Obama’s Sub-Prime Conflict....OOPS! [View All]

[ElsewheresDaughter]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot moderator Democratic Underground)

I remember my first piggy bank: a little pink piggy, made of plastic, with a little slot at the top. The slot was big enough, perhaps, to fit a half dollar, a great deal of money to me at the time.”A penny earned is a penny saved,” my father told me, as we dropped the first few coins into the opening, and I heard them hit bottom and bounce. And I can’t tell you how excited I was when we broke it open, after a year or so, and I couldn’t fit another penny into the slot.

I tallied up my stash-close to five dollars, I recall- and decided what I would do with my small fortune. I bought a kite, and my imagination soared even higher than my beautiful Chinese box-kite as to what I would save up for next.

My pop gave me a powerful push in the right direction, when it came to savings: A penny saved really was a penny earned.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for the 1,406 people who lost much of their life savings when Superior Bank of Chicago went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits. This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior’s owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages. As part of a settlement, the owners paid $100 million and agreed to pay another $335 million over 15 years at no interest.

The uninsured depositors were dealt another blow recently when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision to put any recovered money toward the debt that the bank owners owe the federal government before the depositors get anything.

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http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022708a.html