It was a week ago that 55-year-old real estate investor Jeff Greene declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.
He's a newcomer to Florida politics, and is now in the process of introducing himself to the people of Florida, who despite calls to the contrary, don't have the power in the state that Governor Charlie Crist says they do.
On Wednesday afternoon, CL spoke by telephone to Jeff Greene, who was speaking from his home in Palm Beach County. We began by asking him good-naturedly : how in the hell did he get the audacity to think that he should be Florida's next U.S Senator?
JG: You know Mitch, a lot of people in Florida, you read the Pew Polls, and all of us have seen the same surveys, and so many people are angry and frustrated at what’s going on in Washington about the lack of progress that these career politicians have made in solving our problems. Mainly, the big problem is the economy and jobs. I mean, if you talk to people in Florida, the number one, two and three problem is jobs and the economy. I’ve been watching this race for awhile, and I took a look and who we have running are three career politicians, who as far as I’m concerned, have failed us in trying to solve any of these problems. And I thought, I’m going to give them a choice between these three politicians who basically have been in office for most of the last ten years, and someone who really comes from the private sector who’s been in the business of creating jobs and running businesses and understands how the economy works in my humble view, better than them.
MP: Let’s talk about your past. You were at one point a Republican, is that correct?
JG: I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. I was brought up in, other than recently with Scott Brown what’s happened, I’ve been in the largest Democratic state in the country, which is Massachusetts. My parents were both Democrats and I was a proud supporter of President Obama early on, I was at the inauguration, so, I’ve always been a Democrat. For one year of my life I was outside the party, but that’s really it. And I’m very much looking forward to becoming the next Democratic Senator from the state of Florida.
MP: Let’s talk about some of the issues here. Health care reform passed in March. Your thoughts about that?
JG: Look, we all know especially here in Florida how important it is to have health care available for every American, certainly for every Floridian, which is what I care about most. My mom’s lived here for 40 years. She’s 83 years old. Whenever I’m with my mom – she’s in good health – but it’s ‘I’ve got the rheumatism doctor at 3, I’ve got the dermatologist at 5, and you know, you talk to her friends, they’re panicked, because they’re worried they’re going to use up all they the amount of money they get for drugs for Medicare and they’re not going to be able to afford extra drugs. And to me, to put our senior citizens under that kind of pressure is unconscionable. So we needed to have health care reform, and finally we got it going. I didn’t like the way it went down. I can tell you this, if I were in the Senate, it probably would have been a different health care bill because it wouldn’t have been the inside, back room dealing that went on, you know with all the different states. I think it was an example of how broken Washington is.
MP: So you didn’t like the process?
JG: Who did? I thought it was an embarrassment for all Americans to see our country being run that way.
MP: Let’s talk about financial reform. Can you tell me more about your background. We’ve heard you made a lot of money by betting against sub-prime mortgages.
JG: Let me make this absolutely clear. No Florida home owner lost a penny because of the trades that I made. I’m a realty investor, I’ve been a real estate investor most of my adult life. When I was at Harvard, getting my MBA …I’ve been in real estate for 30 plus years. The housing world owning, creating , and so forth, I had my ups and down. I had a real big down in the early 90’s, in which I really almost lost everything I had. And when I saw the housing bubble –which I have to tell you, none of these other elected officials, seemed to have seen at all – when I saw that forming, I decided I had to protect myself this time and I was able to come up with some investments which allowed me to take on Wall Street which I won! And I had great success taking on Wall Street with these investments. I plan on taking on Washington with the same vigor and determination that I did to take on Wall Street.
MP: Could you be more specific about these investments that allowed you to take on Wall Street?
JG: The term they use for them are swaps. Basically it’s a contract you enter into which I did with – well, I’m not going to name the banks because it’s not appropriate – but with the largest investment banks in the world –and I entered into these contracts, which really served to protect my investments in that the contracts provided that if there were certain losses in the portfolios that were backed by these contracts, that I would be paid money which would offset my losses in my own portfolio and if they went against me, I would have to pay them money. And the way I look at it, it’s just like a farmer doing a futures contract in that if a guy has an orange crop here in Florida and he’s worried about prices he can just sign a contract that says ‘you know what? You’re going to pay me so much a bushel, for this many bushels of oranges and if it’s more, you know I’ll be sorry I signed it. If it’s less, I’ll be glad I signed it. So I did that. My trade was to protect my investments. It wasn’t in any ways speculation. It’s a productive thing. These investments need to exist because they allow people to protect their investments .
I want to reiterate. No Floridian lost one penny, because this is what Kendrick Meek is saying, that I bet against homeowners. I didn’t bet against homeowners. This has nothing to do with homeowners.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2010.