Some history and truth on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
As you watch and read the news from the Drive By Media, just remember who really tried to stem this bubble from bursting with all it’s domino effects. It’s really quite amazing at the level of dishonest reporting happening today. Barack Obama is counting on citizens believing the drivel being fed them.
Rush Limbaugh had an incredible response to Carly Fiorina’s blaming Bush on MSNBC. I’m only printing the first and last part of his response but I highly recommend you go read his response in entirety. It’s amazing. Also about midway into Rush’s response he lets us know this:
Two of the former CEOs of Fannie Mae are working on the Obama campaign as economic advisors. Franklin Raines and a guy named Jim Johnson.
RUSH: I’m watching Senator McCain. I don’t know where he is. He’s doing a campaign appearance right now, and he’s bashing Wall Street regulation and this sort of thing. He’s doing a good thing. He’s demanding an investigation. You know, where is the investigation of all of the individuals involved with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? I did a little bit more research, you would not believe the extent to which Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae existed to prop up liberal Democrat politicians and their favored agencies and organizations and PACs. It’s just stunning. Obama is number two, Chris Dodd is number one, Hillary ranks pretty high up there as well. But they better be careful here because it is clear — you know, we started yesterday talking about all this, and the thing that’s going on here with the financial markets and the housing market, this was not the result of a failure of capitalism.
snip……
“The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but ‘predatory.’” See, the very people that designed the program that led to all of this mess now get to blame the private sector and they’re put back in total control and charge of it. “Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck. And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi- governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America. As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.”
Can I translate that for you? Franklin Raines was a Treasury employee, some sort of cabinet secretary in the Clinton administration. He ends up at Fannie Mae and pays himself a hundred million bucks from 1999 to 2005, and they finally had to get rid of him because the scandal could not be contained. Democrats propped up this, Carly! Bush didn’t do any of this. “Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.” Gorelick again. “In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk. But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.” Hello, Mr. Chris Dodd, number one receiver of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. “At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households. The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists.”
By the way, do you know what affordable housing is? Housing nobody can pay for. Housing that people who live in it can’t pay. Affordable housing, that’s right, is welfare state housing. Next time you hear the term “affordable housing” think welfare state housing paid for by you, me, and all the rest. “The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today’s nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. … But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn’t get it. They won’t acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well- meaning, if misguided, acts.” So here we are, we’re back to the old excuse, “Well, our heart’s were in the right place.” Forget examining the results, just like the Great Society went south, the war on poverty, all this garbage never works, doesn’t matter, we’re not supposed to examine the results. We’re supposed to examine their good intentions, the size of their hearts. All well and good. Democrats are sitting ducks on this. Democrats are sitting ducks on the energy issue. Democrats are sitting ducks in the culture war. Democrats, Obama, Biden, are sitting ducks on every back-pocket issue that matters to American families, and we’ve got McCain people bashing George Bush. Now, I understand the need for distance here, Bush on popularity. But find something else to do it, like hunting. Folks, it pains me. Obama and the Democrats are sitting ducks on the issue that has Americans feeling unsettled, and that is the economy. Their money. Their houses. Democrats did this! George Bush did not!
Other links for a bit of historical perspective the Drive By’s and Democrats would prefer you not remember or know about:
Pure Election Play - Democrats, Republicans & Fannie Mae (NY Post, November 1,2000)
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - (NY Times, September 11, 2003)
McCain Proposed Solutions to Fannie/Freddie Years Ago (GovTrack - May 25, 2006 )
