Posted on 03/26/2009 5:43:49 AM PDT by Timeout
Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.
One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
The Trib still treads softly on Emanuel's amazing success as an investment banker....he raked in $18 million in just 2 1/2 years upon leaving the Clinton WH. The guy who hired him is a fat cat Dem donor with an investment bank in Chicago. In essence, Emanuel "leveraged" his political influence to get public pension funds to direct money to this guy's fund.
The NY Times covered all this in Dec. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04emanuel.html
But their short memories never recalled any of this as they were pounding away at the "unjustified riches" going to today's executives.
He should be forced to give it back.
Or the legislators should pass a retroactive tax taking 90% of it.
And let’s hope ACORN buses in lots of protesters to his front door.
(no link)
NewsBank
Emanuel ‘s cash clash - Emanuel ‘s trust is supposed to be blind, not stupid.
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, August 14, 2003
Author: Lynn Sweet
Freshman Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a former Freddie Mac board member, sits on the very House subcommittee that has oversight of the federal government-sponsored enterprise at the same time that he has outstanding options for 2,500 shares of the company.
Emanuel told me he has no problem because he put his holdings into a blind trust and plans to recuse himself from any votes relating to Freddie Mac . “I chose to do something you don’t have to do,” he said, as if he deserved extra points. “I feel good about the actions I’ve taken to date,” he added.
Emanuel had no business getting on the Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises subcommittee as long as he had the Freddie Mac options—in blind trust or not.
It would have been better if Emanuel sold the Freddie Mac shares he already owned before being sworn in last January and told Freddie Mac to forget about any future options to which he may be entitled. It’s not like Emanuel did much to earn those options, and he already has received more than $300,000 from Freddie Mac just for attending a few meetings.
Emanuel ‘s former boss, President Bill Clinton, appointed his former senior adviser to the plum seat, and Emanuel served from March 2, 2000, to May 3, 2001. The main job of a board member, Emanuel told me, is to attend quarterly board meetings and take part in committee meetings, either on the phone or in person.
For a mere 14 months on the board, Emanuel was paid director’s fees and given stock as a gift. The package totaled $292,774 in 2001, according to the disclosure statement Emanuel filed in 2002.
That’s not all. A Freddie Mac appointment is the gift that keeps on giving.
The disclosure Emanuel filed on May 15 reveals that Emanuel exercised a Freddie Mac stock option in 2002 that resulted in $27,280 in income.
Emanuel ‘s office confirmed that the options for 2,500 more shares will come up this fall and next spring. That means that the administrator of Emanuel ‘s blind trust over at LaSalle Bank will have the option of buying the 2,500 shares at the “strike price” of $40.09, no matter how high the stock is selling. I can’t imagine why any administrator of a blind trust would buy shares if the Freddie Mac stock was selling for less than $40.09 or if the company, created with a congressional charter, faced a dubious future. Emanuel ‘s trust is supposed to be blind, not stupid. On Wednesday, Freddie Mac shares closed at $50.20.
The Freddie Mac pop is on top of $9,678,775 in deferred income from what was Emanuel ‘s regular job before coming to Congress, as a deal maker in the investment banking firm of Wasserstein Peralla. Emanuel made most of that money in the three years after he left the White House.
(snip)
Should White House Employees Keep Bonuses?
Some animals are more equal than others, eh?
How do these people continue to escape scrutiny? It’s not like it’s HARD to find any of this on the web. Yeesh!
Oh, that’s right. The Media is in the tank for the ‘Rats.
Silly me!
That place was a reward for loyal service in the Clinton administration.
They did nothing except network with other democrats until another more lucrative job came available or they were able to set up yet another “think tank” funded by Soros.
$9,678,775
The NY Times says he “went on to make more than $18 million” in those two+ years.
That’s quite a discrepancy.
You must understand their culture, the culture of Ci-cago!
Oh, but I’m sure that Charles Grassley will be making a big stink about this on Capitol Hill sometime soon, really standing up for us Republicans.......
I am so sick of our leadership. I seriously cannot think of a single Republican in Congress that is worth a sh!t to any of us. Sellouts, wusses, infiltrators, weasels. That’s it. Emmanuel did this because Emmanuel knew he would get away with it. So did Jamie Gorelick, so did Franklin Raines, so did Jim Johnson, so did Christopher Dodd, so did Barnie Frank, so did all of them. And no one on our side has the guts to do anything about it. Until one of us does.
Too much money a bad thing? - 5th District House candidate Rahm Emanuel tested voter reaction to $6 million salary
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, January 3, 2002
Author: Lynn Sweet
Rahm Emanuel is positioning himself as a populist in the Democratic primary campaign for the House, but the brash former Clinton White House senior adviser earned an astounding $8 million in the last two years, with at least another $2 million on deck for 2002.
On top of that, financial disclosure statements filed with the U.S. House dated Dec. 20 reveal that Emanuel ‘s extensive portfolio was valued between $4 million and about $12 million, under rules which only require a general range of assets to be reported.
(snip)
Emanuel , 42, a former fund-raiser for Clinton and Mayor Daley, is making his debut as a candidate in the 5th Congressional District March 19 primary, where his main rival is former state Rep. Nancy Kaszak. Her earned income amounted to $203,712 for the last two years. Her assets were valued at between $64,000 and $260,000. She also is making public six years of income tax returns. Emanuel said he will also release his tax returns.
Most of Emanuel ‘s income in 2001 came from a $6,491,000 salary he pulled down as managing director of the investment banking firm of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. In the preceding year, the firm paid him $1,006,510.
If he stays with the company for most of 2002, he'll pocket another $2 million, he said.
Clinton's going-away gift to Emanuel was a seat on the quasi-governmental Freddie Mac board, which paid him $231,655 in director's fees in 2001 and $31,060 in 2000. Young and Rubicam, the ad agency, named Emanuel to its advisory board and paid him $128,500 last year and $124,750 the year before. Adjunct professors, take note: Northwestern University paid alum Emanuel $20,000 in 2000 to teach a course one quarter on the press and the presidency. He also made $33,500 on the lecture circuit in 2000.
Much of the big cash came from Emanuel ‘s work on the merger between Chicago-based Unicom Corp., Commonwealth Edison's parent holding company, and Peco Energy. Yes, 2001 was a very good year for Emanuel . While the deal that created Exelon bestowed a windfall on Emanuel , the newly merged utility ended up laying off 3,350 workers, or 10 percent of its work force.
The disclosure also shows that another client Emanuel brought to his firm was Avolar, the new time-share business jet subsidiary of UAL Corp., the parent of United Airlines. Avolar’s CEO is Stuart Oran, who is a friend of Emanuel ‘s campaign treasurer, William Singer. Singer, based in Chicago, is a Washington lobbyist, and United is one of his clients. Singer is also a fund-raiser for Senate Democrats.
I know Singer and Emanuel are close pals, but installing Singer as campaign treasurer shows a lack of political judgment or an ethical blind spot or both. O'Hare expansion is one of Chicago's biggest issues before Congress; at a national level, Congress is very involved in keeping the airline industry safe and solvent. United has a big stake in Congress.
(snip)
If there is any doubt about the true purpose of the stimulus bill, let it go. It's all about redistributing wealth not to the disadvantaged poor, but to the cohorts, co-conspirators, inlaws, cousins, wives, girlfriends, blackmailers, college buddies, and every crooked associate of the Obamas, Clintons, Daschles, Rangels, Conyers, Murthas, Dodds, Pelosis, Reids..(this is gonna be a long list).
They probably do - he throws them a party and doles out the post-riot beers and cigs for payment.
That’s what I thought.
Sounds like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nothing more than entities providing cushy non-jobs and exorbitant pay (pay-offs?) to political appointees, but Emmanuel's $324K pales in comparison to the over $20 million bonus that Jamie Gorelick pulled down.
Actually, my favorite Rahm Emanuel scam (of many) is the magnificent property tax-free mansion he lives in owned by the Rahm Emanuel Foundation.
You or I would be doing the perp walk in handcuffs if we ever tried this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110604006_pf.html
On his 2003 disclosure, he listed $9,678,775 from the firm
.............
At Bank, Obama Aide Made Money and Ties
New York Times, The (NY) - Thursday, December 4, 2008
Author: MICHAEL LUO
EXCERPT
Mr. Emanuel ‘s biggest transaction came in late 1999 when he landed an advisory role for Wasserstein in the $8.2 billion merger of two utility companies, Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, and Peco Energy, to create Exelon, now one of the nation’s largest power companies.
John W. Rowe, the former chief executive of Unicom who now holds the same position at Exelon, sought out Mr. Emanuel after he went to Wasserstein. Mr. Rowe said he believed Mr. Emanuel would offer a different dimension, providing wisdom on what might pass muster at the governmental level.
“You can’t understand utility transactions without thinking about whether they’ll play or not play in legal and political circles,” said Mr. Rowe, who was first introduced to Mr. Emanuel by Lester Crown, the billionaire scion of Chicago’s influential Crown family.
Tax returns Mr. Emanuel released while first running for office and reported in news articles, along with Congressional financial disclosures, reveal his steep financial ascent while working at Wasserstein. He earned more than $900,000 in 1999, his first year at the firm; nearly $1.4 million in 2000; and $6.5 million in 2001, when he left the firm in midyear to run for Congress. He collected $9.7 million more from the firm in deferred compensation in 2002.
Mr. Emanuel ‘s annual salary was not especially large but his hefty paydays came from bonuses for the business he brought in , as is customary in investment banking , along with the company’s sale in 2001 to the German Dresdner Bank, which allowed him to benefit from an equity stake, as well a large retention bonus paid to him based on his prior performance.
The bonanza Mr. Emanuel reaped would come in handy when he ran for the House seat vacated by Representative Rod R. Blagojevich, now governor.
Mr. Emanuel contributed $450,000 out of his own pocket to his campaign in the primary, and his leading rival accused him of trying to buy a seat in Congress.
TWO-TIER TAX: PAYERS - AND BAM'S PLAYERS (limousine liberalism meets senatorial entitlement)
See also Commonwealth Edison/Axelrod/Obama connections
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2129244/posts
NRG rejects Exelon’s takeover bid (Obama/Axelrod connection)
Very interesting!
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