Obama Received a Sweetheart Deal on His Mortgage
Originally caught this on Newsmax, so I’m glad to see it being reported elsewhere. It would appear that our dear Mr. Obama received a special rate on his $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois. He got it well-below market rates and without paying the usual extaneous fees, which reportedly saved him about $300 per month on his mortgage payments.
The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.
The Obamas had no prior relationship with Northern Trust when they applied for the loan. They received an oral commitment on Feb. 4, 2005, and locked in the rate of 5.625 percent, the campaign said. On that date, HSH data show, the average rate in Chicago for a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loan with no points was about 5.94 percent.
Jumbo loans are for amounts up to $650,000, but the Obamas’ $1.32 million loan was so large that few comparables are available. Mortgage specialists say that many high-end buyers pay cash.
Now, Team Obama responded to the Washington Post report by claiming that everything was innocent and that the low rate was simply a benefit of competition.
On The Washington Post story “Obama Got Discount Home Loan,” the campaign, through spokesman Ben LaBolt, tells The Bourbon Room that Barack Obama received a loan that “anyone with the Obamas’ financial profile could have gotten the same rate on that mortgage.”
LaBolt says the Obama family was flush with cash at the time they were loan shopping and that the bank in question, Northern Trust, sought their business by offering a lower mortgage rate and to respond to a competitive mortgage rate offered by another lender. LaBolt would not identify the lender “at this time.”
“There was a competitive offer from another bank and the Obamas had a substantial amount of cash to deposit in the bank,” LaBolt said. “Northern Trust made the loan for commercial reasons.”
To which Ed Morrissey responds:
Let’s assume this is true. Doesn’t the basic lending rate also account for competition? Northern Trust competes for every loan it gets; that’s the beauty of competition, which someone should explain to Maxine Waters and Maurice Hinchey. More to the point, though, why were lenders lining up to give money at discount rates to the Obamas? And who was this mysterious second lender that cut $300 a month from Northern Trust’s income stream?
Hopefully this won’t be the last we hear about Obama’s sweetheart deal.
CNS: Women Working for Obama Get Payed Less Than Men
If CNS has its figures correct on this, and salaries of staffers are public record so it’s not like they need anonymous sources, then Barack Obama has some ’splainin to do. It appears that women in the offices of Barack Obama get payed, on average, $6,000 per year less than their male counter-parts.
On average, women working in Obama’s Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That’s according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama’s Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one — Obama’s administrative manager — was a woman.
The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama’s staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama’s staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)
McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain’s staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain’s office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.
As Ed Morrissey observes, Obama consistently speaks out against unequal wages for men and women. If he thinks that should change, perhaps he should start at his own office.
Because That Sounds Like a Typical Righty…
Here’s a story out of Orlando, FL, where dozens of vehicles were found vandalized on Saturday. Many of the cars apparently were spray-painted with anti-Obama slogans, with his name being spelled in several different ways. Then there’s this:
The person or persons left a business card with political ramblings and other phrases such as ‘How ‘Bout them Gators’ and ‘Legalize Marijuana/ Stop Building Prisons’.
Legalize marijuana and stop building prisons? Does that sound like your typical anti-Obama American?
GOP Leadership Remains As Oblivious As 2 Years Ago
If there are two members of the United States Senate that you should never have co-sponsor “marriage protection” legislation, it’s Sens. Larry Craig and David Vitter. And yet, sure enough, here they are co-sponsoring the Federal Marriage Amendment. I look forward to the late night jokes.
Obama-Supporting Councilman: Criticism of Mugabe Racist
Councilman Charles Barron, seen more than once defending dictators, told the Observer that the worldwide, bi-partisan criticism of Mugabe is racist. Barron, who has called for New Yorkers to vote for Obama simply because he’s black and has compared Jeremiah Wright to MLK, had hosted Mugabe in NYC six years ago.
Lovely.