SUB PRIME QUEEN GIVEN TOP OBAMA JOB

OBAMA NOMINATES PENNY “SUB-PRIME” PRITZKER FOR COMMERCE SECRETARY. SUB PRIME QUEEN GIVEN TOP OBAMA JOB REWARDS FOR CRONIES EDITOR’S NOTE: This report originally appeared on suntimes.com in 2008, written by former Sun-Times political reporter Abdon Pallasch. “Part of the reason we got a current mortgage crisis has to do with the fact that people got suckered in to loans that they could not pay,” he told a crowd in Reading, Pa., last week. “There were a lot of predatory loans that were given out, a lot of teaser rates. Banks and financial institutions making these loans were making money hand over fist.” One of the banks that went under after making a lot of subprime loans -- leaving 1,400 of its customers without part of their savings -- was Chicago’s Superior Bank. At the helm of Superior Bank at least some of the time was Obama’s national finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker, an heiress to the Pritzker fortune. But a letter obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows that until the end, Pritzker appeared to be taking a leadership role in trying to revive the bank with an expanded push into subprime loans. Pritzker wrote in May 2001 that her family was recapitalizing the bank, and she pledged to “once again restore Superior’s leadership position in subprime lending.” The bank shut down in July 2001. .....“They still owe me $113,000,” said Fran Sweet, 63, of Downers Grove, who deposited her $480,000 retirement account at Superior a month before it collapsed. “To the Pritzkers, this is nothing. They probably think, ‘Why pay her back?’ That’s nothing. But we’re all upset that someone who made these decisions could be in that position.” Judging from the record-breaking job Pritzker has done raising money for Obama’s campaign, her fund-raising skills do not appear to be in question, but Sweet said it sends the wrong message.