If the first woman doesn’t become president of the United States, isn’t it ironic that it may be due to the billionaire white woman who serves as the mastermind for the Obama fund-raising operation?
Penny Pritzker, a Chicago-based scion of the Hyatt Hotel fortune worth more than $2 billion, has helped Obama raise $188 million. That’s reported to be the largest ever for a primary race.
A weekend Wall Street Journal article is an informative piece, but reveals itself to be a “puff piece” by the way it buries the real news. Toward the end of the article is this mention about Pritzker:
Her business career hit a bump in 2001, with the costly failure of Superior Bank FSB, a Chicago-area thrift that was seized by federal regulators after it ran into problems with subprime lending. The Pritzker family held a 50% stake, and Ms. Pritzker had been on the board of the bank’s holding company. Anxious to avoid further embarrassment and liability, the Pritzkers and their co-owner settled with federal officials by agreeing to pay $460 million over 15 years. Nearly all of the funds came from the Pritzkers. Ms. Pritzker says she regrets what happened.
Some critics of Sen. Obama have cited Ms. Pritzker’s role in the bank failure, arguing that it undermines the candidate’s criticisms of subprime lenders who target low-income borrowers.
You bet it does. Read an earlier entry on this blog linking to Dennis Bernstein’s excellent piece on Pritzker. The mainstream press hasn’t really addressed it. Now that the Pritzker connection comes up as it has in the Journal, she gets a free pass from the financial world’s paper of record with a glowing piece headlined “Money Maven.” The real news is buried after the jump at the end of the story, well off the front page which coincidentally blares away about the rescue of Bear Stearns.
Isn’t the subprime mess related to what got Bear into its mess in the first place? Sure it is. Pritzker’s past shouldn’t be excused as old news. And when subprime is driving the economic distress in the U.S. , how can it not be addressed by either the paper or the Obama?
If the Journal wasn’t trying to sugar coat Pritzker, it would have more prominently connected Bear’s rescue with the bailout and seizure of the Pritzker’s Superior Bank FSB.
But why connect all the dots? We’ll do it for you.
Of course, you won’t see Obama react to Pritzker’s past either.
Aides and confidants can call Hillary a monster (Samantha Power), or say politically incorrect things about race and 9/11( Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and can be expected to get publicly dumped by the candidate.But subprime Pritzker? She’s pure gold to Obama.
An untouchable.
As they say, campaign donations’ are the mother’s milk of politics.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120554763760338773.html