The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both have stories today on Maxine Waters and her connection to OneUnited, a bank that received $12 million in federal funds.
The Times' account has extensive details about a meeting Waters arranged last fall in which OneUnited officers asked the Treasury Department for a massive bailout. This struck the Treasury officials as improper:
The Times' account has extensive details about a meeting Waters arranged last fall in which OneUnited officers asked the Treasury Department for a massive bailout. This struck the Treasury officials as improper:
"Here you had a tiny community bank that comes in and they are not proposing a broader policy -- they were asking for help for themselves," said Steve Lineberry, a former Treasury aide who attended the meeting. "I don't remember that ever happening before."Waters' husband, Sidney Williams, has served as a director of the minority-owned bank, and both he and Waters have owned shares in it. That particularly galled the Treasury officials:
The bank, which had lost $50 million due to the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, did not get the massive bailout it sought. Instead, it got $12 million in TARP funds in December. Treasury officials say there was nothing untoward about that transaction."It angers me," said one former Treasury official, asking that his name not be used because he had not been authorized while at Treasury to speak about the gathering. "You got to know you have to be careful when you are dealing with people who you have personal relations with."
Maxine oh Maxine
Somebody in the family caught in the cookie jar
No white cookies and no jewish cookies
Only big black cookies
Mrs Ethics Right?
Ya Sure.
In January, Ms. Waters acknowledged she made a call to the Treasury on OneUnited's behalf. The bank's capital, which was heavily invested in shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was all but wiped out with the federal takeover of the two mortgage giants, and the bank was seeking help from regulators.
OneUnited eventually secured bailout funds under the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was set up later that month.
Meanwhile, in October the company was ordered to stop paying for a Porsche for one of its executives, as well as a beachfront home in California. Lovely.