{"id":377636,"date":"2010-03-01T14:25:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T19:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0120a8e771d2970b"},"modified":"2010-03-01T16:41:10","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T21:41:10","slug":"kirk-says-fate-of-giannoulias-family-bank-will-be-issue-for-senate-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/377636","title":{"rendered":"Kirk says fate of Giannoulias family bank will be issue for Senate voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATED by Rick Pearson at 3:40 p.m. – Giannoulias camp calls Kirk criticism "outlandish"<\/strong>; originally posted by Rick Pearson<\/em> at 1:25 p.m.<\/p>\n

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk said today the fate of his Democratic rival\u2019s family bank should be an issue of concern for voters in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s no question that Alexi Giannoulias bears direct personal responsibility for reckless loans that could bankrupt the Broadway Bank,\u201d Kirk said of the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee. \u201cI also worry that the possible collapse of the Broadway Bank will leave taxpayers left paying for Alexi\u2019s reckless loans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which covers individual depositors up to $250,000, is financed by fees on the banking industry. Though the FDIC\u2019s finances have been strained by a wave of bank failures in the recession, agency officials said last month they believed they had enough cash on hand and would not need to borrow taxpayer dollars from the Treasury.<\/p>\n

Kirk\u2019s comments came after the Tribune reported in its Sunday editions that the bank\u2019s chief executive, Demetris Giannoulias, said the family must raise at least $85 million by the end of April to prevent a government seizure of the financial institution. Demetris Giannoulias is the older brother of Alexi Giannoulias.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Alexi Giannoulias has said his family\u2019s bank is no different than others that have tried to weather the recession. He has said he has had no involvement with the bank since becoming Illinois state treasurer nearly four years ago and that the bank was prospering then. <\/p>\n

The family has said that of Broadway’s more than $240 million in seriously delinquent loans and foreclosed real estate, 9 percent of the value of those deals originated during Alexi’s tenure at the bank. He was previously the bank\u2019s senior loan officer.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Strand, a Giannoulias spokeswoman, called Kirk\u2019s criticism \u201coutlandish\u201d and labeled him a \u201cwholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Alexi hasn\u2019t been at the bank for four years, Mark Kirk has been in Washington for a decade supporting the failed and reckless Bush policies that got us into this economic mess,\u201d Strand said.<\/p>\n

Kirk, a five-term North Shore Republican congressman, also told reporters at a news conference today that he believed President Obama should have brought Democratic and Republican legislative negotiators to Camp David for a week to hash out an agreed upon healthcare reform bill. Democrats are looking at using a process to avoid a Republican Senate filibuster to pass their plan with a simple majority.<\/p>\n

Kirk noted that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California enjoys great power among the majority, though he questioned whether some Democrats might break ranks with leadership in an election year.<\/p>\n

Still, he said: \u201cThere\u2019s often a mistake people make that members of Congress only vote in their political self-interest. But many times, Congress is a lot like high school student council. It\u2019s more important for people to be with their friends and supportive of the leadership than with the people who voted for them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATED by Rick Pearson at 3:40 p.m. – Giannoulias camp calls Kirk criticism "outlandish"; originally posted by Rick Pearson at 1:25 p.m. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk said today the fate of his Democratic rival\u2019s family bank should be an issue of concern for voters in November. \u201cI think there\u2019s no question that Alexi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}