It is understandable why Wall Street would be concerned about Dubai.  Why would they be concerned about ACORN?  On October 24, 2009, Biggovernment.com revealed that the San Diego office of ACORN dumped thousands of documents into a dumpster in advance of an investigation into the organizations activities by California Attorney General Jerry Brown.  I retrieved the documents from a shared public dumpster located behind the local ACORN office.  The documents that were retrieved filled the back of my Suburban.  Much of what was retrieved was truly trash, items such as banana peels, coffee grounds and marketing materials. After sorting through the documents, though, the 20,000 documents that were retained included sensitive personal information, financial records and documents outlining the internal and political workings of ACORN.  One of the documents obtained by Biggovernment.com shows that ACORN had business relationships with 28 major financial institutions for the purpose of assisting homeowners whose mortgages were in foreclosure.

ACORN – Citibank Flyer _Redacted_ –

Citigroup was one of the 28 financial institutions with which ACORN had a business relationship.  ACORN operated a Citi Outreach program where employees of ACORN were provided personal information for Citigroup’s customers and would make contact with borrowers who fell behind on their mortgage payments.  The objective of the program was to get homeowners to contact ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC).  Testimony provided to members of two congressional committees, the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, revealed that ACORN used the Citi Outreach program, as well as a program operated on behalf of Bank of America, as a membership recruiting tool where homeowners where expected to pay monthly membership dues to ACORN prior to receiving assistance.  Testimony provided by Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN employee turned whistle-blower, sated that ACORN had quotas for membership recruitment.  Documents provided to Biggovernment.com show that regardless of whether the homeowner was assisted or not, ACORN was paid by Citigroup as long as a current phone number was obtained.  The document also shows that ACORN employees were well aware of the need to keep these documents and records private due to state and federal privacy laws.  The document reads, “People on this list have their privacy protected.  Keep the lists private.”

ACORN – Citibank Outreach _Redacted_ –

The reason Wall Street lawyers and board rooms are concerned about ACORN beyond the current political and public relations drawbacks, ACORN’s actions of throwing sensitive private information into a public dumpster containing bank customer records begs the question, is a class action lawsuit in the offing?  One document obtained by Biggovernment.com shows Citibank customers names, addresses and mortgage loan numbers were illegally disclosed, not to mention the very fact that these individuals are on this list reveals their credit worthiness since they are in a default status with regards to paying their mortgage loans.

ACORN – Citibank Customer _Redacted_ –

Wall Street certainly has enough to worry about with a weak U.S. economy and uncertainty in global financial markets.  But thanks to ACORN, there is now more to worry about.  Citibank’s cavalier treatment of its customers sensitive, personal and financial information is potentially a serious breach of state and federal law. As the depth of the San Diego ACORN office data breach becomes more clear, Citigroup and possibly more banks, will have to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of low-income homeowners lining up to take advantage of what is truly to be a cash bonanza for the poor.  Be assured that there will be many law firms willing to help “spread the wealth” to these economically disadvantaged individuals whose personal information was treated with careless disregard.

The manual provides a bit of background on the issue, some suggested actions and, helpfully, identifies “targets” for these actions.

Basic Issue Development for Organizers –

We draw your attention to two interesting sections. The first is on speed bumps:

If you’re tired of beating up on the City for speedbumps, and the City allows people to pay directly for speedbumps, you can do an ACORN safe streets pledge campaign targeting local businesses, and get each of them to sponsor a speedbump.  Targetting autodealers would make a lot of sense here.  This gives you a private-sector target.  You could also do a campaign to set up a special taxing district to tax local businesses (or downtown businesses, maybe, this may be legally harder) to pay for traffic calming. (emphasis added)

The second deals with the issue of vacant lots:

This would be a massive neighborhood level campaign, but feasible where we’d built something.  The strategy would be to force the City to make a plan to turn the vacant land it owns, or where taxes are delinquent, into an opportunity for decent housing affordable to our members.  We demand the City pool the land, and go after a developer to agree to develop it at an affordable level.  To add a smart growth twist to this, we could go after a big sprawl developer with deep pockets and demand some development in our neighborhoods as payback.  The developers will argue they need subsidies to make it all work out affordably, which may be true.  Call AHC…(emphasis added)

Again, this is an ACORN manual suggesting what is very close to a “shakedown” of private businesses. We’re stunned that the word “payback” is actually used in this document.

We assume “AHC” is “ACORN Housing Corporation,” the ACORN affiliate that receives considerable taxpayer support.