Congressman Tom Graves (GA-9) and his business partner Georgia State Senator Chip Rogers, the majority leader, tea party favorites who disagree with bailouts...would rather shut the government down than raise the debt ceiling, and, in Graves' case, voted last year for an absurd bill that would enable a law to be in effect with only passage by the House of Representatives -- have gotten a bailout themselves from the FDIC.
Daily Kos Staffer Joan McCarter reported on the agreement with the FDIC last August, but the details are just coming out today in a report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Joan McCarter's piece has an excellent interview of Graves by Lawrence O'Donnell (if you can stomach listening to Graves).
In 2007, Graves and Rogers took out a loan from the Bartow County Bank to fund the operation of a motel along I-75 near Calhoun. The loan amount, $2.3 million, was too much for the pair to handle. In fact, the AJC reports:
Court documents show that Graves and Rogers were struggling to make payments almost immediately after they signed the loan documents with Bartow County Bank in 2007.
The paper goes on to report today that, in a secret agreement with the FDIC, Graves and Rogers are now on the hook for $1.2 million - a $1.1 million dollar write-off that finance professor Tony Plath (UNC-Charlotte) called "highly unusual."
Morgan Akin, the former bank chairman, doesn't think much of these two hypocrites:
He [Akin] said the lawmakers' loan default "contributed significantly" to his bank's failure and accused them of being irresponsible with their personal finances.
The sad thing is, this kind of rank hypocrisy is not likely to sink the careers of either politician. Georgia, where I live, is just too red to cause them much grief over their personal bailout. They'll go on spouting their reverance for the Constitution, their hatred of government regulation, the absolute necessity to defund Planned Parenthood, their Christian values grounded in the very founding of the country, and their unwavering support for the troops.
In fact, both of these officials, in Repub. eyes, probably qualify to chair their respective banking committees.