreIn January, I deconstructed the White House "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee" fakery for you: My friends at the Heritage Foundation compiled a handy graphic that underscores chicanery.
In critiquing Glenn Beck's CPAC speech taking the Republican Party to task for failing to own up to its Big Government lapses, Bill Bennett cites various Republicans who have admitted the party's culpability. But see if you can spot the glaring problem with his defense of the GOP: If you didn't gag when you read...
Read MoreScroll for updates... You've got to be freaking kidding me. I mean, really. Come on: Over the last year, John McCain supported everything that the grass-roots Tea Party movement has stood against: *The $700 billion all-purpose, earmark-stuffed TARP bailout; *The $25 billion auto bailout; *The $300 billion mortgage entitlement bailout; and *The
My column today looks at the phantom Porkulus II/Jobs Bill. I say "phantom" because there is no bill text I can actually point you to -- it's the same business-as-usual we've been subjected to since Porkulus I. GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was on the Senate floor yesterday pleading to see the legislation: "“My...
Read MoreScroll for updates... The House is currently debating the federal debt ceiling increase to $14.3 trillion. (The Senate, with every single Democrat voting in favor, adopted the debt limit increase last week.) These measures are on top of two other debt limit increases over the last year (including one adopted in the dead of night...
Read MoreThe final vote in the Senate on the Federal Reserve chairman's re-nomination this afternoon was 70-30. Among the Republicans supporting Ben Bernanke: Alexander, Barrasso, Coburn, Cochran, Collins, Enzi, Graham, Gregg, Hatch, Kyl, Lugar, McConnell, Murkowski, Voinovich, and Snowe. Seven Senators switched their votes after voting for cloture (the procedural vote was 77-23). Via The Hill's...
Read MoreEeenteresting. About a week ago, the SEC agree to cover-up bailout documents for AIG until 2018. The documents relate to the backroom bank bailout payments at top dollar to AIG counterparties -- which know-nothing Tim Geithner was grilled about today on the Hill. The leak comes as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke heads to the Hill...
Read More"You gave lame excuses then, you are giving lame excuses now."
Photoshop/CoC card set credit: Tennyson Hayes Complicit? Clueless? Incompetent? Corrupt? All of the above. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner went before Congress today to answer (or not answer) questions about his role in the AIG bailout while he was chairman of the New York Federal Reserve. (See my backgrounder on the backdoor bailout payments to AIG's...
Read MoreHard for me to suppress a snort. But here it is: John McCain -- who supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, the $25 billion auto bailout, a $300 billion mortgage bailout, and the first $85 billion AIG bailout -- has grandiosely announced that he will oppose Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's second term: So, how...
Read MoreThe question isn't why Sarah Palin is helping John McCain. The question is: What are you doing to stop him from cementing his Big Government Republican legacy? *** Conservatives: Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2010 Pay attention: In the afterglow of the Massachusetts Miracle, there are flickers of peril...
Read MoreAfter engaging in mind-boggling acts of non-stop generational theft over the past year and blowing through the debt ceiling during the Christmas holiday, the White House and Democrat majority have unveiled a phony plan to "solve" the red-ink disaster they helped create by kicking the can to a toothless panel. GOP Sen. Judd Gregg calls...
Read MorePhony fruits from a phony administration.
My column today uses the little Iron Chef-fuffle episode to examine the White House's much larger phony fruit basket. The seeds of Candidate Barack Obama's transparency pledges have instead yielded bottomless backroom deals. Here's the big lie about the Cadillac tax exemption for Big Labor. The Dems say the tax will take effect in 2018....
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