Culture of Corruption? Why, whatever on Earth could you be talking about?
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye’s staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.
The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm’s losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn’t meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal cases, according to agency documents.
Two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye’s office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million.
Funny how that just worked out, isn’t it?
I’ll say there is no explicit sign that Inouye did anything untoward. It is possible (and in a government as big as the one in Washington, I’d say it’s even likely), that the Senator’s call and the bank’s approval were mostly coincidental.
Kind of.
I don’t believe that the Senator leaned on the officials who chose his bank for a bailout. I don’t think he did more than he said he did. However, I would be willing to bet that the Senator’s name and title appeared prominently on the bank’s paperwork, probably more than once, where the folks making the decisions couldn’t miss it. I’m not saying that he put it there, but I can’t believe someone else didn’t think to do it. It is a metaphysical certainty that a mention or two of the Senator’s name (and perhaps a note that he was a founder and is a major investor) would give the bank an immense advantage. What bureaucrat would be insane enough to refuse a request, even one that is secondhand and implied, from a United States Senator?
Even the Senator’s relatively-innocent call is weighted with expectations, whether the Senator actually has them or not. Daniel Inouye has been around enough to know that just expressing an interest provides plenty of impetus to get a piece of paper hand-ushered through the bureaucratic maze.
It’s not corruption, per se, but it looks like corruption, which is plenty bad enough.
Not related….
The USDA, Secretary Tom Vilsack and President Obama recently announced the appointment of the Director of Rural Development for Hawaii, on June 30.
Ms. Donna Goto- Kiyosaki, got the appointment and interestingly, is either the sister or aunt of the Senator’s Chief of Staff in Honolulu, Mrs Jennifer Goto-Sabas, I am told.
Please check. Please do not include my name as source, but you can use this information for your perusal.