If there is one thing Obama has been very good at, it’s been covering his tracks. This time, I believe I have made a link that is undeniable to his knowledge and possible participation in the real estate dealings and the corruption in Chicago. His links to not so savory individuals and friends have supported almost every attempt for political office he has ever made. It is amazing how someone who came from nowhere has risen to the position of power in such a short time. He stands to lose much, if Tony Rezko actually tells all he knows as his Federal sentence is about to be imposed. Possibly he is playing “lets make a deal” in exchange for bringing down the house on Chicago real estate ventures at public expense. Everywhere you turn, the major players are tied directly to Sen. Obama.

First, let’s start with the Superior Bank in Chicago. That bank failed directly under the control of Penny Pritzker. She is Obama’s Campaign Finance Chairman and has been instrumental in raising millions for his campaign. The regulators closed Superior Bank in 2001 because of a vast number of sub-prime mortgage loans. She took over a failed savings and loan in 1988 and it was renamed Superior Bank. 

During the years of that Obama was actively in Chicago as a community organizer, one interesting person comes into the picture. Stanley Kurts reports this in his N.Y. Post article:

ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an “affirmative-action lending policy.” The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the “community support requirements” of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting – for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s program as “affirma- tive-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks “kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed – Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.”

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae – which had agreed to buy up the loans. “If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.” 

This was exactly the time frame Superior Bank was very active in the sub-prime lending and no doubt, Obama knew exactly who Penny Pritzker was and her involvement in the ACORN sponsored lending practices. Another direct link early on to Obama is with another foundation that Pritzker in involved in. Pritzker is very much involved in the reform of Chicago’s public education system. Currently she is vice chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund, the successor organization to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the same Board Sen. Obama served with William Ayers.

Obama no doubt needed the financial backing of the Pritzker’s. They are the owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain and Obama had inside connections.  David Mendell recalled in his 2007 book Obama: From Promise To Power: (more…)