Sotomayor: Very modest assets - will have no financial vetting problems

Sotomayor Rose High, with Few Assets

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/05/07/sotomayor_rose_high_with_few_a.html?wprss=44

Congressional staffers tend to begin the vetting process for Supreme Court nominees by looking for fatal flaws in their personal finances -- anything from shady business partners to holdings in corporations that might have business before the court. Experience has proven that financial holdings can prove fertile ground for digging.

Not so in the case of Sonia Sotomayor of New York, who is considered a front-runner to replace the retiring David H. Souter.

Although Sotomayor earns $179,500 a year as a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and worked for eight years as a private attorney in New York before joining the bench, in recent years she has reported having virtually no assets.

For 2007, Sotomayor, who is divorced, reported that she had no financial holdings that needed to be reported on her personal financial disclosure report, save for a checking account and a saving account with Citibank. Combined, the accounts were worth $50,000 to $115,000. That was more than she reported as assets during the previous four years, during which the value of the accounts at some points was listed as low as $30,000.