(ProsperNews.net) – President Biden has nominated Penny Pritzker, a billionaire who failed to win a cabinet seat in 2008 because of her involvement in a subprime mortgage collapse, to help Ukraine recover economically. Pritzker is a close associate of President Obama and the heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune. She was an executive with Superior Bank, which failed in 2001.
Superior Bank’s collapse led to a $15 million loss for its depositors, and its executives, including Pritzker, blamed the collapse on “inaccurate audits and inattentive regulators.” However, when placed under the microscope, Superior was found to have engaged in the reckless lending practices that characterized the later crash in 2008 and had done so as far back as the 1990s.
Financial expert Bert Ely testified to the Senate Banking Committee in 2001 and said Superior Bank was a “dumping ground for low-quality, and possibly predacious, mortgages.” Pritzker held leadership roles, including chairwoman, throughout the 1990s.
The Government Accounting Office, in a 2002 report, found the bank’s failure was primarily the fault of its owners and managers.
Nevertheless, she was appointed Secretary of Commerce by the Obama administration in 2012. While at the department, she visited Ukraine to offer the administration’s “sustained commitment to supporting the Ukrainian government and people and helping strengthen the Ukrainian economy.” During her tenure, then-Vice President Biden threatened President Petro Poroshenko, telling him he must fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin or the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in US loan guarantees.
Biden bragged how he told Poroshenko, “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” It would later emerge that the prosecutor in question was investigating the gas firm Burisma Holdings on suspicion of corruption. Burisma Holdings employed Hunter Biden – despite his lack of experience or expertise in the gas industry – and paid him $83,000 per month. Two months after Biden left office, Burisma cut Hunter Biden’s salary in half. He left the Burisma board in 2019.
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