Class Warrior John Edwards Made A Fortune Forclosing Homes Of Katrina Victims

Ken McCracken • August 17, 2007

Hey, I don’t mind it personally. Business is business, and we should all look out for #1. But if John Edwards is going to run a populist campaign where he sets himself up as a messiah figure for America’s proverbial unwashed masses he’s going to get called out on this stuff.

As a presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards has regularly attacked subprime lenders, particularly those that have filed foreclosure suits against victims of Hurricane Katrina. But as an investor, Mr. Edwards has ties to lenders foreclosing on Katrina victims.
The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report. Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through 2006.
Asked about the matter, Mr. Edwards yesterday pledged that he would personally provide financial assistance to New Orleanians who are facing foreclosure by Fortress-affiliated businesses or have lost their homes already. “I intend to help these people,” the former North Carolina senator said.
He also promised to cleanse his portfolio of any investments that may be profiting from their losses. “I am going to divest” from any Fortress funds that have a stake in the subprime lenders that filed the foreclosures, he said in a telephone interview. “I will not have my family’s money invested in these firms.”

Nice of him to find his principles ex post facto.

Tags: Asshats, Domestic Issues, Politics

http://proof-proofpositive.blogspot.com/ proof_positive

Never thought ellinas and I would be in such perfect agreement!
jpe

Actually, a big part of Fortress’s investments were in Green Tree, which 1 minute of googling confirms was involved in subprimes.

So my theory didn’t pan out.
jpe

Each fund must offer a prospectus with yearly updates giving in detail all the places they have put the funds money.

Sure, but if the subprime component is sufficiently small, it’s not going to show up on the prospectus.

If you’ve seen a hedge fund prospectus, you should know that they aren’t minutely detailed. And, from an audit standpoint, if the subprime component is small enough the hedge fund itself may not even know about it.
ellinas

John Edwards is full of shit. This piece of shit should drop out of running for president and out of public view
anita

“Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through 2006.”

For the person that thought that Edwards didn’t know what was going on with this hedge fund or that this was a hit piece— it states in another article that Edwards actually worked for Fortress. HMMMM me thinks that he knew what was going on and chose to ignore it.

I think, therefore, I can’t be a democrat.
http://www.superalerts.com/ george

“I will not have my family’s money invested in these firms.”

It just blows my mind that people really believe statements like these are sincere. But if Hillary can be sitting at 48% in the polls, anything is possible.
Dave

It’s ok. He can just buy some foreclosure offsets to bring his net foreclosure emissions to zero and everyone will be happy.
anita

What I find amazing about this story, is that this is August 20th and we are not hearing too much about it. AOL tries their best to put any story that is pro-liberal, anti-conservative on their front pages– yet- I have yet to see hide or hair of the story. It is been kept quiet by the liberal bias of the media. And plus, we have Edwards doing his tour 2 months ago-telling all in NO how he felt their pain.
docdave

Many investors have no way of knowing what the underlying investments of a hedge fund are

You’re joking, aren’t you? Each fund must offer a prospectus with yearly updates giving in detail all the places they have put the funds money. Anyway, hedge funds are not for the small conservative investor and good investment consulars will steer their clients away from them.
jpe

Many investors have no way of knowing what the underlying investments of a hedge fund are, given that so many are set up as funds of funds. Given that, this sounds like a hit piece to me.

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Class Warrior John Edwards Made A Fortune Forclosing Homes Of Katrina Victims

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