By Pam Martens: May 10, 2013
Penny Pritzker, the President's Nominee to Head the U.S. Commerce Department
President Obama adds to the rising stench of his nominations to the U.S. Treasury and Securities and Exchange Commission with the nomination of the billionaire Hilton Hotel heiress, Penny Pritzker, to be the next U.S. Commerce Secretary.
With the confirmed nominations of Mary Jo White as Chair of the SEC, Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary and now the nomination of Pritzker to lead Commerce, the President is sending the chilling message to the Nation’s young people that it’s legal if you can get away with it; and if you get away with enough and get rich enough, the President of the United States admires that and you can join the power elite. Building a career through honesty and hard work is for suckers.
Jack Lew, the President’s pick for Treasury, was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed the bank in 2008. He then accepted a personal bonus for himself of $940,000 out of taxpayer bailout funds paid to Citigroup. Lew also invested in a tax dodge in the Cayman Islands. Before that, Lew played a key role in busting a grad students union at New York University while buying a mansion with over $1 million in forgivable loans from the tax subsidized university.
Mary Jo White, installed by the President as Chair of the SEC, and her husband, John W. White, have legally represented the largest Wall Street firms that have been serially charged with looting the public. Mary Jo White came from the corporate law firm Debevoise and Plimpton; her husband is a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 208, the basic criminal conflict of interest statute, an executive branch employee is prohibited from participating personally and substantially in a particular Government matter that will affect his own financial interests, as well as the financial interests of his spouse. Effectively, the SEC is now too conflicted to function – exactly the way that Wall Street likes it.
According to the 2013 Forbes list of billionaires, Penny Pritzker has a net worth of $1.85 billion. She is heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune and serves on its Board. The company is the target of a global boycott campaign for alleged abuse of its housekeepers, hazardous working conditions and anti-union activities. Supporters of the boycott include the National Organization for Women, the NFL Players Association, the National Council of La Raza and over 5,000 social justice organizations and individuals.
The U.S. Commerce department, which Pritzker will head if confirmed, states that its mission is to promote “progressive business policies that help America’s businesses and entrepreneurs and their communities grow and succeed.” Anti-union activities were once considered not a “progressive business” policy.
Pritzker also joins Lew in having among her career highlights the collapse of a major bank. In 1988, Penny Pritzker’s uncle, Jay Pritzker, and his long time friend, Alvin Dworman, acquired a failing thrift, the Lyons Savings Bank of Countryside, Illinois. The bank was renamed Superior Bank. This occurred during the time that the Federal Home Loan Bank Board was attempting to conceal the savings and loan crisis. The Board gave Pritzker and Dworman a sweetheart deal. The two put up $21.25 million each and bought bank assets of $1.5 billion. According to media reports, the deal also garnered $645 million in tax credits.
Penny Pritzker served as the Chair of the bank and later served on the Board of its holding company as the bank went on a subprime loan securitization binge and used accounting tricks to hide its enormous losses. In 2001, Superior collapsed. The Government Accountability Office assigned the collapse to bad management.
How is this Democratic President, elected twice by progressives, unions and minorities, getting away with this sell out of his base?
In Obama’s first run for the Presidency, he spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing to cast himself as the candidate of hope and change. I wasn’t buying it then and neither was the Black Agenda Report. Bruce Dixon, Managing Editor, wrote at the time:
“The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That’s not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience.”
It is “irrational” to observe these nominations by the President at a time when the wealth and income gap in our Nation is at historic extremes, when 46 million Americans live below the poverty level including one in every five children, when corruption on Wall Street continues to dominate the headlines, and still believe that this President is on your side. And yet tens of millions of Americans still cling to the illusion, to the detriment of the entire country.
