Uh-oh – bad news for the McCain family. “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) arranged for the takeover of Nevada’s Silver State Bank, the 11th failed bank of 2008 on Friday,” according to an online report. And guess who serves on that bank’s board of directors – or at least he did until July, when he saw this coming and resigned? John McCain’s son, Andrew, who is also CFO of his mom’s beer distributorship.
Apparently, “the FDIC likes to close banks on Friday after hours so they can reopen as branches of the acquiring bank on the following Monday morning.” It takes the news off of prime time too – which I am sure the McCain family appreciated.
Here are a few more details about the takeover:
Nevada State Bank of Las Vegas will take over the insured deposits of Silver State — which had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in deposits at the end of June. AP reports that “[Silver State’s] branches will reopen Monday as offices of Nevada State Bank in Nevada and National Bank of Arizona in Arizona.”
Andrew McCain also was a member of the bank’s audit committee, responsible for oversight of the company’s accounting,” according to AP.
Bank scandals run in the McCain family. Senator John McCain was the only Republican implicated in the Keating Five Scandal. He had a long history with Keating, which, according to an online news site included:
In 1982, during McCain’s first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.
In 1983, as McCain contemplated his House re-election, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for him, even though McCain had no serious competition. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.
By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.
On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain’s wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.
The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.
In return McCain and four other U.S. Senators met with Federal regulators and essentially tried to buy time for Keating, who was being investigated.
When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.
“You’re a liar,” McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating.
“That’s the spouse’s involvement, you idiot,” McCain said later in the same conversation. “You do understand English, don’t you?”
He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife’s ties to Keating.
“It’s up to you to find that out, kids.”
In April 1989, two years after the Keating Five meetings, the government seized Lincoln, which declared bankruptcy. In September 1990, Keating was booked into Los Angeles County Jail, charged with 42 counts of fraud. His bond was set at $5 million.
During Keating’s trial, the prosecution produced a parade of elderly investors who had lost their life’s savings by investing in American Continental junk bonds.
You can read the rest of this story at this link.
Art,
You have to go back almost 20 years or more to dig that up about McCain. His son has a little different situation and one that will be looked at very closely. Right now many banks are in trouble, primarily because liberals in Congress decided that everyone deserved to live the American dream, and become home owners. Many of those who have defaulted committed outright fraud to get the loans they have walked away from, leaving the banks (and the FDIC, which of course means all of us.) to hold that liability. Yes, too many of them were swindled by criminal loan officers as well into there plight without full knowledge of what they signed, but shouldn’t you read and understand what you’re signing?
As we have discussed here before. Many of the banks are to some degree responsible for those, many are not. They too were defrauded by the companies who sold them fraudulent paper. And they knew full well it was bad paper when they packaged them and sold them in bulk. While I may be wrong, my gut tells me that this will be the case at Silver State when it’s all said and done.
I hear very little about the much more recent ties to Tony Rezco, now a convicted felon, and seller of the home that the Obama family lives in. Along with that strip of land adjacent (garden?) to that same home. This has been discussed at some length but not nearly as much as I think it deserves. The Daly machine that has run Chicago for decades is and has been very close to Mr. Obama throughout his political life. I doubt that Mr. Obama has the backbone that Mr. Truman did when once he was elected as VP, and told the Pendergast machine (of Kansas City) to go pound sand. While the Truman library and other sources tell a sanitized version of the story my mom was a child in KC at the time and certainly remembers if very differently. Both her mother and father were called upon during those days there. After all they (friends of Rezco/Daly) aided not only his rise to power they also still control his home mortgage.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-obamarezko-connect.swf,0,4929416.flash
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132×4873045
While I am still not particularly enamored with John McCain as POTUS he is certainly better than the other guy. McCain has also admitted that he screwed up with the dealings he had with Keating, that he had lapses of judgment, but he has not repeated those in later years. Who among us is not wiser with experience? That is one of the points McCain has in his favor over Mr. Obama, a much longer track record, (one, I don’t always agree with) but he has learned over the years. Mr. Obama may get there someday, but I still don’t believe that day has come.
Carl –
‘Yes, too many of them were swindled by criminal loan officers as well into there plight without full knowledge of what they signed, but shouldn’t you read and understand what you’re signing?‘
Where were you when Paul Lucas signed the letter alleging that Janet Nguyen provided him opposition research on Van Tran? He could have used your advice!
SMS
sorry…off fishing…?
I believe Andrew is McCain’s adopted son from his first marriage ( even though he works for Cindy, she is not his mom).
Carl, your bank account and your worldwide fishing trips are showing. Are you concerned about Obama because he plans to raise your taxes?
Maybe if Obama raises your taxes and improves the economy more of us will be able to take a vacation to Alaska. I’d like to catch one of those big fish there.
Anonyms,
You didn’t read or comprehend what was written apparently, “my boss paid for the trip”, has every year.
It’s my only vacation time of the year.
No, not about taxes either. I pay more than my fair share and donate a huge chunck to charity every year, most of which I can’t write off.
He’s a socialist.