American Thinker reported on the role of Herbert and Marion Sandler in the collapse of Wachovia Bank and in America’s housing crisis in this article ("How Allies of George Soros helped to bring down Wachovia Bank") months ago.
The Sandlers have taken the fortune they gained when they sold their California-based savings and loan and funded a wide variety of liberal and ultra-liberal causes, often in tandem with George Soros. The article was credited with inspiring the now controversial Saturday Night live skit that implicated the Sandlers in the housing crisis) and that noted George Soros as being the “owner” of the Democratic Party. The skit was controversial and was redacted to remove some of the material. An unedited version can be found here The Sandlers long viewed themselves - and were viewed by many others - as the mortgage industry's model citizens. Now they too have been swept into the maelstrom surrounding who is to blame for the housing bust and the growing number of home foreclosures.
Once invited by Congress to testify about good lending practices, the Sandlers were recently parodied on "Saturday Night Live" as greedy bankers who handily sold their bank - and pocketed $2.3 billion in shares and cash - in 2006 before many of their loans began to sour.
Last month, the United States attorney's office in San Francisco announced dual inquiries into whether World Savings engaged in predatory lending practices or misled investors about its financial well-being. And the bank has been sued by numerous borrowers who claim they were misled into taking out mortgages they could not afford.
One wonders what took the Times so long to cover a story vital to the housing crisis but then, publishing it on Christmas Eve in the Business Section rather than making it front page news is perhaps one of the major reasons the Times faces such business problems of its own.
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