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Very interesting, lainie. More about CDR, Broken Promises , November 2006

"Wall Street created $7 billion in bonds for housing and schools. The tax-exempt deals were a ruse; banks and advisers collected millions in fees and investment gains. The public got nothing. "...........

........."During the past decade, local governments across the U.S. have issued more than 70 of these phantom bonds -- at least $7 billion of them." ......Proceeds from the tax-exempt bond sales are supposed to be used to improve homes for the poor or upgrade health care for the elderly or supply computers to inner-city schools. "....

......"Taxpayers never get most of those benefits; the winners are the banks, insurance companies and financial advisers that get paid millions of dollars for crafting these transactions and then profit by using bond proceeds for their own investment gains...."

....."Black Box Deals --The arrangements -- often called black box deals, because they're complicated and mysterious -- sometimes contain secret agreements that promise to pay the financial middlemen higher fees if none of the money from the bond offerings is used to help the public. The agencies that issue the bonds buy them back from investors. The money goes untapped, and the advisers keep their fees. "...

....."The Fees --- In the Florida deal, a little-known government body called the Capital Trust Agency turned the work over to its advisers: Anchor National Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of AIG; CDR Financial Products Inc., a Beverly Hills, California-based financial advisory firm; and underwriter JPMorgan. These companies and other middlemen extracted $12 million in fees from the bond issue; the rest of the money went unused.

The AIG unit and CDR had an agreement the agency says it didn't know about that allowed CDR to increase its fees as long as the money wasn't spent for its intended purpose, according to a Nov. 18, 1999, letter from CDR President David Rubin to AIG's Anchor National Vice President J. Franklin Grey.

The less money that was used to acquire and renovate apartments, the more money CDR stood to make, and the less risk AIG's affiliate faced as an insurer since all of the money stayed in a safe account. ".............

No wonder they were doing the pay to play stuff. Quite lucrative!

Maybe this is why he's steppin' down?

Obama's own Cabinet member: He's an immigrant

Posted: December 09, 2008

Don't believe Barack Obama's grandmother? Don't believe the ambassador to Kenya? How about Barack Obama's own Cabinet member?

That's right – former presidential candidate and Obama's choice for secretary of commerce, Gov. Bill Richardson, slipped up. In an effort to reach out to the Hispanic community, he admitted what Barack Obama has been trying to hide all these months: "Barack Obama is an immigrant." See it for yourself:

You don't need a translator to understand what Richardson admitted: Barack Obama is NOT a natural born citizen. That means we have a guy who's planning to take over the White House who is in direct violation of the Constitution. And his own Cabinet member says so. That's pretty big news, one would think. But the media has refused to cover it with anything more than a blurb laced with a "this is ridiculous" tone. It is ridiculous – ridiculous that the Constitution means so little that we can't even ensure that it's being followed. It's ridiculous that the story of the century is being ignored by those whose job it is to report it.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83114

http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1248&posts=2

Interesting that all these same names keep coming up, isn’t it? AIG, JPMorgan, Lehman, Bear Stearns, BoA...