…subprime billionaire Roland Arnall, whom Bush had appointed Ambassador to the Netherlands for raising $12 million for him, who was the biggest donor to Arnold Schwarzenegger and, before him, Gray Davis, who co-founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the brow-beating Museum of Tolerance, was the founder of a couple of the biggest and worst subprime boiler rooms, Ameriquest and Argent. Previously, he had founded the notorious Long Beach Mortgage, which Washington Mutual bought.
In 2006, Arnall paid a $325 million fine to settle a lawsuit brought by 49 state attorneys general. Yet, Congress approved his nomination as ambassador. (Overall, states performed somewhat better in regulating subprime than feds, who mostly egged them on. The states were operating, on average, under older laws, while the feds were operating mostly under the U. of Chicago-style consensus that emerged over the last generation or so.) Here`s Arnall`s obituary by E. Scott Reckard of the L.A. Times, who covered subprime in real time better than anyone else. Roland invented the “stated income loan,” which did so much to help people realize the American Dream.
His widow Dawn is being sued by his brother for $47.6 million. The brother claims that Roland claimed he was strapped for cash because of the $325 million fine.
WIKIPEDIA: SHMAIS.com (Lubavitch News Website) reported that Chabad of California was to be the beneficiary of an $18 million donation from the estate of Roland Arnall. According to their source, before his death, he made arrangements for Rabbi Shlomo Cunin to receive the donation, and a short while later sent in a down payment of $180,000.[16] Arnall made three payments of $180,000 each to Chabad before dying of cancer in March 2008; after his death, Chabad sought payment for what it said was the balance of his pledge. Arnall’s widow, Dawn Arnall, denied that the payments made by her late husband had been part of a pledge. On January 25, 2013 a California appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling denying a claim from Chabad of California Inc. of an $18-million pledge that the local Jewish nonprofit group said was promised to it by Arnall.
