Tag Archives: magnetar

Stacy Summary: Another great piece from Janet Tavakoli.

• Tavakoli: ProPublica’s “Untold” Magnetar Story Creates Excuses for Wall Street and Washington

FYI:  For our next episode of Keiser Report to air tomorrow, we were actually scheduled to interview one of the authors of the ProPublica piece that Tavakoli refers to in her article.  That is until he bailed on us with what I thought seemed a bit of a lame excuse (after first asking for links to our previous episodes, he said his editors, who I since learned are ex-WSJ, said he was too busy). Anyway, the curious nature of their declining us access to their investigative team inspired me to do some research on them. And I learned that ProPublica is financed by Herbert and Marion Sandler who used to own Golden West Financial / World Savings Bank, a savings and loan that they sold in October 2006 to Wachovia for $24.3 billion.  The sale to Wachovia included $122 billion of adjustable rate mortgages held by Golden West.  According to this article from 2008, “Home prices began to crumble once Wachovia took over, and now the bank [Wachovia] is in such deep trouble that it has agreed to be sold to Wells Fargo for nearly 90 percent below the company’s stock price at the time of the Golden West takeover.”  Also at the same time, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” broadcast a skit deriding the Sandlers as predatory lenders who had duped unsophisticated borrowers and Wachovia, too.  The skit was subsequently pulled, but this site has it here (from 5.00 minutes).

Kind of interesting that an investigation they financed now stands accused of providing excuses for Wall Street and Washington.