Cheat Seeking Missiles

Posted by: Laer at 08:02 am

nce again, the candidate for real change you can believe in has been caught trying to change out of his Old Chicago Hack outfit. Here’s WaPo, which busted in on the costume change:

Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. [The average at the time was 5.93 to 6 percent.] The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a “super super jumbo.” Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama’s rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

For the trust fund babies, that would be $3,600 a year - a decent enough gift even for a multi-millionaire. Oh, and the fact that Obama is not exactly a man of the people was the defense offered up by his campaign in a brilliant [not] bit of now familiar Obama crisis control. After saying Northern Trust was just competing for a special customer, Obamaton Ben LaBolt added,

“The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust.”

Three mil stashed in one place, and we don’t put all our eggs in one basket. That’ll make the bitter people of Pennsylvania less bitter, you betcha.

You might say that $300 a month is chump change for a man of Obama’s wealth. Yeah, chump change you can believe in.

Obama is just the latest of bigwig Dems caught getting juicy loan deals from lenders they (1) regulate and (2) condemn publicly. Also busted are former prez candidate Chris Dodd, who chairs the banking committee for cryin’ out loud, and North Dakota Dem Kent Conrad. Those two are the subjects of Senate ethics investigations for their loans.

Will Obama now be added to the investigation. By any reasonable measure, he should be, as the WaPo story presents a pretty clear case that this is a case of Obama benefiting financially from his office. It is not a case of failure to disclose, because the current law does not require electeds to disclose information on real estate loans. Count on that to change soon.

It’s interesting: The Obama campaign has not been steady on its feet since declaring victory in the primaries. Every day, another crisis barrels into them, so that the candidate has not be able to take any positive initiative at all, just defense, defense, defense.

Why, if the MSM seems to favor him so? Probably because Obama provides just so much low-hanging fruit that they can’t ignore it … and possibly because if there’s anything big-time reporters hate, it’s being duped.

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