Bigger stage, same plot: Supe John Moorlach sees “Wall Street greed” and risky leverage as culprits in the financial industry meltdown, as they were in Orange County’s 1994 bankruptcy that he predicted. Moorlach isn’t sure what to do about the current crisis, but he opposes the bailout plan that passed Congress late last week as a bad deal for taxpayers. He says the doomsday scenarios among the plan’s supporters remind him of dire warnings during the bankruptcy that OC would “crater” if voters didn’t enact a sales tax hike. They didn’t, but a recovery plan still was crafted and the local economy hardly skipped a beat. Moorlach is surprised there hasn’t been more scrutiny of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, especially over the Fed’s assistance to his former firm, Goldman Sachs, and to Goldman trading partner AIG: “I think it’s a serious conflict. I don’t know why they’re railing on poor Chris Cox” …
Keep holding your breath, but there’s been some good news for OC government’s $5.7 billion investment portfolio. The Fed takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bolsters the agencies’ bonds, which comprise about a third of the county holdings. And Treasurer Chriss Street says he dodged a $50 million bullet: He sold off the county’s investment in Sigma Finance SIV for 91.5 cents on the dollar (a net profit with interest earned) just one day before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. That event in turn doomed Sigma, whose remaining investors face the prospect of steep write-downs …
Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens’ Proposition 10 (“Big Wind”) initiative is largely an OC production. Most campaign funding, $3.8 million as of the last filing, has come from Pickens’ Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels. Consultants to the campaign include: Newport Beach-based Forde & Mollrich, which was paid $800,000 so far to qualify and promote the measure; former Irvine city manager Allison Hart ($90,000); and law firm Reed & Davidson ($90,000), whose partner Dana Reed is campaign treasurer …
F & M;, consultant to the Great Park, is a link between Republican Pickens and Democratic Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, odd bedfellows in that city’s contentious council races. Proposition 10 is promoted in the Irvine Community News & Views, a pro-Agran slate mailer that looks like a community newspaper. Stu Mollrich says no “official” Proposition 10 money is funding the mailer … Dodgers broadcaster and former Marine Rick Monday hit ’em deep (if not always straight) at the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund golf tourney at Old Ranch CC in Seal Beach. The event raised more than $200,000. Playing partner and fellow retired Marine Quang X. Pham, CEO of Lathian Health in San Juan Capistrano, will run in another fundraiser, the Marine Corps Marathon, Oct. 26 in Washington, D.C.
