At a flail-and-wail House hearing last month, California Democratic
Rep. Maxine Waters melted down in front of big banking CEOs. “Raise
your hand! Raise your hand!” she shrieked as she harangued the
executives on their business practices and management of federal
bailout money. Sneering at the “captains of the universe,” whom she
refused to address by name (”You, Bank of America!”), Waters excoriated
the corporate heads for their greed. “All of my political life,” Waters
bragged, “I have been in disagreement with the banking and mostly
financial services community because of practices that I have believed
to be not in the best interest always of the very people that they
claim to serve.”
[link to attackmachine.com]
Ms. Waters and her husband have both held financial stakes in the bank.
Until recently, her husband was a director. At the same time, Ms.
Waters has publicly boosted OneUnited’s executives and criticized its
government regulators during congressional hearings. Last fall, she
helped secure the bank a meeting with Treasury officials.
Her involvement isn’t new. Ms. Waters has detailed her financial ties
in a series of federal disclosure forms and has been vocal in public in
support of the bank. Those ties, however, have received little public
attention. Nor is it well known how the influential lawmaker has over
the years acted to support the bank and its executives.
Such potential conflicts of interest are more serious as the banking
system’s crisis has led the government to take an increasingly active
role in overseeing financial institutions, including OneUnited. The
financial-services committee on which Ms. Waters sits oversees banking
issues, and the lawmaker is a potential future chairman.
[link to hotair.com]