Free Republic

The family of Ameriquest Mortgage founder Roland Arnall says he has died at UCLA Medical Center. He was 68. The billionaire helped create and later emerged as a symbol of the struggling sub-prime mortgage industry. A family statement said Arnall died Monday morning but did not give the cause of death. Arnall was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands in March 2006 after an approval process that was slowed by unsettled issues regarding Ameriquest. the California-based lending company he founded in 1979. A major Republican financier, Arnall's fortune was estimated at $1.5 billion by Forbes magazine last year.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A judge refused a request by Ameriquest Mortgage Co. founder Roland Arnall to limit his ex-wife's look into his net worth as part of her attempt to get a higher divorce settlement. Sally Arnall's attorney, Vicki Greene, asked Superior Court Judge Richard E. Denner to approve a broad investigation into the finances of Arnall, who is President Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. "We want to assess all the assets that were not disclosed or undervalued," Greene said. But Leonard J. Meyberg Jr., lawyer for the Ameriquest founder, told the judge Wednesday that...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has planned a series of fundraisers from California to the East Coast next month, including a dinner with New York Gov. George Pataki, a business round table with Washington lobbyists, and a Los Angeles event where $89,200 will buy a "private briefing" for two with the governor. Schwarzenegger's fundraising blitz in Ohio, Manhattan, Washington, Los Angeles and Indian Wells, Calif., — at upscale hotels, restaurants and private homes — is intended to raise money for a possible reelection campaign and other Schwarzenegger endeavors. The Los Angeles invitation lists one of Schwarzenegger's state campaign chairmen as...