BAIR MUST RESIGN: Conflict Of Interest
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
Sheila Bair, one of the chief regulators overseeing Bank of America’s federal rescue, took out two mortgages worth more than $1 million from the banking giant last summer during ongoing negotiations about the bank’s bailout and its repayment.
It gets better…
Mortgage documents for that 14-room home include a provision, known as a second-home rider, stating that Bair and her husband must keep the house for their “exclusive use and enjoyment” and may not use it as a rental or timeshare.
Yet the couple has been renting out part of the house since they left for Washington, with Bair listing income from the “rental property” in Amherst as between $15,000 and $50,000 a year on her most recent financial disclosure form as head of the FDIC.
Oh yeah, there’s no conflict of interest here cough-friends-of-angelo-cough!
Of course the FDIC retroactively gave her a waiver from its conflict of interest rules – AFTER The Huffington Post started snooping around.
And of course the FDIC’s ethics officer says there was nothing wrong with what went on – even though it appears that Bair’s use for the property did not qualify for the loan she got, and that the programs that would qualify would and did carry a higher rate.
If, as the FDIC claims, this was an "innocent mistake" then Bair should immediately demand (and accept) a re-price on that paper to conform with her intended and actual use, retroactive to the issue of the loan, and immediately pay all accrued arrears.
We know that won’t happen though, right?
