And Alex Sink was a part of it. Her position on the Cabinet and SBA gave her one of three votes on the investments. Until August, the best hope of allaying any political consequence for this was that Bill McCollum, the once-presumptive GOP nominee for governor, was just as much to blame. Now Sink has secured the Democratic nomination, but Rick Scott's surprise candidacy balances out the ballot.
But I'm not that worried. I link above to a St. Pete Times on the entire SBA affair. It's a fair assessment, but it's a gobbledygook of a scandal. Basically, money managers were chasing higher yields on investments, something they really shouldn't do with a standing fund such as this, and got burned by a collapsing economy. They were running the funds like an investor looking for a quick buck, and Sink, McCollum and Gov. Charlie Crist went along.
None of it was illegal. It was all just stupid.
I was covering the City of Cape Coral when all this went down, and that city was among those who yanked their money and fled the system, never to come back. The finance director for the city got an award for the foresight, but I also spoke with other cities who felt the mass exodus created the collapse as much as the actions of the SBA. That, I would note, is an opinion not well-expressed in this piece.
But the biggest reason this won't be a candidacy-cratering controversy? It's too complicated. Sink was one of three people who supported a move which could have boosted public revenues, but always ran the risk of costing. The latter occurred. How many people have been directly affected by this? Excluding those SBA officials who lost their jobs amid the original scandal, nobody. If you don't quite understand what all happened, you are not alone.
Compare that the the biggest of Rick Scott's scandals. His company was fined for stealing from the federal government. You get that? The fine was for $1.7 billion. The loot was likely much larger. Scott likes to brag the HCA had cheap rates when he was in charge. How were they low? If he'd known, he says he would have stopped the fraud. But according to another Times expose, he was warned of problems but never bothered to check things out.
That's all pretty cut and dry. Sink, as one of three votes, supported a bad investment and got snookered by crooks.
Rick Scott's company was caught stealing.
Which story scares you the most?
It seems to be that you are reverse engineering the argument on predatory lending. I've always contended that there is no such thing as predatory lending, just dumb borrowing. Most borrowers don't bother to read their mortgage documents in detail. If you are not willing to hold borrowers accountable for reading the documents which will determine their financial well-being, then it seems ridiculous to expect an organizational CEO to read every line of the multitudinous audits and compliance reports generated
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of reasons to dislike Rick Scott, but it is not cut and dry - remember too, Scott was not charged with anything so we must give him the presumption of innocence. Both stories scare me and trouble me but that's another story
It's a judgment call, but I think being duped is not as bad as duping people. There are no questions Sink and the SBA signed off on some bad mistakes, and you are right that the fraud at HCA happened under Scott. But I think making bad investments is very different from the malicious stuff done at HCA.
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