The owner of this firm, Richard Blum, UC Regent and husband to Senator Dianne Feinstein, is also Chairman of the Board of the politically entrenched real estate firm CB Richard Ellis (CBRE). Through leveraging his position as UC Regent, Mr. Blum has brought outsize benefits to Blum Capital Partners by exploiting UC’s sizable investment portfolio. He has directed a multitude of university build projects to his very own real estate company, even going so far as to construct a building named after himself on the UC Berkeley campus from which he personally profited. Thanks to his wife, Senator Feinstein, Blum’s real estate firm CBRE won contracts from the FDIC to handle the state’s residential foreclosures at above market rates, despite the firm’s weak track record in the field. As part of the nationwide threat to public services, the closing and selling off of California’s historic post offices have been contracted out to none other than Mr. Blum’s own CBRE, allowing him to profit from the public’s great loss of priceless buildings and works of art housed in them. 

Richard Blum and his companies exemplify the intractability of corporate influence on public policy, the marriage of wealth to politics and the incestuous twining of the two. In today’s political discourse, privatization is too often pitched as the only alternative, as necessary “reform”. “We are here today to stand for real reform: the removal influence over public policy by the 1% and their corporate allies, the establishment of true public accountability, and the preservation of public services,” stated OBAU member Jane Smith. 

Occupy Bay Area United is committed to nonviolent direct action. You can find more information, including schedules of our events, and information about our weekly General Assemblies at www.obau.org. Follow #OBAU on Twitter at @occbayareautd

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Article source: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2012-11-30/article/40566?headline=Occupy-Bay-Area-Takes-Over-Richard-Blum-s-Corporation-in-San-Francisco-Tonight-to-Protest-Sale-of-Post-Offices--

Yesterday morning I attended the FDIC’s background press briefing before the vote on proposed risk retention rules.

While the rules covered a vast ground, I was of course most interested in those that focus on the “Qualified Residential Mortgage.”

The QRM would be the exemption from risk retention, and therefore banks would want most borrowers to fall under the QRM standard.

A few moments after we reporters sat down at the big conference table, FDIC representatives clunked down a huge document in front of each of us. Then another, then another: Well over 200 pages of what these proposed rules are all about. Thankfully, they then had some other FDIC folks explain to us exactly what we needed to know. I then ran out onto the balcony camera and reported the three top points…20 percent down payment, debt to income ratio requirements and various servicer rules.

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