http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3002
An obituary in the today’s New York Times, March 19, 2008. p. C11, entitled: “Roland Arnall, 68, http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3839 Investor; Creator of a Subprime Powerhouse That Has Been Touched By Crisis”, is very illuminating:
[abstract to minorities). In 2005, Ameriquest was the largest supprime mortgage issuer in the country. Pres. Bush had named him ambassador to the Netherlands (2006-2008): he was one of the top donors to the Republican Party in 2003-2005.[In the 2003-2005 period, Arnall and his wife raised more than $12 million for George W. Bush’s political efforts, including $5 million for the Progress for America Voter Fund, a self-proclaimed “conservative issue advocacy organization dedicated to keeping the issue record straight.”, giving $1 million for Bush’s second inaugural party alone. Arnall was a French Jew who lived in Paris until after WWII, when he emigrated to the United States. In 1977, he was one of the founders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center [and the Museum of Tolerance and was its chairman for many years. [He also served for 16 years on the California State University board of trustees.
Last year, his fortune was estimated at $1.5 billion by Forbes [or $3 billion. In early 2006, his company announced a $325 million settlement with state attorneys general and law enforcement agencies and financial regulators in 49 states and the District of Columbia over allegations of predatory lending.
Considering that the sub-prime mortgages represented a vast transfer of wealth from European-American middle class bank customers to minority mortgagees in the first place, and in the second transfer of wealth when these bogus securitized mortgages were resold (many to European banks, effecting a transfer wealth from European middle class bank customers to Arnall and his cohorts), it may be that Roland Arnall created a system that destroyed the savings of more European middle class families worldwide than even http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2843, the architect of the S&L Crisis.