Thanks.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2467531/posts
Obama and Giannoulias) Banking on Corruption In The Windy City
Investor’s Business Daily ^ | March 9, 2009 | Investor’s Business Daily staff
Posted on Tuesday, March 09,
Politics: Another bank failure is nothing new these days — except if the bank is run by the family of a U.S. Senate candidate who profited handsomely and lent millions to a convicted felon. But then, that’s the Chicago way.
‘I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,” President Obama said in a recent interview with “60 Minutes.” Speaking to those bankers, he said: “You guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it’s gone through in — in decades, and you guys caused the problem.”
Not all those fat cats, apparently, are on Wall Street. Some are on Main Street in the president’s hometown. One of those “guys” recently won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Obama.
He’s an Obama protege and fundraiser. His name is Alexi Giannoulias, and his family runs the Broadway Bank in Chicago, a financially troubled institution that the feds appear ready to seize and shut down. He is running for U.S. Senate from Illinois.
Last Friday, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that the Giannoulias family stood to collect more than $10 million in federal tax refunds even if the bank does fail. “It’s quite likely the bank will fail,” the Chicago Tribune reported Giannoulias as saying last Wednesday, unless “they can raise the capital to keep the bank going,” an amount estimated at $85 million
Posted 03/09/2010 06:57 PM ET
from: second page of above.
One of the people Giannoulias cared about, apparently, was Michael “Jaws” Giorango, a Chicagoan with multiple convictions for bookmaking and promoting prostitution. As Ed Morrissey reported when he ran his Captain’s Quarters blog, Giannoulias approved some $11.8 million in loans to Giorango and associates after Giorango was convicted in 2004 for running a prostitution ring.
In answering questions about Broadway’s loans to Giorango during a 70-minute meeting with the Tribune editorial board, Giannoulias, the newspaper reported, “at first contended he was unaware of Giorango’s criminal history. That contradicted Giannoulias’ comments in 2006 to the Tribune, in which he acknowledged knowing Giorango had a criminal background.”