It was in August of 2010 that the House Ethics Committee decided to proceed with charges against California Congresswoman Maxine Waters for contriving to procure “special favors” for the Massachusetts-based OneUnited Bank. And although “Waters has done her damnedest during [these] three years to exploit as many legal technicalities as possible to try to get the investigation halted…” it now looks as though the jig might finally be up.

In 2008, Representative Waters set up a meeting between officials of the Treasury Department and members of a “trade association” of minority-owned banks. The meeting, however, consisted almost exclusively of OneUnited Bank executives who, to the surprise of the Treasury people, asked them for a $50 million dollar loan!

It seems the minority-owned OneUnited was in trouble. It also seems Maxine Waters’ husband, Sidney Williams, was on the board of OneUnited and owned $350,000 worth of the bank’s stock–stock that would have been worthless if the bank failed. The Congresswoman forgot to mention this minor point to Treasury when arranging the get-together.

Now who came to Waters’ assistance but Rush Limbaugh’s “Banking Queen,” Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank? Advising the congresswoman that her involvement in the affair might not look so hot to the House Ethics Committee, Frank offered to do the dirty work for her as OneUnited Bank was, after all, in his district. Frank later told the Committee:

“I said, look, it’s a Boston institution. You should stay out of it. It’s a legitimate constituency thing for me. You should stay away from this. It’s a legitimate thing for me to do, and you shouldn’t be involved,” Frank told the Globe, recounting his conversations with Waters.

Although it is against House rules to “use one’s power as a member for personal financial gain,” it’s apparently just FINE if one of your House colleagues does it FOR you.

At this point, Waters’ Chief of Staff—and grandson—Mikael Moore decided to lend a hand. He addressed numerous emails to the House Financial Services Committee, “…discussing with committee members details of a bank bailout bill apparently after Ms. Waters agreed to refrain from advocating on the bank’s behalf. The bailout bill had provisions that ultimately benefited OneUnited…” 

Read More at Western Journalism. By Doug Book.

Although President Obama declined to comment on the recall election between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett during last Friday’s news conference, he didn’t mind talking about it yesterday with a reporter from ABC’s Green Bay, Wis., affiliate WBAY.

“I‘d like to ask you about Wisconsin’s recall election. There are a lot of Democrats that are upset you didn’t campaign for Tom Barrett,” reporter Matt Smith asked in reference to the fact that the only piece of endorsement Barrett received from the president was a 112-character Tweet.

“The truth of the matter is that as President of The United States, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities,” President Obama responded.

“I was supportive of Tom and have been supportive of Tom. Obviously, I would have loved to see a different result. But the broader principle is that we want an economy that is not focused on a few at the top but is a broad-based economy that invests in our future, that makes sure we’ve got a strong education system that is thinking about workers and their ability to pay their bills, is something in everything I do,” he added.

See the WBAY interview here [starts at the 0:46 mark]:

Did he just say he was too busy to campaign for Barrett?

Read More at the Blaze.

Only this one may not even succeed in buying time – I give it less than a month before some such other piece of bad news comes along to fire the crisis anew. Like all the others, the latest fix seems to create as many problems as it solves. The euphoria in markets at Spain’s rescue lasted all of a few hours; having bounded away at the opening, they ended broadly flat.

But please don’t call it a bail-out. It may walk, talk and look like a bail-out, but to the Spanish premier, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s handout is completely different to the three rescues we’ve already seen, even though at €100bn (£81bn)– or some 10pc of Spanish GDP – it’s quite a bit larger than that of Ireland and Portugal.

No doubt mindful of the fact that every political leader who has agreed on a bailout to date has been defenestrated soon afterwards, Mr Rajoy has attempted to snatch victory from the jaws of humiliation by proclaiming the €100bn of aid an unparalleled triumph. Don Quixote himself would have struggled to see such majesty in all too self evident defeat.

To Mr Rajoy, however, the Spanish aid is no more than “the opening of a line of credit for our financial system”, which because Spain has been such an exemplary to others in accepting austerity without complaint, has been offered more or less unconditionally. I suspect Mr Rajoy is in for a bit of a shock once he sees the fine print, but for him, the important thing is getting it across to his electorate that Spain is not being bailed out. Honour has to be seen to be maintained.

Unfortunately, the reality is altogether different. This is not a direct line of credit to the Spanish banking system, but a sovereign loan which expands the national debt by getting on for 20pc. The fact that all of it is going to be used to prop up the banking sector is no more than cosmetic for an underlying truth – that it is Spanish taxpayers who are left with the liability. Spain is being forced to borrow from Europe to bailout its banks because markets won’t provide the money directly to Spain.

Read More at The Telegraph. By Jeremy Warner.