[hoosiermama]

Are any of these people related to CHicago or Obama? COuntry wide seems to stickin mymind for some reason.

FROM:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/business/25sandler.html?_r=1
SAN FRANCISCO — Herbert Sandler, the founder of the Center for Responsible Lending,......

...Last month, the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco announced dual inquiries into whether World Savings engaged in predatory lending practices or misled investors about its financial well-being. And the bank has been sued by numerous borrowers who claim they were misled into taking out mortgages they could not afford. .....

LONG article with much information abour Wachovia purchase and problems that have arisen....Several names....to cross check.

[Tainan]

http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/

Links to this blog are also posted at #s 20,46, 87, 114, 116, 185 and 188.

[Army Air Corps]

"According to New York Times reporter Matt Bai, the Sandlers, along with Democratic donors George Soros and Peter Lewis established America Votes "to coordinate various get-out-the-vote drives during the 2004 election". The Sandlers also sent their son-in-law Steven Phillips as their representative to the October 2005 meeting of the Democracy Alliance at the Chateau Elan near Atlanta Georgia."

The Sandler's have also made donations to (drum roll, please)...ACORN.

Here are their other pet organisations to which they have donated cashola:

Moveon.org ProPublica America Votes Center for American Progress Human Rights Watch Oceana

There is also some interesting info from the 30 June 2008 edition of Businessweek. The Sandlers are credited with the invention of the "Pick-A-Pay" mortgage that allowed borrowers to pay less than the interest due on their loan each month -- which increased the total amount owed by the borrower. Analysts place the blame on the near failure of Wachovia in the fall of 2008 on the "Pick-A-Pay" mortgage portfolio Wachovia acquired from the Sandler's Golden West Financial (Golden West operated bank branches under the name World Savings Bank).

[Army Air Corps]

There is more on the Sandlers. The Sandlers sold their firm at the top of the market, saying that they were growing older and wanted to devote themselves to philanthropy. A year earlier, in 2005, World Savings lending had started to slow, after more than quadrupling since 1998. Some current and former Wachovia officials say that the merger was agreed to in days and that it was impossible to conduct a thorough vetting of World Savings’ loans. They noted that the creditworthiness of World Savings borrowers edged down from 2004 to 2006, while Pick-A-Pay borrowers had credit scores well below the industry average for traditional loans. There is more in the 24 December 2008 New York Times.

[Army Air Corps]

From the opening paragraphs of the 24 December 2008 edition of the New York Times:

“SAN FRANCISCO — Herbert Sandler, the founder of the Center for Responsible Lending, is standing in his bayfront office watching a DVD that trains brokers to pitch mortgages by extolling the glories of the real estate boom.

The video reeks of hucksterism, and it infuriates Mr. Sandler.

‘I would not have approved that!’ he declares. ‘I don’t think we should be selling our loans based on home prices continuing to go up.’

But the DVD was produced in 2005 by a mortgage lender that Mr. Sandler and his wife, Marion, ran at the time: World Savings Bank. And the video was a small part of a broad and aggressive effort by their company to market risky loans at the height of the housing bubble.”

[Army Air Corps]

More from yesterday’s New York Times:

“Once invited by Congress to testify about good lending practices, the Sandlers were recently parodied on ‘Saturday Night Live’ as greedy bankers who handily sold their bank — and pocketed $2.3 billion in shares and cash — in 2006 before many of their loans began to sour.

Last month, the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco announced dual inquiries into whether World Savings engaged in predatory lending practices or misled investors about its financial well-being. And the bank has been sued by numerous borrowers who claim they were misled into taking out mortgages they could not afford.

At the center of the controversy is an exotic but popular mortgage the Sandlers pioneered that helped generate billions of dollars of revenue at their bank.”

[Army Air Corps]

Most analysts now agree that the acquisition of Golden West spelled the end for Wachovia.

[Army Air Corps]

Here is a dandy chart from Muckety.org