Wall Street’s Iron Grip and the Banking Industry Stranglehold is China’s gain and America’s loss

Can anyone remember how some politicians made it a point to bad-mouth China about how they manipulate their currency and the news media going crazy with stories about how China is taking over this country?  How about those who do not have to try very hard to find a microphone, whining about how slow this economy is growing or those who screamed about how Corporate America is hiding money overseas and sending our jobs over there as well?  Well it appears that Wall Street is not the only ones guilty of selling out this country for tax breaks, oil revenues or other personal considerations according to this article titled “Mayor, Gorman head to China to raise $25M for Rockford hotel” by Brian Leaf for the Rockford Register Star, our own mayor is using money from the city to travel to China to sell them a piece of Rockford.

The article reports that “Gary Gorman and Larry Morrissey are Shanghai-bound Wednesday to raise $25 million for Gorman & Company's $67 million plan to turn the Amerock building into a downtown hotel. They're headed to China with PowerPoint slides and sales pitches to court wealthy investors, who saw financial markets plunge 28 percent last week before government intervention led to a strong rally. They're going places where Rockford is as obscure to the locals as Changzhou is to Rockfordians. And they're trying to tap a pool of investors through EB-5, a once obscure program that provides a visa to foreigners who invest $500,000 in a project that creates 10 jobs.  Gorman raised $15 million from 30 Chinese investors through EB-5 for a hotel in the former Pabst Brewery three years ago. But EB-5 is so popular now that investors are in a visa-approval line that's 14 months long, and developers like Gorman must take out bridge loans as they wait for investor money to be released for their projects.  "There's strong demand for visas, but there is also a lot of competition," Gorman said. "The problem is EB-5 is no longer a secret. There are a lot of projects that are seeking capital in China."  Competition is a reason that Gorman wanted the three-term mayor to accompany him to China. It's the fifth time Morrissey has gone to China since he took office in 2005.  Morrissey's role is that of political dignitary, a Rockford ambassador in a country that reveres government officials.  A dramatic increase in Chinese wealth and the recent U.S. recession helped the EB-5 industry grow rapidly. Developers began looking at alternative ways to finance real estate projects when the economy tanked and banks tightened lending practices. More turned to the EB-5 program, which distributes 10,000 visas a year to qualifying investors? The backlog is currently about 13,000 applications.

Morrissey's trip, which he estimates will cost less than $10,000, will be paid for by the city and reimbursed through the Tax Increment Financing district that includes the hotel property, he said.

Now instead of making Wall Street and the banking industry loosen their iron grip of this country’s economy, we run over to China and sell ourselves to a group that we demonize on a daily basis.  Nothing like inviting the devil to dinner and complaining when he shows up.