"Plastic my son, Plastic" (or Barack Obama & the Biden/MBNA family)

I guess I have to take a break from following my own senior senator Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide) since he skeddalled off to Ireland and may have slipped back into the country while eluding the press.

Now I have another ethically challenged Senator out there, and I can share my knowledge of the financial services field to explain this latest faux pas.

The line in the title is from The Graduate, but plastic in the form of credit cards has made many young men in Delaware (a hotbed of finance) very rich. One, of whom, was Senator Joe Biden's son. 

 A son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that "after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking."

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

"He was not a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing," said Wade. 

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080825/ap_on_el_pr/biden_mbna

hey, Mr. Wade, sellin any bridges tonight?

Fact is Hunter Biden needed a job out of school ,and MBNA came through, big time

Hunter Biden joined MBNA as a management trainee after graduating from Yale Law School and rose to be an executive vice president. Now a partner in Oldaker, Biden & Belair, a lobbying and law firm, he receives a $100,000 annual retainer from MBNA to advise it on "the Internet and privacy law,"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/business/07mbna.html?pagewanted=4&ei=5007&en=7f97bc61437c4057&ex=1393995600&partner=USERLAND

Now Delaware is a tiny, clubby state, but Biden's relationship with MBNA has been so close to incestuous one wonders if they moved off to one of those far western polygamy-oriented cult compounds 

MBNA has been the No. 1 donor to Senator Biden's campaigns since 1993

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/business/07mbna.html?pagewanted=4&ei=5007&en=7f97bc61437c4057&ex=1393995600&partner=USERLAND

Biden sold his home in Wilmington for $1.2 million to a top MBNA executive

Biden disputed the claim and provided the local paper, the Wilmington News-Journal, with an appraisal of the house fixing its value at $1.2 million—exactly the price that the MBNA executive, a man named John Cochran, had paid. The home deal, it appeared, was on the up-and-up.

but....

it appears Cochran simply paid Biden's full asking price. And, according to people familiar with the situation, the house needed quite a bit of work; contractors and their trucks descended on the house for months after the purchase.

and...

It appears that MBNA indirectly helped Cochran buy the Biden house. According to a statement in the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission—in which it is required to detail the compensation of top officers—in 1996 MBNA reimbursed Cochran $330,115 for expenses arising from the move

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDU4OTdhMTFhN2YwZTY3MmMzNGFhYzc3ODdhOTA0ZjQ= (this was in the pre-bubble 1990's---doesn't sound like some Lackawanna County fixer-upper to me)

and how did Biden repay this generosity.....by becoming MBNA's lackey boy on Capitol Hill

 He has actively supported the company's favorite federal legislation, the Bankruptcy Reform Act, which would make it more difficult for consumers to escape their credit card debt.

Senator Biden shepherded the bankruptcy legislation along by taking the unusual tack of inserting it into a foreign relations bill in 2000, said his spokesman, Norm Kurz. But Mr. Kurz added that Mr. Biden said he would have backed the bill whether or not he was from Delaware or had received MBNA donations (clearance sale on bridges, it seems)\s

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/business/07mbna.html?pagewanted=4&ei=5007&en=7f97bc61437c4057&ex=1393995600&partner=USERLAND

(FYI, since credit cards are unsecured debt, the old pre-reform bankruptcy law caused much of this debt to be wiped out soon after a Chapter 7 filing; hence the interest by credit card companies to force more Chapter 13 repayment plans; which is the present law)

Now why would someone running on "hope and change" align himself with a self-dealing Corporate Democrat?

Just last month Obama lambasting bankruptcy reform and one of its unbought supporters, Senator McCain

"Like the president he hopes to succeed, Sen. McCain does not believe the government has a real role to play in protecting Americans from unscrupulous lending practices," Obama said. "He would continue to allow the banks and credit card companies to tilt the playing field in their favor, at the expense of hardworking Americans."

Obama's campaign pointed to a series of Senate votes in 2005 to accuse McCain of "siding with banking industry lobbyists" while opposing measures that the Democrat's campaign said would have helped families struggling to pay medical bills, seniors in bankruptcy fighting to keep their homes, and victims of Hurricane Katrina.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-08-obama-bankruptcy_N.htm

How dare Senator McCain vote in favor of your running mate's favorite legislative priority!

Let's go to the videotape:

Joe Biden:

* makes big money from selling his house to MBNA

* depended on them for campaign contibutions

* his son just happens to get a highly lucrative job and lobbying contract from them

* and this had nothing with the most pro-bankruptcy reform record in the Senate

How, again Mr. Obama, is John McCain the "out-of-touch" guy with middle America?