California Attorney General Considers investigating Schumer
by Matt at Aug 21st, 2008
Reuters reports that California’s attorney general is considering a request to investigate Senator Charles Schumer over the IndyMac bank collapse.
California’s attorney general is reviewing a request by former employees of IndyMac Bancorp Inc (IDMC.PK) to investigate whether a New York senator triggered the bank’s collapse by releasing confidential information.
At issue is a much-publicized letter that Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, sent in June to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) questioning the company’s ability to survive.
The FDIC took control of IndyMac on July 11 after depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion over 11 days. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. At the time, OTS Director John Reich blamed Schumer’s letter for causing the run on the bank.
In a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown last week, 51 former IndyMac workers wrote: “From the day (Schumer’s) letter was made public on June 26 until the closure of the bank, a run on the bank took place and the failure became inevitable.”
It’s hard to get too excited about things like this. Senator Schumer’s entire political career has been under a dark ethical cloud (which have been documented in my book) but he’s always managed to avoid being held accountable.
