The Herald reports that, in response to Deval Patrick’s blockbuster financial disclosure, Tom Reilly released the following statement:
The truth and Deval Patrick are clearly strangers when it comes to Ameriquest. He claims to have been the point person who set Ameriquest on a âbetter course,â but that is empty rhetoric to the hundreds of Massachusetts families who had their homes threatened by this predatory company. Sadly, the problems continue to this day. It seems to me that he reaped a big payout on the backs of the very people who were scammed by his company.
Cut through all the campaign BS in there, and focus on the text that I’ve highlighted. The problems continue to this day?? Uh, Tom, haven’t you been crowing nonstop since January about a big ol’ settlement that was supposed to take care of those “problems”? If Ameriquest is still behaving badly, doesn’t that reflect as poorly on you as it does on Patrick?
I needed a good laugh this morning! The AG is whining! If it wasn’t so funny, it would be pathetic. Maybe Reilly should call Patrick and ask him to please rejoin the Ameriquest board! Really, does anyone prep the AG for interviews? I’m sure he cares about the issue, but it’s his JOB for chrissakes to be a leader and to go after the bad guys. Did anyone fill him in on this? Deval Patrick is not the bad guy — he’s just a candidate who is doing better than Reilly ever expected. No matter what Deval did or didn’t succeed in doing at Ameriquest, at least HE DID SOMETHING other than whining and passing the blame onto someone else. In my book, Deval has proven himself to be a leader. Reilly, on the other hand, might need some lessons. Calling Blumenthal and Spitzer!!
No–it’s nonexistent. There are poor briefings if any; I heard that AG thought Wellesley was co-ed when he spoke there in March.
You are trying to establish an argument that Ameriquest settled with with a number of states and as a result of a weak settlement, the AGs ,including Tom Reilly, should be held responsible for purported continued Ameriquest predatory lending violations.
I don’t know the facts, but if it is true, maybe the management should of indeed been dealt a much harsher penalty than what was negotiated. Possibly jail time . Who knows what was negotiated?
Neither of us were involved in the negotiations and in all fairness cannot pass judgement on any of the details. You imply in the post that Reilly negotiated a weak settlement ,otherwise the practice would of ceased . So lets follow your argument to a conclusion ,if ,in fact you are implying that Tom Reilly and the other AG’s were too soft on Ameriquest.
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According to Reilly… “Sadly, the problems continue to this day was/is still actively engaged in these practices”
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David, if this is true, should all the AG’s now revisit the current purported violations , depose the current management, past and present directors ,including Patrick, and let the chips fall similar to Enron. All with much harsher penalties?
I think this would be the logical conclusion of your argument.
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I think that the point David is trying to make is that Reilly seems to want to have it both ways. He wants to say that he was the big hero who took down Ameriquest as AG, but he also wants to nail Patrick for his involvement and is willing to say that the company is as bad today as it used to be.
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I don’t know much about the details of the company, investigation, or settlement, but that’s not the issue at hand. The issue is a candidate who’s willing to completely reverse himself in order to take a shot at his opponent.
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“A pattern of consumer deception and fraud ends right here with this settlement.”
– Tom Reilly, 1/23/06
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“Sadly, the problems continue to this day.”
– Tom Reilly, 5/30/06
other than the fact – pretty obvious to me, from Reilly’s statement – that Reilly needs to be more careful in attacking his rivals to be sure he isn’t harming himself in the process. I have no idea whether what Reilly said (about the “problems” still continuing) is actually true. If it isn’t, he’s making stuff up to bludgeon Patrick. And if it is, he would be well-advised to explain exactly what the ongoing problems are and why his much-touted settlement (and you cannot seriously deny that he hasn’t been mentioning that thing every chance he gets) didn’t address them, before trying to make political hay out of them.
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If you reread my post carefully, and set your own (very obvious) biases aside, you will see that nowhere did I actually criticize the contents of the settlement. What I did is raise what seems to me a fair question: if Ameriquest is still behaving badly, is the settlement really doing what it was supposed to do?
should be: “(and you cannot seriously deny that he HAS been mentioning that thing every chance he gets)”
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sorry.
a lot of credibility with the .005 % of the world that reads these blogs. But who cares , it is really the voters that count. The students and academics that obviously post in this blog still don’t get the real picture. Voters LOVE negative ads.
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You should really be concerned about the exculpation of Patrick from the Ameriquest problem rather the bashing of Reilly . Even if he is 50% wrong it will make for a great political ad during the primary. $380,000 is a lot of money to those black voters who were the largest group of Ameriquest victims.
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I think it takes a particularly cynical and craven political mind to insinuate to Dorchester, Roxbury and Lowell neighborhoods that Deval’s $380,000.00 salary was made directly from the percentage points Ameriquest mortgagors were paying from their home loans. Maybe he’ll gain popularity with the .01% of the population paying attention to this extraordinarily boring story about home mortgages and lawsuits, but he’ll lose my support this fall for sure, should he get that far.
The one asking why Tom Reilly thought it would be okay to take campaign checks from Big Dig contractor while turning a blind eye to the biggest public construction failure and defrauding in Massachusetts history.
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That’s the one I’m going to look forward to.
David — I have no way of knowing what Tom Reilly meant by the statement, but as someone who works in the mortgage lending world, I can honestly say that the problems caused by Ameriquest will persist because many of these borrowers will be unable to refinance out of these loans. I’ve commented on this before, but if you look at the foreclosure filings (sorry, no link. It’s subscription service only), you’ll notice that Ameriquest continues to be one of the leading lenders filing for foreclosure against homebuyers in Massachusetts.
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Unfortunately, no multi-state settlement will make the problems go away for all of these homeowners.
But I very much doubt that that is what Reilly meant. Obviously, problematic loans that are already out there and can’t be refinanced may continue to cause problems. To me, the most reasonable reading of Reilly’s comment is that the company is still out there making unfair, predatory loans – i.e., he’s saying that whatever Patrick tried to accomplish on the board failed. That suggests that the settlement failed as well.
…that the settlement wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. But that happens a lot in these situations where you have 40 or 50 AGs running the case with competing interests, etc.
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However, my original post also was in response to some of the Patrick supporters who seem to believe that all of the Ameriquest problems have been solved. The problems weren’t solved by the settlement OR Deval’s work on the board. Thousands of homeowners will continue to pay higher interest rates, potentially ruin their credit, and face the very real possibility of foreclosure for many years to come.
Where do you see Deval Patrick supporters claiming that his work there not only resulted in improving Ameriquest’s practices, but actually also solved all the problems caused by Ameriquest’s past practices? It sounds ludicrous, and I don’t recall ever hearing or reading a Deval Patrick supporter (or anyone else) suggest such a thing.