Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
In a week that has seen financial markets tumble to their lowest level in years, BusinessWeek magazine puts the spotlight on Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who it says was one of the first public officials to try and alert Washington to the future mortgage meltdown.
In an article titled “They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis,” Miller, along with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, are said to have warned the federal government about predatory lending practices in 2003, but their efforts were thwarted by the Bush Administration and the financial industry.
Sitting in the spacious Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with its panoramic view of the capital, the AGs from North Carolina and Iowa said lenders were pushing increasingly risky mortgages. Their host, John D. Hawke Jr., expressed skepticism.
Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Tom Miller of Iowa headed a committee of state officials concerned about new forms of “predatory” lending. They urged Hawke to give states more latitude to limit exorbitant interest rates and fine-print fees. “People out there are struggling with oppressive loans,” Cooper recalls saying.
But it was not to be, and the two were sent home with the realization “that Washington had become a foe in the nascent fight against reckless real estate finance.”
The article goes on to say that Miller was unsuccessful at getting the Iowa Legislature to pass more- restrictive lending laws in 2006 and 2007.
Lax regulatory standards at the federal level helped undermine his efforts, he explains. State-chartered banks insisted that tougher rules in Iowa would put them at a competitive disadvantage with federally chartered banks overseen by the OCC. “We had to acknowledge the [political] environment we were in,” Miller says.
The article was published Thursday.
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