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Friday, October 30, 2009

Has Michele Bachmann been trying really hard to stash an entire VA clinic inside one of Mary Kiffmeyer's OREOs?

Well, properly speaking it would not be Kiffmeyer's, but Kiffmeyer's Bank's. And that might need a bit of explaining.

Crabgrass looked at the VA clinic situation before and the apparently strong Bachmann effort to have the thing sited in her district with Elk River apparently being favored by her, here.

And Crabgrass has reviewed closure of the Kiffmeyer Bank, here. (She signed key last-gasp documents with the Minnesota Fed as president of the bank holding company, if you've forgotten).

But how do these have anything in common, and what's this about sweet stuff, OREOs?

Elk River's leading weekly newspaper, in an item written today, Oct. 30, 2009 by the paper's Editor, this link, notes:

Riverview Community Bank in Otsego and Anoka has been shut down by the Minnesota Department of Commerce and re-opened as Central Bank with 16 other branches including one in Coon Rapids and another in St. Michael.

The financial institution’s doors were closed Friday, Oct. 23 and [...] bank examiners worked into the night to comb over the books and complete the transition from one community bank to another.

The state agency appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver, which in turn entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Central Bank to protect the depositors. [...]

One area in particular that showed up on bank records was a line item bankers refer to as OREOs or Other Real Estate Owned. OREOs are a fancy way of saying assets the bank owns after they have been foreclosed upon.

Riverview Community Bank went from having $849,000 worth of OREOs on June 30, 2008, to $7,182,000 by the following summer. By then the bank had been issued a cease and desist order from the FDIC. The six-year-old bank, which had added a branch in Anoka along its journey, was ordered to clean up its unsafe lending practices. But there was speculation in the community it was already too late.

As of March 31, the bank’s commercial real estate portfolio was 11 times its total capital — more than twice what is considered safe by banking experts. [...]

Central Bank, which has $430 million in assets, has recently acquired two other failed banks.


[emphasis added] Who picked Central Bank to pick over the bones? The guy in the middle, we know he did not, because he does not work for the Commerce Department.



"So you're from the Commerce Department. I'm not on that payroll. FDIC guy, here, says Central Bank steps in. Who's Central Bank? Why them?"





________UPDATE________
An apology to readers - in posting originally I omitted the link to the Star News item, which I corrected along with bolding in the above text, giving this link. Also, while the paper is headquartered in Elk River (506 Freeport Ave., Suite A, Elk River, MN 55330 -- with email name "erstarnews.com") and seems to have Elk River news as a primary focus, the paper touts coverage reaching "Elk River, Dayton, Ramsey, Otsego, Rogers, Zimmerman, Minnesota." Jim Boyle is identified in reporting as its Editor. Jesus with the two suits is not my creation nor Star News'. It has been noted as prominently displayed wall art at the failed bank's Otsego headquarters, this link. I only speculate one is an FDIC suit, the other a Commerce Department suit. Interchangeable as to which is which? That, I could not say.