Joining his fellow Democrats Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad, it appears Barack Hussein Obama also took advantage of senatorial privilege when it came to getting a home loan on his Chicago mansion:
The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an
interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the
average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large,
known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or
discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.
Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's
rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors. "The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust," he said in a statement. {..}
Within Obama's presidential campaign organization, former Fannie Mae
chief executive James A. Johnson resigned abruptly as head of the vice
presidential search committee after his favorable Countrywide loan became
public.
Driving the recent debate is concern that public officials, knowingly or unknowingly, may receive special treatment from lenders and that the discounts could constitute gifts that are prohibited by law.
In Obama's case, he received a lower rate than the average offered at the time in
Chicago for similarly structured jumbo loans. He secured his final mortgage
commitment on June 8, 2005, and during that week, rates on similar loans for
which information is available averaged 5.93 percent, according to HSH
Associates, which surveys lenders. Another survey firm, Bankrate.com, placed the
average at 6 percent.
The Obama campaign called the rate "consistent with Northern Trust policies, and it reflected the base rate set for that period discounted to address the competition for the account and other opportunities, such as personal financial services, that the relationship would bring to Northern Trust."
"Other opportunities"....hmmm.
Obama's Chicago mansion is already the subject of just a little bit of controversy.
The Obamas apparently bought the place for $300,000 less than the $1.95 million asking price at the height of the real estate boom in 2006, something just a little bit unusual in a seller's market with prices on the upswing.On the same day the Obamas closed, the wife of Obama's chief fundraiser Tony Rezco closed on an adjoining side lot for the full asking price of $625,000. Rita Rezko later sold a portion of that undeveloped lot to the Obamas at a deep discount.
Rezco, of course, has already been convicted of 16 counts of influence-peddling and corruption.
Accountability - hey, it's for the little people.
the prospect of Obama becoming president is frightening. I feel there is a large group of people who are waiting for this event to start a war, these would be both the white and black supremacists. The whole campaign is based on race priviledge and it is radicalizing this country.
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