Ex-Im Bank Chief of Staff scolds D'Souza and Forbes in comments on ludicrous How He Thinks article

[BurtWorm]

To give you a small sample of the profound WRONGness of the D'Souza piece (of shit):

http://rate.forbes.com/comments/CommentServlet?op=cpage&sourcename=story&StoryURI=forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html

Posted by kvarney1 | 09/17/10 01:31 PM EDT
Dinesh:

I wanted to drop you a note. I'm Chief of Staff here at the Export-Import Bank in Washington. I received a call yesterday from Nathan Verdi, a fact checker at Forbes, who was calling to fact check your article, after it was published. (Is this how journalism works now?).

I don't believe you ever spoke to anyone at the Export-Import Bank about the Petrobras transaction, am I correct?

The Bank looked into this and gave Nathan our assessment of your paragraph describing the President's role in the 2009 Petrobras transaction. Here's a copy of the e-mail I sent to Nathan yesterday.

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Nathan:

Thanks for the call.

Ex-Im believes the statements in the second paragraph of the article, "With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro?not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil" are false and designed to mislead your readers.

Both statements are factually incorrect and an even cursory check by the author would have clarified the real timeline, approval process and purpose for this transaction

According to John McAdams, Ex-Im's Senior Vice President for Export Finance (and a Bush political appointee) Petrobras and Ex-Im entered into discussions regarding potential Ex-Im financing for Petrobras with Ex-Im career staff in June, 2008.

After a series of meetings and discussions throughout the fall of 2008 and into 2009, Ex-Im career staff recommended to the Ex-Im Board (comprised entirely of Bush appointees, 3R's, 2D's) that Ex-Im enter into a Preliminary Commitment (PC) with Petrobras to finance U.S. exports to support Petrobras' oil exploration off the coast of Brazil

The subsequent review and approval of the Preliminary Commitment was conducted by Ex-Im career staff and five, Bush appointed, Ex-Im Board members.