We know who the culprits are in this financial real estate mess. If you want to see who Congress thinks is responsible, just look at the fact that Democrats in Congress have no interest at all in holding hearings to investigate what went wrong and are trying like crazy to find any Republican to blame it on and flailing. Knowing that Democrats will investigate anything if there's a shred of a chance of blaming Republicans, this is telling seeing as they know where the finger will point to. They tried to point the finger at Phil Gramm, who merely sponsored legislation to allow investment banks to participate in more traditional banking. Even Clinton's Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman-Sachs, Robert Rubin, shot that down, saying that the legislation had no impact whatsoever on the current crisis.
If Congress were to ever truly investigate this, people like Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, and John Kerry would be voted out of office very quickly.
Here's a
piece from the Wall Street Journal further outlining the obstruction Democrats played in preventing oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, where all the problems stemmed from. The detonation of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac essentially took out collateral damage such as AIG, Lehman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, etc. If Democrats had not stood in the way of oversight, the situation would be far different today.
The White House also put out a press release showing the
timeline and actions taken to address the problems and were stymied every step of the way. After auditors pointed out fraud and potential dangers, Democrats like Barney Frank, Chuck Shumer, and Chris Dodd stood up to say that there were no problems and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not in trouble and that anyone who wanted reform legislation only wanted to discriminate against the poor and minorities by making it hard for them to get a loan.
As for Obama's culpability, he stood with Democrats in blocking efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Here's
an article from Bloomberg as well on this issue.
For those who want change, let's vote out the ones who were at fault and keep out of the White House the people who were responsible for blocking reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was liberalism that was at fault for distorting the markets and creating the real estate bubble, not capitalism. And who were the ones in charge? We had Janet Reno at the Clinton Justice Department who threatened companies who didn't loan to the poor or minorities under the Community Reinvestment Act, all in the name of giving people homes who couldn't afford them. We had Jim Johnson (Countrywide Mortgage scandal anyone, and Obama's head of the VP selection committee) and Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick who ran Fannie Mae into the ground, fraudulently inflating assets in order to maximize their bonuses. (Ann, where's your outrage at the Democrats here?) We had Barack Obama and his entire party blocking reforms that could have saved taxpayers from hundreds of billions of dollars in losses.
Explain to me why Democrats should be allowed anywhere near the economy?
As for why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could make campaign donations (Obama was #2 despite having been in office less than four years with over $200,000), they are corporations and were set up as such. They are Government-Sponsored Entities (GSE's), but are actual companies with a board of directors, a CEO, etc. They do have special government exemptions, which is why they're referred to as quasi-governmental agencies.
