A piece by Paul Flemming in my Tallahassee newspaper caught my eye this morning. CROSS POSTED FROM FLAPOLITICS.COM
It was about the recent Florida cabinet meeting that people have been discussing since it gave a preview of the upcoming race for Governor here.
Here is the quote from Flemming's article that interested me:
Sink had a motion or two to spring on her fellow trustees — Crist and McCollum — following a presentation from the director of the State Board of Administration, Florida's investment agency that oversees more than $100 billion in assets managed for the Florida Retirement System and other funds.
The SBA since the end of 2007 has been rocked both by the equity markets and revelations of chicanery.
Sink on Wednesday made a surprise motion for increased oversight, calling for quarterly meetings with advisers and auditors, instead of the "maybe 10 or 15 minutes every two weeks that's tagged on to the end of the Cabinet meeting" as she described how it's done now.
McCollum gave a me-too.
"Getting our advisory board together with us more regularly is a good idea. I'd like to see that, Governor."
For Sink, it takes on what's certain to be a campaign issue with plausibly proactive (if late) verve. And it put McCollum and Crist on their heels for a bit.
Sink is one of the canniest politicians around. I can tell you where this is all heading.
After the Republicans make a big stink about "the mess that the banks got us into" and try to attach Sink to the recession because of her career with Bank of America, she is going to smile sweetly and say, "You’re right, the banks HAVE gotten us into a mess. Perhaps General McCollum needs to look into the purchase of tainted debt by the SBA."
Here’s a quote from a December 18, 2007, Bloomberg.com article that gives the background:
It was the first day of November and Coleman Stipanovich's world was coming undone. Florida school districts and towns had begun pulling their cash out of the $26 billion money market fund he supervised, after they learned it held subprime-tainted debt.
Stipanovich, who earned $180,214 in 2006 as executive director of the State Board of Administration, was in New York in confidential meetings with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the largest U.S. underwriter of mortgage-backed bonds. Lehman was proposing ways to help the state manage the risk of its debt investments, according to a letter the bank sent to Stipanovich after the meeting.
What Stipanovich, 58, hadn't told his boss, Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, was that Lehman Brothers was the same firm that had sold the state fund $842 million of mortgage- backed debt in July and August. Those securities defaulted within four months, and totaled more failing debt than any other bank sold the state, Florida records show. ``At the time, I never knew it was Lehman Brothers that actually sold us these investments,'' Sink says.
Sink also was unaware that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who incorporated Jeb Bush & Associates in February 2007, a month after completing his second term, had been hired as a consultant to Lehman Brothers in June.
Then she can just sit back and watch him squirm.