Earlier this year in posts for Heartland’s FreedomPub blog and elsewhere, I tracked how the politically- and presidentially-loved community lender ShoreBank received favorable treatment from regulators that other similar institutions did not. ShoreBank failed in August, but as expected it survived thanks to a special FDIC intervention and the help of TARP recipients who were reportedly pressured to return a favor for the Obama administration.
Now the Chicago lender lives on as Urban Partnership Bank, but management looks as incompetent as ever after an attempt to add a crooked city contractor to the bank’s board of directors, which I explained yesterday for the National Legal & Policy Center.
