Has anyone posted this yet?
Sadly, I think MOST voters are ignorant of history and will buy into the distortions - no, make that outright lies - that I'm hearing as I listen to the nightly news...
This crisis didn't happen over night... and if you want to get a better CLUE as to who is at the root of the matter, this article from 2003 is VERY telling:
September 11, 2003
"New Agency proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae"
by Stephen Labaton from the New York Times.
"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ... The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session. ... ''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies. ... Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill.
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."For the full article go here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&scp=1&sq=%22barney+frank%22&st=nyt
Thank you Mr. Frank.
The Dems. have been very tenatious in their efforts to block Bush's attempts to "fix" problems like this... like Social Security...
And now Fannie and Freddie are the plutonium core of the economic meltdown...
According to the Wall Street Journal,
"How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of "affordable housing." They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse."
Seems kinda obvious which side of the aisle is MOSTLY responsible for this mess.
