Posts Tagged ‘freddie mac’
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
01/27/2010
In the wake of the Massachusetts Miracle last week (”The other Boston Massacre”), President Obama adopted a populist mantle, claiming he was going to “fight” Wall Street. It was either that or win another Nobel Peace Prize.
Now the only question is which Goldman Sachs crony he’ll put in charge of this task.
If Obama plans to hold Wall Street accountable for its own bad decisions, it will be a first for the Democrats.
For the past two decades, Democrats have specialized in insulating financial giants from the consequences of their own high-risk bets. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs alone have been rescued from their risky bets by unwitting taxpayers four times in the last 15 years.
Bankers get all the profits, glory and bonuses when their flimflam bets pay off, but the taxpayers foot the bill when Wall Street firms’ bets go bad on — to name just three examples — Mexican bonds (1995), Thai, Indonesian and South Korean bonds (1997), and Russian bonds (1998).
As Peter Schweizer writes in his magnificent book Architects of Ruin: “Wall Street is a very far cry from the arena of freewheeling capitalism most people recall from their history books.” With their reverse-Midas touch, the execrable baby boom generation turned Wall Street into what Schweizer dubs “risk-free Clintonian state capitalism.”
Apropos of the Clintonian No-Responsibility Era, Goldman Sachs and Citibank became heavily invested in Mexican bonds after a two-day bender in Tijuana in the early ’90s. Any half-wit could see that “investing” in the dog track would be safer than investing in a corrupt Third World government controlled by drug lords.
But precisely because the bonds were so risky, bankers made money hand-over-fist on the scheme — at least until Mexico defaulted.
With Mexico unable to pay the $25 billion it owed the big financial houses, Clinton’s White House decided the banks shouldn’t be on the hook for their own bad bets.
Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, former chairman of Goldman, demanded that the U.S. bail out Mexico to save his friends at Goldman. He said a failure to bail out Mexico would affect “everyone,” by which I take it he meant “everyone in my building.”
Larry Summers, currently Obama’s National Economic Council director, warned that a failure to rescue Mexico would lead to another Great Depression. (Ironically, Summers’ current position in the Obama administration is “Great Depression czar.”)
Republicans in Congress said “no” to Clinton’s Welfare-for-Wall-Street plan.
It’s not as if this hadn’t happened before: In 1981, Reagan allowed Mexico to default on tens of billions of dollars in debt — Mexico claimed the money was “in my other pair of pants” — leaving Wall Street to deal with its own bad bets.
As Larry Summers expected, this led like night into day to the Great Depression we experienced during the Reagan years … Wait, that never happened.
Full article here. -
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, economy, Election 2010, freddie mac, Houston, Houston Voters, Mortgage Crisis
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Americans must face the grim reality that the Obama stimulus package has not and will not create the millions of jobs promised. Yes, the TARP money has impacted the stabilization of the financial markets, but in the long run it won’t be enough to sustain it. When will this administration proclaim that, only through the business community (large and small), and the business community only, can the economy be truly stimulated and create jobs for the long term. Industry leaders are speaking vociferously on how this administration’s economic policies are severely undermining free enterprise in America. They’re hoping that the Obama Administration will have an epiphany sooner, and not later, before the crisis is insurmountable.
If President Barack Obama truly wants America’s financial community to help accelerate the recovery, he should stop publicly blaming it for the recession and unemployment. Instead, he should praise it for creating the most effective financial system in the world and make it his partner in the recovery.
Currently, the president is sending the financial community mixed messages. On the one hand, he is correctly reminding our banks that the government helped stabilize the financial meltdown by bailing them out.
As a result, the banks owe an extraordinary effort to help accelerate the recovery by increasing lending to small and medium-sized businesses. On the other hand, the administration’s bank regulators are forcing the banks to tighten credit standards so they make fewer risky loans. In addition, the regulators are requiring banks to write down performing loans on their balance sheets that are collateralized with devalued property. This write-down reduces a bank’s capital and its ability to make additional loans. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that government policy is contributing to a reduction in bank lending.
The demand for bank loans by small and medium-sized businesses has also declined because of the toxic political environment in Washington.
Small and medium-sized businesses are reluctant to invest borrowed money in risky projects and hire additional employees given the political overhang. This overhang includes: a probable 10 percent increase in income taxes on the wealthy and small businesses in 2011; a significant but unknown increase in healthcare costs; the prospect of unionization through card-check; an expected increase in energy costs through cap-and-trade and the Presidents Copenhagen commitments; increased financial regulation; and anti-banking and -business rhetoric from both the Democrats and Congress.
Instead of using Wall Street as the whipping boy for the economy’s ills, the president should publicly praise Wall Street for creating the most effective capital market in the world. There is no other country in the world where capital is so easily available to small and medium-sized businesses. There is no other country where capital is so readily available to consumers for homes, cars and major appliances.
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, economic rescue bill failed, Election 2010, fannie mae, freddie mac, government control, Houston Voters, National Security, Taxes, unemployment
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Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, economy, Election 2010, Energy Policy, Environmental Issues, fannie mae, First Amendment Rights, Foreign Policy, freddie mac, government control, Houston Voters, Illegal Immigration, national healthcare, National Security, Public Education, socialism, Taxes, Texas 18th Congressional District
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
56 Sponsored Bills (Ranks 2 of 440) 0 Made Into Law -
Do you want to! Or would you prefer someone who addresses the country’s pressing issues that you hear about and see on TV everyday. I can think of a few: Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Terrorism, Energy Policy, Environmental Issues, Foreign Policy, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Jobs, Economy, Recession, 1st Amendment Rights, Illegal Immigration, Mortgage Crisis. Seems as though she avoids the issues.
Tags: Energy Policy, Environmental Issues, fannie mae, Foreign Policy, freddie mac
Posted in Houston, National Issues, Sheila Jackson Lee, Stop Sheila, The U.S. Government | No Comments »
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Borrowed From Blond Sagacity
“…Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
“I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Clinton said recently.” (source)
Truthfully, I have no sympathy for Wall Street OR Main Street. The story about Addie Polk doesn’t tug at my heart strings –it’s not the standard. The “folks” on “Main Street” were just as irresponsible as the bigwigs on Wall Street IMO.
Who are the people that got loans that are now in jeopardy?
1) People that outright couldn’t afford them and put no money down –so are basically where they started anyway.
2) People that were looking to “Flip that House” –the gamble didn’t pan out.
3) People that already had a house but decided to upgrade to one they knew they couldn’t afford.
Is it so wrong that I have sympathy for none of the above?
This is more American entitlement at play. I DESERVE a house because the Jones’ have one. There should be a government program to get me that house regardless of whether I can afford it or not…
I’m just so sick of Obama getting a bounce from the economy woes when:
“Lehman Brothers collapse is traced back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big mortgage banks that got a federal bailout a few weeks ago.
Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.
A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.
Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee…” (source)
Wouldn’t it be nice if Americans actually read more than headlines and commercial text?!
(permalink) Breathtaking Acumen By ALa @ 8:57 AM
Also Borrowed From Blond Sagacity
“Obama & Friends – A History Of Radicalism”
Sean Hannity of Hannity’s America Special Report Entitled “Obama & Friends – A History Of Radicalism” Including Black Panthers, Bill Ayers, Muslim, and Saudi, Khalid Monsour Connections. Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_HZMD97nMw
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
I fear many won’t watch this because it’s Sean Hannity presenting it…but there are even questions from the NYT included. I want Obama voters to watch ALL the parts of this special (It’s an HOUR long, BUT you are voting for the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) It’s worth an hour of your time.
(permalink) Breathtaking Acumen By ALa @ 9:13 AM
This is not an hour long since the commercials were removed.
Tags: Barack Obama, barney frank, economy, fannie mae, freddie mac, Hannity's America, Housing-mortgage crisis, Mortgage Crisis, National Security, Obama's allies
Posted in National Issues, The U.S. Government, Voices of the 18th Congressional District | No Comments »
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
Creditors Shot Themselves in the Foot and Congress Handed Them the Gun
Americans are mad as hell right now because we are tired of not only; no representation but adverse representation by our lawmakers.
Our banking system lobbied our Senators and Congress to tighten up Chapter 7 Bankrupsy filing making it more difficult and expensive to file for debt relief. Little did they know that the passage of the legislation they desired, the; “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” would make it more appealing to walk away from poorly contrived mortgages in down economic times.
Now they are left “holding the bag” at the burst of a long running housing bubble artificially stimulated through ridiculous toxic mortgage tools such as ARMs, No Down Payment and Interest Only Loans that they paid 354 American lawmakers to turn their heads and allow.
That’s right, this lack of governance was purchased from our lawmakers over 2 decades by our lending institutions and now they are bleeding all over us, crying fowl and asking the American taxpayer to bail them out.
We, “Main Street” don’t seem to have much choice but to bail out “Wall Street”, because if we don’t we may “bleed out” too.
Fortunately we seem to have responsible non-elected officials “Bernanke & Paulson” at the helm of change here presenting a reasonable plan.
I sincerely hope American voters will take a hard stance and cast these 354 Lawmakers that took contributions from Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae out of office this year.
It’s up to voters to take back control of our government and demand that they represent us in a fiscally responsible manner.
We need real change and we need it now.
If you agree, please pass this message or a link to this page to friends, family and every voter you know. You can use the tools in the toolbar (click for more choices) below to help get this message out.
Engineer2
Help John Faulk defeat Sheila Jackson Lee
Tags: 354 lawmakers, balanced budget, Barack Obama, credit crisis, economy, fannie mae, freddie mac, John McCain, lawmakers take from freddie mac and fannie mae, Mortgage Crisis, Taxes
Posted in National Issues, Sheila Jackson Lee, The U.S. Government | No Comments »
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
We Americans are asking ourselves; Who failed us?:
- Our major old long time banking establishments are failing
- The Mortgage Crisis continues to escalate with 100s of thousands of families losing their homes
- Oil surged $25 dollars/barrel today before dropping back to a record $16.37 increase in one day, today, exacerbating current financial market instability while guaranteeing future rises in inflation
- Unemployment is rising at a high rate, much higher than what’s being reported because the American unemployed worker is no longer counted when they fall off the unemployment compensation rolls within a few short months, having regained employment or not
- Politicians are raising campaign funds valued at multiples of 10 times to thousands of times what the job pays. Doesn’t anyone ask why those “public service” jobs are perceived to be that valuable?
- We are looking at a $750 Billion taxpayer bailout which will increase our national debt from $10.5T to $11.3T with subsequent devaluation of the Dollar and almost certain inflation consequences
- 11 Banks have already failed this year and the FDIC has 117 more on the “Watch List” as troubled banks. That list alone has the potential to bankrupt the FDIC. What happens then? I believe we already know… They come back to the taxpayer and ask for more.
You can find the list of 354 lawmakers who may have succumbed to influence peddling by Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae by taking donations to “look the other way”, here.
The worst potential offenders are listed in order of largest total contributions with:
- Barack Obama coming in second place with $126,349
- Harry Reid in 11th place with $77,000
- Hillary Clinton placed 12th with $76,050
- Nancy Pelosi made the top 20 at 18th place with $56,250
- Barney Frank in 26th place with $42,350
The list goes on and on with Democrats comprising the majority of the 354 lawmakers taking funds from Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae (taxpayers now). Here’s the taxpayer burden breakdown:
- 209 Democrats (59%)
- 143 Republicans (40%)
- 2 Independents
Houston – Let’s make sure and not forget Sheila Jackson Lee and her $8,000 in Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae contributions when placing blame.
We certainly didn’t see any legislation introduced by her to help stem the fleecing of the 2 American Institutions set up to help guarantee affordable housing to low and middle income Americans. She should have known better since a large percentage of her constituency fall within that umbrella.
We don’t just need a “Congressional Oversight Committee”, we also need a “Senate Oversight Committee”. Our system of “Checks & Balances” seems to have fallen prey to raw American greed. We need Sarah Palin to “Clean House” and the Senate. We need someone who will help revive flatlined political ethics in America.
We all need to take a hard look at this list provided by OpenSecrets.org and lay blame where it belongs, when we go to the polls this election year. From judges who legislate from the bench to an out-of-control Senate and the most “Do-Nothing-Congress” in the history of the US, American voters must take back control of our government this year.
Engineer2
You can help us send John Faulk to Congress today.
Tags: American Banking Failures, Banking Failures, Barack Obama, Corrupt Politicians, economy, fannie mae, Fannie Mae Contributions, Frank Barney, freddie mac, Freddie Mac Contributions, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mortgage Crisis, Nancy Pelosi, Sheila Jackson Lee
Posted in Houston, John Faulk, National Issues, Sheila Jackson Lee, The U.S. Government, Voices of the 18th Congressional District | No Comments »
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Why was I not surprised? Sheila was just standing out there minding her own business and along comes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with $8,000.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html
Sheila’s campaign donations from the now defunct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was all funneled through individuals. I hope the money given to her did not cramp the style of the donors. I am a little surprised that she would have received twice as much as Al Green. Now taxpayers are being forced to bail these failed Democrat led organizations.
Sheila did not do as well with her “hometown” buddies, Lehman Brothers! She only picked up $400, the lowest amount given to any Texas member of Congress. Gene Green picked up more than Sheila.
Help me get elected so we can stop this madness!
John Faulk
You can help us send John Faulk to Congress today.
Tags: Al Green, economy, fannie mae, freddie mac, Gene Green, John Faulk, Lehman Brothers, Mortgage Crisis, Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas 18th Congressional District
Posted in Houston, John Faulk, National Issues, Sheila Jackson Lee | No Comments »
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Nancy Pelosi, you are the spokesperson in charge of defending the most “Do-Nothing” Congress in the history of the United States. You are the spokesperson for the Democrat led 110th Congress that has to step up to the plate and say; “We are at fault too”.
American voters want to know who in Congress was influenced by Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s influence peddling through campaign contributions and lobbying.
We want a full list of every Congressional member (Democrat &/or Republican) who took any kind of contribution from Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae in the last 4 years.
We want to know who, and the full $ amounts associated with any and all Congressional members. We want full accountability and we want it now!
We want full disclosure before the elections!
Engineer2
You can help us send John Faulk to Congress today.
Tags: congresional disclosure, Congress, economy, fannie mae, freddie mac, influence buying, lobbiest, Mortgage Crisis
Posted in Houston, John Faulk, National Issues, Sheila Jackson Lee, The U.S. Government, Voices of the 18th Congressional District | No Comments »
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