Back in June, Blue Man and I reported on the troubles of a bank in Otsego which is at least partly owned by Representative Mary Kiffmeyer. At that point the bank was merely in trouble and being told by the government to "increase its capital after allegedly engaging in "unsafe or unsound banking practices," including operating with inadequate reserves and excessive loan losses, according to an order issued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp."
Yesterday, it was reported that the bank has now been shut down:
Riverview Community Bank, an Otsego firm that attracted national media attention several years ago for espousing prayer in the workplace, has been shut down by state regulators.
The six-year-old bank, which has $108 million in assets and branches in Otsego and Anoka, was an aggressive real estate lender, once boasting the fourth-highest concentration of real estate loans-to-capital among community banks in the state. The bank was hard hit by the wave of foreclosures that began hitting Wright County in mid-2007.
As with the April reporting, what is not mentioned is that former Secretary of State and current Representative from District 16B, Mary Kiffmeyer, has an ownership stake in this bank. The importance of this connection is due in no small part to the ideology Kiffmeyer represents. An ideology that decries government involvement in nearly every aspect of our economic lives. Now we the taxpayer's are on the hook for $20 million to bail out her bank?
So apparently, limited government help and involvement really only extends to those OTHER people. You have to wonder if THIS is the type of conservatism we really want running our government...
