Deadlines Datelines and Dead-ends

DATELINE “DC”: Cub Reporter MOTUS Reporting

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The interweb is buzzing with speculation following the release here on MOTUS’ blog, of an unauthorized video of President Obama in an unguarded moment. The video, obtained from a secret source, appears to show Big Guy secretly enjoying what some have suggested might be, a “Monica rope line” moment with old law school chum, Gregory “Greggers” Dingens. That little post appears to have triggered a firestorm of reporting, analysis and speculation that has lit up the interweb from HillBuzz, to iOwnTheWorld to RIGHTNETWORK. Where’s Drudge on this?

Monica & Bubba Rope Line Moment-iOwnTheWorld

Obama & Greggers – RIGHTNETWORK 

Sources tell this cub reporter that Greggers is a former defensive tackle, from Notre Dame. I don’t know about that, but he sure is a big bruiser. I had my mole, Little Mo, dig into this and he found Greggers player profile from the Fighting Irish Monogram Club website:

Greg Dingens '86, who played defensive tackle under Gerry Faust, joined the Monogram Club Board of Directors in 2008. The three-time Academic All-American and 1986 Byron Kanaley Award winner graduated magna cum laude and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors at Notre Dame. He received post-graduate scholarships from the NCAA and the National Football Foundation. Dingens, who graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1992, has spent his entire career in Chicago. He currently is a partner and the head of investment banking at Monroe Securities Inc., a boutique investment bank which covers the community banking sector, and a general partner of Siena Capital Partners I., L.P., a private investment fund that invests in community banks.

So I asked myself, “What’s a nice, Catholic, investment banker from Chicago doing at a UN delegate’s reception sponsored by Big Guy?” We know how Big Guy feels about Wall Street investment bankers, although there may be a loophole here, because Monroe Securities is located on North Riverside Plaza, not Wall Street.

Then I remembered Big Guy, Mo, JoeyB, Harry Reid, Fancy Nancy and the rest of the Team celebrating the latest Senate legislative “colonoscopy”: Creating Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. The celebration started Thursday, just hours before the big UN reception. A nosey cub reporter might ask, “could there be a connection?” Let’s have a look.

The “Creating Small Business Jobs Act of 2010” aka “Mini-TARP” provides, among other goodies, a $30 billion lending fund for small business. Ok, are you still with me? The $30 billion will be administered by “Toxic-Tax-Cheat Timmy” Geitner, and will be awarded to community banks “...deemed strong by regulators.” 

Community banks...community banks...I know I just saw something about that...Oh, yes:

Greggers “...currently is a partner and the head of investment banking at Monroe Securities Inc., a boutique investment bank which covers the community banking sector...”

So let me see if there might be some dots to connect:

• Senate rams gains passage of Big guy’s mini-TARP on Thursday
• Mini-TARP provides $30 billion lending fund which will be awarded to “community banks” by Toxic-Tax-Cheat-Timmy Geitner
• Big Guy attends UN delegate’s reception Thursday evening
• At UN delegate’s reception, he bumps into old Harvard chum Greggers, who is not a UN delegate, butt is a partner in a Chicago securities firm specializing in the “community banking sector”

Damn! Dead-end: a cub reporter’s nightmare! Oh well, I wouldn’t have been able to connect the dots anyway, since it’s above my pay grade.

Back to you Walter.

Footnote: Here are a couple more dots I found that can’t be connected either.

• Some critics, who know more about bureaucrat-speak and legislation than me, say that this bill won’t help small businesses much, nor create many jobs. In fact, it appears that  most community banks don’t want anything to do with it. So who does benefit? Another dead end. 
• Shore Bank, a community bank in Chicago (with Tony Rezko and many other Obamanite connections) was seized by the FDIC in August for insolvency, and its assets acquired by a consortium of Wall Street bankers and reincarnated as Urban Partnership Bank. Probably nothing here either, you know how urban conspiracy theories go.