September 30, 2008 A Letter to Representative Pelosi

Today I wrote to Speaker of the House and CA Representative Nancy Pelosi. For the record, she is not my direct representative.

Dear Representative Pelosi,
Can you please explain your decision to vote yes on the Bail Out Bill. You made two comments on the House floor that are very incongruous with your vote. The first, “Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos."
If you vote for a bailout of institutions which made, as you put it, "unwise and risky financial deals," how can you claim to believe in the free market? It is not free if risk takers are not allowed to fail. And it is certainly not free if failure is rewarded.
You also stated that "Today we must act for those Americans, for Main Street, and we must act now." Yet you voted for a bill that may or may not stabilize wall street and has no provisions or protective measures for "main street," as you refer to constituents. In fact, you voted for a bill that must be paid for by your constituents and will benefit the aforementioned risk taking institutions. How did you act for "Americans on Main Street" by backing this legislation.
Thank you for your time and I hope that you will clarify this discordant speech and vote.

I hope that she will write back. I did not want to point directly to her own personal financial obligations- current personal mortgages and investments, and campaign financiers. I hope that her personal obligations had no bearing on her vote. But here is a list of her reported outstanding loans (mostly mortgages) between her and her husband in 2007. SP = spouse owned JT= jointly owned
That means that Nancy and her husband are paying off loans in the $12.25 million - $54.5 million range. I wish that I could report the exact number, but Reps are only required to check off a range on their financial disclosure forms and the range options are quite large (i.e $5-25 million). Perhaps if she graces me with a reply I will expend the time and effort to snooping around propertyshark or trulia with the disclosed addresses. The list of stocks that her and her husband own is too long for a picture- but you can download the file yourself from the above link and check it out. Some highlights: In 2007 Paul purchased $1 - 5 million in stock from a real estate company, purchased and then sold $1 - 5 million in stock from apple, and purchased $500,000- 1 million in stock from Cisco Systems. Bet you can't guess what Paul Pelosi does for a living. Financial Investor/Real Estate Investor. Bail him out Nancy! Us folks down here on main street aren't feeling the crunch like you because luckily we couldn't afford to invest in that kind of tanking portfolio.