The Washington Post reports that, just after getting elected to the Senate, “Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.” The story shows how super fun it is to be a Senator:

The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen…

Obama assumed his Senate seat in January 2005, with an annual salary of $162,100. That same month, Random House agreed to reissue an Obama memoir, for which it originally paid $40,000, as part of a $2.27 million deal that included two future nonfiction books and a children’s book. Around the same time, the University of Chicago Hospitals promoted Michelle Obama to a vice president and more than doubled her pay, to $317,000…

The Obamas had no prior relationship with Northern Trust…They received an oral commitment on Feb. 4, 2005, and locked in the rate of 5.625 percent, the campaign said. On that date, HSH data show, the average rate in Chicago for a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loan with no points was about 5.94 percent. Jumbo loans are for amounts up to $650,000, but the Obamas’ $1.32 million loan was so large that few comparables are available…

Obama’s house purchase has been a source of controversy. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that on the day of the closing, the wife of Obama’s longtime friend and fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko closed on an adjoining lot that had been the estate’s side yard.

The Obamas bought the house for $300,000 less than the asking price of $1.95 million, while Rezko’s wife, Rita, bought the neighboring lot for the full asking price of $625,000. Rita Rezko later sold a portion of the undeveloped lot to the Obamas, enlarging the senator’s yard. Tony Rezko already had been linked to a grand jury investigation involving public corruption. Last month, he was convicted of 16 counts in an influence-peddling scheme…

Question: how much better a deal would Senator and Mrs. Obama have gotten if America wasn’t just so “downright mean“?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.