“I Do Think At A Certain Point, You’ve Made Enough Money”

On April 29th, 2010, Barack Obama made the following statement:

I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.

Well, what about Obama’s friends and donors? At what point did they make enough money? Glenn Beck asks that question without speaking a single word:

Note the final question at the end:

Mr. President, why don’t you ask your friends to set the example on how much is too much?

New York Times Article From September 30, 1999 Showcases Who Is Really Responsible For The Credit Crisis

Despite Barack Obama’s bold-faced lie about deregulation being the cause for the mortgage credit crisis, the New York Times, in an article published on September 30, 1999, reveals the truth about what happened and why.

We know that it all began with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act which required banks and lenders to make risky loans to people who didn’t have the credit rating necessary to qualify for those loans.

But, as the NYT article illustrates, it was stepped up and taken to even further extremes. Now, we all know who was President in 1999, right? (Hint: it wasn’t a Republican.)

Here are some exceprts from that article:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Did you read that? “Fannie Mae is easing credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.”

Now, why would they do that?

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people …

Yes, you read that correctly. “Under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration.” This was also the time when Franklin Raines made millions off of Fannie Mae even though he knew it was heading for big trouble.

I wonder if Barack Obama knew about this before he told his bold-faced lie about Republicans being at fault for the credit crisis in his State of the Union Address last night?

More:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s. “From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

Again, more history that gets ignored by leftist politicians. It was the conservative American Enterprise Institute that saw the danger and the libs ignored it. And, everytime someone brought up the possibility that Freddie and Fannie would go under, it was libs who blocked any effort at reform.

Finally:

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The push for making all of these subprime loans came first from the 1977 CRA (passed and signed into law by Democrats) and then later from the Clinton Administration.

Now, who is responsible for this economic crisis? (Hint: they were not Republicans.)

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
Steven A. Holmes
New York Times
September 30, 1999

And just in case the New York Times decides to place this article into a memory hole, you can download it in .pdf format here:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
Steven A. Holmes
New York Times
September 30, 1999

Congress Finally Acknowledges Some Of The True Culprits Of The Credit Crisis

Former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives were scheduled to be questioned about their roles in the sub-prime credit crash. Names like Leland Brendsel, Daniel Mudd and Franklin Raines as well as Richard Syron are being mentioned.

These are the people who should have been hauled before Congress back in September-October when the House and Senate were discussing the failed bailout of Wall Street. Maybe now we can get some real answers to the problem and Congress will see that the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act needs to be repealed if we really want to clean up the entire mess.

From CNN:

“The companies made irresponsible investments, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., committee chairman. “Their own risk managers warned time after time of the dangers of investing in subprime market, but those risks were ignored.” The companies have drawn criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for taking on too much risk, exacerbating the credit crisis when the housing market declined. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his recent failed presidential bid, said Fannie and Freddie were the “catalyst – the match that started this forest fire.” The publicly traded but federally backed companies together control or guarantee about $5 trillion in mortgage loans. They purchase large amounts of home loans, bundle them together and divide them into securities that can be sold to investors.

I’m gald to see that people like Franklin Raines (who made over $90 million in personal income off of these high risk, sub-prime loans) are finally being brought before the cameras so that the American people can see who profited by this whole thing and why.

You can access the original blog entry on-line here:

Fannie, Freddie Ignored Warning Signs
David Goldman
CNNMoney.com
December 9, 2008

Pelosi Declares Hearings On Housing Crisis: Barney Frank To Co-Chair

Immediately after the Wall Street Bailout bill passed the House and went to the Oval Office for Presidential signature, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that there would be hearings on the subject.

According to CNN:

She said Congress will shine a new “light of scrutiny and accountability” on the nation’s financial system to try to prevent a replay of the problems that plunged the nation into a financial crisis. Reps. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, and Henry Waxman, D-California, plan to hold hearings to increase scrutiny of the financial system, Pelosi added. “We want to take our country in a new direction for the middle class,” Pelosi said. Frank told reporters Friday that starting in January, Congress will “have a major role.” “We have to rewrite housing in America. … It would be highly irresponsible if we were to stop here,” he said. “Now we have to perform more serious reform.”

Yet, she mentions nothing about the accountability of people like Sen. Chris Dodd, or Franklin Raines or Jamie Gorelick, the latter two having made millions off of Fannie while the organization itself was sliding into government conservatorship.

And what about Barney Frank Co-Chairing these hearings? Will anyone get him to answer questions about the way he blocked reform of Freddie and Fannie over the past several years? Will Pelosi demand accountability and transparency from him? No. She is nothing more than a partisan hack who just managed to cram through the biggest socialist package in American history.

Something else that should be looked into: Barney Frank’s relationship with a former Fannie executive named Herb Moses.

From Fox News:

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. Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical. “It’s absolutely a conflict,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane? “If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane,” added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. “But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.” A top GOP House aide agreed. “C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?” the aide told FOX News. “No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.” Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Of course they didn’t immediately respond. They need time to think up a way of spinning out of it.

You can access these articles on-line here:

Pelosi: After Bill Passage, Hearings Set To Begin
CNN.com
October 3, 2008

Lawmaker Accused Of Fannie Mae Conflict Of Interest
Bill Sammon
Fox News
October 3, 2008

Congress Passes Legislation That Hands American Taxpayers The Largest Bill In History

All the scaremongers said that it was necessary to avert a credit crisis.

Credit crisis?

Where? I was still getting credit card offers through the mail. A 20-year-old friend of mine just got approved for a car loan. Student loans are still being approved. Small businesses are still able to get loans. Exactly where is the “credit crisis?”

Only on Wall Street. And Congress has now authorized the President to screw the American Taxpayer with over $805 billion in responsibilities. Maybe our children will be able to pay this off, but those of us living on Main Street just got served notice that the Federal Government cares more about the people who make big campaign donations than they do about the American people.

From the Associated Press:

The final vote, 263-171 in the House, a comfortable margin that was 58 more votes than it garnered on Monday. The vote capped two weeks of tumult in Congress and on Wall Street, punctuated by daily warnings that the country confronted the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression if lawmakers failed to act. Bush was poised to make a statement on the historic vote. “We all know that we are in the midst of a financial crisis,” House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, said shortly before casting his vote for government intervention in private capital markets that was unthinkable only a month ago. “And we know that if we do nothing, this crisis is likely to worsen and to put us into an economic slump like most of us have never seen.”

And this bailout is going to put us in a situation like none of us have ever seen!

Here is what I see:

– Wall Street Big Wigs and the Congressional recipients of their donations are stuffing my tax dollars into their pockets.
– Numerous recipients of earmarks and pork stuffing my tax dollars in their pockets.
– My gasoline prices going up because some idiot inserted a carbon tax into the bill my and stupid fool Senators (Webb and Warner) and Representative (Wolf) completely missed it!

Here is what I don’t see:

– Accountability from those who caused this mess.
– I don’t see Chris Dodd (D-CT) or Barney Frank (D-MA) being hauled before a Congressional committee to give account of how they blocked Republicans from enacting the reform that could averted this whole mess and saved us $805 billion dollars.
– I don’t see Franklin Raines being hauled before a Congressional committee to explain how he made $90 million while Fannie was losing money.
– I don’t see that the progenitor of this whole thing, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, has been repealed which means that banks and lending institutions are still being forced to make bad loans.

Let’s see who the big winners really were:

Sec. 101. Extension of alternative minimum tax relief for nonrefundable personal credits.
Sec. 102. Extension of increased alternative minimum tax exemption amount.
Sec. 103. Increase of AMT refundable credit amount for individuals with longterm unused credits for prior year minimum tax liability, etc.
Sec. 201. Deduction for State and local sales taxes.
Sec. 202. Deduction of qualified tuition and related expenses.
Sec. 203. Deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers.
Sec. 204. Additional standard deduction for real property taxes for nonitemizers.
Sec. 205. Tax-free distributions from individual retirement plans for charitable purposes.
Sec. 206. Treatment of certain dividends of regulated investment companies.
Sec. 207. Stock in RIC for purposes of determining estates of nonresidents not citizens.
Sec. 208. Qualified investment entities.
Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit.
Sec. 302. New markets tax credit.
Sec. 303. Subpart F exception for active financing income.
Sec. 304. Extension of look-thru rule for related controlled foreign corporations.
Sec. 305. Extension of 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements and qualified restaurant improvements; 15-year straight-line cost recovery for certain improvements to retail space.
Sec. 306. Modification of tax treatment of certain payments to controlling exempt organizations.
Sec. 307. Basis adjustment to stock of S corporations making charitable contributions of property.
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
Sec. 310. Extension of mine rescue team training credit.
Sec. 311. Extension of election to expense advanced mine safety equipment.
Sec. 312. Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico.
Sec. 313. Qualified zone academy bonds.
Sec. 314. Indian employment credit.
Sec. 315. Accelerated depreciation for business property on Indian reservations.
Sec. 316. Railroad track maintenance. Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
Sec. 318. Expensing of environmental remediation costs.
Sec. 319. Extension of work opportunity tax credit for Hurricane Katrina employees.
Sec. 320. Extension of increased rehabilitation credit for structures in the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
Sec. 321. Enhanced deduction for qualified computer contributions.
Sec. 322. Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventory.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds.
Sec. 401. Permanent authority for undercover operations. v Sec. 402. Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities.
Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.
Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation.
Sec. 505. Certain farming business machinery and equipment treated as 5-year property.
Sec. 506. Modification of penalty on understatement of taxpayer’s liability by tax return preparer.
Sec. 512. Mental health parity.
Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
Sec. 602. Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund.
Sec. 702. Temporary tax relief for areas damaged by 2008 Midwestern severe storms, tornados, and flooding.
Sec. 703. Reporting requirements relating to disaster relief contributions.
Sec. 704. Temporary tax-exempt bond financing and low-income housing tax relief for areas damaged by Hurricane Ike.
Sec. 706. Losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 707. Expensing of Qualified Disaster Expenses.
Sec. 708. Net operating losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 709. Waiver of certain mortgage revenue bond requirements following federally declared disasters.
Sec. 710. Special depreciation allowance for qualified disaster property.
Sec. 711. Increased expensing for qualified disaster assistance property.
Sec. 712. Coordination with Heartland disaster relief.
Sec. 801. Nonqualified deferred compensation from certain tax indifferent parties.

And don’t forget Sec. 117. The carbon tax. Now the Feds can royally screw our economy just like the governments in Europe are screwing theirs!

At least I can say one thing that is a bit of a relief. This bailout is going to ultimately fail and the economy is going to crash (we cannot keep the markets artificially inflated like this) and it looks like Barack Obama is going to win this election. The crash will happen on his watch and he will have no one to blame except himself and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Congress OKs Historic Bailout Bill
Julie Hirschfeld and David Espo
Associated Press via Breitbart
October 3, 2008

An Open Letter To Rep. Frank Wolf Concerning The Wall Street Bailout

Frank Wolf
241 Cannon Building
Washington, DC 20515

Subj: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act

Mr. Wolf,

As you already know, Senators Warner and Webb have voted “Yes” to bailing out the Wall Street Banks and Institutions that got themselves into a serious mess by engaging in extremely poor business practices. This bailout amounts to the Federal Government using my hard earned money to give a huge payday to a group of Wall Street executives while completely failing to hold accountable any of the people who caused this whole situation to begin with.

Further, this bill is being shoved down our collective throats since there have been no hearings, no debates and no investigations into the exact cause of the problem.

I recommend that at least four people be brought before Congress and put under oath to explain their exact roles in this matter. These four are Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Franklin Raines, who made $90 million in personal income off of Fannie and Jim Johnson who made over $20 million. I, for one, would like to know how these last two made money while everyone else lost money.

Beyond all of this is the pork that has been tacked onto this bailout. Main Street is going to bail out Wall Street for some Puerto Rican Rum and maybe some NASCAR tracks? How about that “Wool Research?” God knows we can never have too much of that now, can we? And what about those “Wooden Arrows designed for use by children?” Maybe we can line the Wall Street CEOs up against the wall and shoot them with the arrows!

This $700 billion legislation just went up to $850 billion, and now the House is talking about tacking even more pork onto this!

It doesn’t matter whether this bill is 3 pages or 3000 pages. It is still a socialist bailout that will saddle me and my children with bills that will take decades to pay off, if we can even pay them off at all.

Perhaps you should take the time to read through the entire bill before voting to require the American Taxpayer to handle more debt than we can afford.

Also, you should know that the contributions made to you in gratitude for your “Yes” vote on the original bill have not gone unnoticed. To wit:

Securities brokers & investment companies: $28,150
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate: $27,250
Commercial banks & bank holding companies: $21,700
Credit Unions: $13,250
Investment banking: $11,800
Credit agencies & finance companies: $11,250
Private Equity & Investment Firms: $7,800
Venture capital: $7,500
Banks & lending institutions: $6,000
Stock exchanges: $1,950
Savings banks & Savings and loans: $400
Commodity brokers/dealers: $250

The total you received from entities who support this bailout is $137,300. That is how much you have effectively been paid to hand me and my children this huge debt of at least $850 billion plus whatever other pork you and your peers decide to put into this thing. The latest estimate I saw was a final bill of $905 billion.

There is a reason these banks and lending institutions are failing. It is because the market is dictating that the fail. Once they do, businesses that engage in wiser practices will step up and take their place.

Please do the right thing and vote “No” on this bailout bill, or if you cannot do that, please explain to me why I have to provide a huge payday to Wall Street while those who got us into this mess get to walk away with no accountability and at the same time, are shoving my money into their pockets.

Thank you.

‘Crony’ Capitalism Is Root Cause Of Fannie And Freddie Troubles: Democrats At The Center Of It All

Terry Jones at the Investor’s Business Daily has a nice, clean, concise and accurate description of what happneed at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and why we taxpayers are being cajoled into paying for it.

The truth is that depspite the shrill calls from Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank that it is “all the Republicans fault,” it has been the Democrats at the center of the maelstrom. It was the Democrats who, at least twelve times, derailed Republican efforts at reforming Freddie and Fannie and as we showed in a previous blog post, Barney Frank was one of those opposed that reform very ferociously.

So, why did the Dems opposed the reform of Freddie and Fannie? Money. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.

Here is the history in a nutshell:

It all started, innocently enough, in 1994 with President Clinton’s rewrite of the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act. Ostensibly intended to help deserving minority families afford homes — a noble idea — it instead led to a reckless surge in mortgage lending that has pushed our financial system to the brink of chaos. … Fannie and Freddie, the main vehicle for Clinton’s multicultural housing policy, drove the explosion of the subprime housing market by buying up literally hundreds of billions of dollars in substandard loans — funding loans that ordinarily wouldn’t have been made based on such time-honored notions as putting money down, having sufficient income, and maintaining a payment record indicating creditworthiness. With all the old rules out the window, Fannie and Freddie gobbled up the market. Using extraordinary leverage, they eventually controlled 90% of the secondary market mortgages. Their total portfolio of loans topped $5.4 trillion — half of all U.S. mortgage lending. They borrowed $1.5 trillion from U.S. capital markets with — wink, wink — an “implicit” government guarantee of the debts. This created the problem we are having today. As we noted a week ago, subprime lending surged from around $35 billion in 1994 to nearly $1 trillion last year — for total growth of 2,757% as of last year. No real market grows that fast for that long without being fixed.

And the part about money for the Dems? Read on:

Fannie and Freddie became huge contributors to Congress, spending millions to influence votes. As we’ve noted here before, the bulk of the money went to Democrats. … Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie also became a kind of jobs program for out-of-work Democrats. Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, the CEOs under whom the worst excesses took place in the late 1990s to mid-2000s, were both high-placed Democratic operatives and advisers to presidential candidate Barack Obama. Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick also got taken care of by the Fannie-Freddie circle. So did top Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel, among others.

And yet, despite the fact that the Dems are in the middle of this whole fiasco, Obama, Dodd and Frank are insistent that it is a Republican problem. Unfortunately, their surrogates in the media are spreading this misleading (or outright false) message.

But, do you remember all those campaign ads by Barack Obama about how their were lobbyists on John McCain’s staff? Well, Obama should change his campaign slogan of “Change we can believe in” to “Hypocrisy for our own cause.” Here is how Obama deals with those lobbyists:

Over the span of his career, Obama ranks No. 2 in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie, taking over $125,000. Dodd, head of the Senate Banking panel, is tops at $165,000. Clinton, ranked 12th, has collected $75,000. … It emerged that Clinton aide Raines, who took Fannie Mae’s helm as CEO in 1999, took in nearly $100 million by the time he left in 2005. Others, including former Clinton Justice Department official Gorelick, took $75 million from the Fannie-Freddie piggy bank.

Today, Raines is a top advisor for the Obama campaign.

So, the next time somone accuses the Republicans of this Freddie and Fannie mess, ask the accuser what happened to all the money that the Dems made off of Freddie and Fannie and ask when was the last time the Dems tried to reform them.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

‘Crony’ Capitalism Is Root Cause Of Fannie And Freddie Troubles
Terry Jones
Investor’s Business Daily
September 22, 2008