James Lambright- grits for breakfast

Mar 3, 2006 ... James Lambright, of Missouri, was nominated February 13, 2006, by President George W. Bush to be President of the Export-Import Bank.

The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday named U.S. Export-Import Bank chairman James Lambright as the interim chief investment officer of the Treasury's new Troubled Asset Relief Program, reversing a previous appointment.

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The federally funded Ex-Im Bank apparently backed loans to people affiliated with both cartels and the Mexican drug trade.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, News 8 asked for all documentation related to defaulted small business loans made to Mexico from 2002 to 2005. Although there were nearly 200 bad loans, so far, information on only 34 cases has been turned over.

But the bank did give a list of the defaulted loans and the names and addresses of the people who got them in Mexico.

"They have drug connections, which is very disheartening to think that the U.S. government is lending money to documented traffickers in the drug trade that are tied into the cartels in Mexico," said Phil Jordan, the former head of the El Paso Intelligence Center for the DEA and Border Patrol in El Paso.

Jordan ran background checks of the borrowers with two federal sources and found borrowers from Juarez and Sinaloa with criminal ties to money laundering, organized crime or drugs in Mexico. Jordan said he was surprised to find that the Ex-Im Bank didn't do similar checks before guaranteeing the loans.

Reporter Byron Harris was able to show that "Out of $243 million in the medium-sized loans the Ex-Im Bank backed in Mexico from 2003 through 2005, less than $25 million was ever repaid."

Say good bye to the bailout money. Bye Bye bailout money.