So much for the politics of change – this isn’t change, it’s checks. Big ones. The Fannie Mae CEO admits, back in 2005, that there were serious problems – in the same speech he calls Obama and the rest of the CBC members of the “family.” Obama was being sworn in; he was new to Congress. But he can’t deny he knew there were problems at Fannie because he heard it directly from the CEO – just before he started to take money from him.
What else was going on in 2005? John McCain was trying to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae. GayPatriot notes McCain’s record of trying to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and says that if it were Barack Obama, it would be front page news. Karl’s post at Patterico’s has lots of linky goodness, and blasts WaPo for it’s alternate reality of trying to pin this problem on McCain.
And the media? Crickets chirping. Here’s the damning video. McCain had better, as Ace insists, make some commercials from this.
Also – Franklin Raines’ (Fannie Mae executive and Clinton administration alumni) “criminal enterprise?” You be the judge. If the Justice Department is not looking into this, it surely should be – the taxpayers have been robbed. The full story is at Hennessy’s View, but here’s a taste:
As an executive at Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines illegally coerced his employees to falsify accounting facts so he’d get a maximum bonus. The government-backed firm used Enron-like fraud, in part at Raines’s orders, to create the largest bail-out in US history. Raines had the whistleblower fired.
And Barack Obama was very much in Fannie Mae’s pay. In spite of the fact – as the video shows – that as far back as 2005 it was known that there were serious problems there. Here’s how the Fannie Mae payouts stack up: (full chart at Hennessey’s)
But it doesn’t stop at just taking donations. Fannie Mae evidently really is family. Rob at Say Anything notes,
Not that the Associated Press mentions that Franklin Raines, who fled Fannie Mae in the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, is now a housing policy adviser to Barack Obama.
Remember when everybody was all riled up about George Allen’s “macaca moment?” How about when Trent Lott (a disgusting porker, true, but that’s besides the point) clumsily tried to compliment a geezer on his way out of Congress? How about eight years of “Bushisms?” How about the witch hunt to expose the person who outed Valerie Plame, Double-O Soccer Mom who drove to work at the CIA every day? (Oh, wait – it was known all along who did it; the rest was just an exercise in convicting someone in the Bush administration.) The media never misses a chance to leap with both feet on any Republican who makes, or even appears to make, a mistake – much less commit a crime. Even to the point of mislabeling Democrats as Republicans when there’s a headline mentioning something criminal or unethical… They can’t cover up for Obamessiah forever. The question is, can they do it until November?
h/t Ace
I just can’t stand how communists always use problems that they cause to further their own ideology.
Wow, Obama took almost as much as McCain’s campaign manager to look after Fannie and Freddie’s interests. Well, maybe a tenth as much, but still.
Obama’s Finance Chairperson created the problem. Top that.
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/09/sub-prime-slime-obama-and-pritzker-and.html
(Yes, that’s a bit childish; it’s 2am and I’m fighting off a hack attempt on my server. If I could just track him/them down and get my hands around his throat I’d feel a whole lot better. But the Dems are neck deep in this mess; for Nancy Pelosi to flatly deny it and for Obama, Chuck Schumer and others to play ignorant and point at Bush, who at least tried back in 2003 to do something about it, as did McCain on several occasions only to be mocked for it, is just BULLSHIT.)
Added: Mind you, I’m not saying the GOP is free from blame. But this started on Clinton’s watch, and the Dems have protected the process every step of the way. It is completely unjust that the MSM is twisting it the way they are.
From your link:
“Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch”
You know, a month ago I might have pointed out the irony of accusing ‘the liberals’ of inventing this problem by using Ernst & Young and Merrill Lynch as examples. But now that I see the staggering degree of corporate socialism alive in the US today I might have to concede the point. Now the fact that McCain’s campaign manager was paid $2 million to defend Fannie and Freddie makes me wonder exactly why anyone thinks it was wrong – Obama practically invented it (apparently), and McCain supports it so much he wants the health system run the same way! (I guess there is a future for socialized medicine after all)
Paul, you’re killing me, brah, and not just because I’ve barely slept in three days.
Yes, I agree that the private profits, public risk situation has GOT to end. It never should have existed to begin with. McCain’s campaign manager was paid $2 mil to defend Fan/Fred? That sucks. But that doesn’t even touch the fact that Democrats invented this problem because it was politically opportune for them to force banks to let people buy houses that they couldn’t afford. Barney Frank’s response was typical – no, we’re not going to put the brakes on this thing because that will stop low income people from getting houses. John McCain, regardless of who his campaign manager is (and I still haven’t looked it up) personally tried to warn people and put a stop to this. So did President Bush. Democrats (not Obama personally, although he’s plenty connected as you well know) caused this problem. Some Republicans aided and abetted, true, but Dems own it, which is why they are so desperately trying to shift the blame now.
And you know darned good and well McCain doesn’t want socialized medicine, Paul.. Come on, you’re better than that.
I keep hearing that the Dems ‘own’ this problem, but I don’t see the evidence. So far what I’ve worked out is that a largely Democratic group pushed for low income loans. That in itself was a noble idea, but with the potential for things to go wrong. What helped it along was the largely Republican group (including McCain) who removed the sort of controls on the financial sector that would have stopped the routine mistake on lending (routine in the sense that the government implements bad ideas like this every year) to become the disaster we currently see. So I don’t think this is a Republican problem, but neither is it a Democratic one either; it’s an excellent example of what happens when politicians (of either side) concentrate on pandering rather than looking at the big picture.
And yes I know that McCain doesn’t want socialized medicine. That was a joke. Though I assume, judging by the record of so many politicians in government, that both candidates would be fine with a private health care system that benefited from a socialized guarantee that it wouldn’t fail.
McCain probably would – he’s no conservative. I have read several good blog posts detailing the timelines starting with the CRA. When I have more than a few minutes, (right now the script kiddies have resorted to brute force attacks on my work server and I still can’t reach my IT guy) I’ll dig them up and link them. The problem isn’t low income loans per se. The problems is the magical thinking that qualified an unqualified person for a loan. And I gladly admit that once the banks were forced into this by CRA, they rolled with it and made profits off it – legal, but totally immoral given that they KNEW how this was all going to end up.
Here’s one on Gramm-Leach-Bliley:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306716557967194
Here I might well show my liberal bias, because any article that starts with ‘the problem is not that we interfered too little, but that we interfered too much’ irritates me
I love the idea of a market that automatically optimizes itself, but I also love communism for much the same reason; everything is taken care of. Sadly either one simply isn’t going to happen, because people just aren’t like that. If there’s money to be made people will exploit it (the UK’s financial oversight system is among the best in the world, and the amount of money that’s removed from the system by back-scratchers and old boys is enough that if the average person knew the government would fall by the end of the day). And if there’s no such thing as money people will invent an equivalent and then use it to exploit people.
Having said that I’m greatly in favor of half the regulation, but done twice as well – the requirements of Sarbannes-Oxley look good, but don’t achieve close to what they’re intended to, as one example.
Addendum – when I said “exploit people” in the last comment that sounded harsher than I intended. My point is that in a communist system people will subvert the system; whether that’s a good or bad thing is irrelevant. The same is true of a market economy.