Edwards' Fortress investment
Posted: Friday, August 17, 2007 1:51 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Andrew Merten and Carrie Dann
Having made poverty alleviation a central pillar throughout his campaign for the presidency, Edwards has spent plenty of time on the stump decrying the practice of predatory lending. But today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Edwards, who chose New Orleans as the sight to officially announce his campaign and later kick off his three-day poverty tour, has heavy financial ties with subprime-lending units of a large investment group that has brought foreclosure suits to 34 Gulf coast homes.
VIDEO:
John Edwards talks about predatory lending after touring a Cleveland neighborhood in July.Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress Investment Group, LLC, and worked for them from late 2005 through 2006, the Journal reports. When contacted by the paper yesterday, he promised to divest himself from any company profiting from the foreclosures. But the news may be damaging to Edwards’ populist campaign, given his strong language against the practice on the campaign trail.
“This is wrong, this is not complicated; it’s wrong,” Edwards said during a visit to Cleveland, adding: “These people are being taken advantage of; they’ve been working all their lives, and what’s happened is that the very thing they worked for, their homes -- and those children we just passed back there -- are going to be kicked out of their homes, all because these predators have come into this neighborhood and taken advantage of them.”
He went on to call for legislative intervention against the practice, saying he will push for an aggressive federal anti-predatory-lending law as president.
Edwards told the Journal “that when he first joined Fortress, ‘I made clear that I didn't want to have anything I was investing in to be antilabor or involved in predatory lending practices.’ But he added that he didn't fully understand the firm's complex operations, saying: ‘They're diverse. They're very diverse.’”
