Posted on 10/01/2008 4:19:19 PM PDT by Libloather
Fannie/Freddie Scandal Dwarfs Enron, WorldCom
RUSH: Investor's Business Daily today has just a great, great editorial: "Should Congress Be 'Perp-Walked'?" They say, "A federal grand jury in New York is probing the accounting shenanigans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's about time, and we hope it doesn't end there. Remember the early 2000s, when companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and Xerox suddenly and spectacularly were revealed to have been cooking their books? Remember the glee expressed by Washington politicians, especially Democrats, as they watched CEOs and their underlings get perp-walked out of their buildings and into federal custody? Enron became the poster child for corporate misdeeds. In the accounting crisis of 2002, CEO Ken Lay was one of the most loathed human beings on Earth. And no, that's not an exaggeration.
"Here was California Attorney General William Lockyer, one of many Democrats on the national scene who gloated at the downfall of the Enron chief and others: 'I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.' Lockyer wasn't the only one swept up in a spiteful prosecutorial frenzy. Sure, some of the prosecutions were deserved. But some were excessive, part of a corporate witch hunt. As noted in a 2003 study by Kathleen Brickey, a Washington University law professor, the Justice Department brought 50 major fraud prosecutions from March 2002 to August 2003. An estimated 90 corporate officers were involved. That's a lot of prosecutions. ...
"Democrats wasted no time calling this a 'GOP' scandal, tarring any Republican official with charges of corruption for taking so much as a dollar from any of the companies. Never mind that Democrats were also prominent on the political gift lists. Fanning the fire were news media highlighting Republican ties to scandal-plagued firms while all but ignoring Democrat links. Here's how James B. Lockhart III, head of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, described the two companies back in 2006, before the meltdown occurred..." Fannie and Freddie, "We mention all this because we now have an opportunity, thanks to the New York grand jury, to probe perhaps the greatest financial crime ever." Do you understand that Fannie and Freddie "dwarfs Enron," and WorldCom, "in size and scope," and that's why we're fit to be tied here!
The Democrats in Congress can happily frog march Ken Lay all the way to jail and everybody else that they wanted to tar and feather because they thought Lay was only contributing to Republicans. He contributed large amounts to Bill Clinton, too. But when it comes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored enterprise, ladies and gentlemen, "Why, oh, no, no, no! We're not going to investigate here. We're not going to prosecute." The differences here are stark, and by treating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as victims, we are only going to perpetuate all of this, unless this is accountability. James Lockhart described the two companies -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the meltdown occurred -- this way: "'The result of (Fannie's and Freddie's) rapid growth unconstrained by market forces and a weak regulator was years of mismanagement, flagrant earnings manipulation, and systems-and-controls problems.
"Managements of both companies were forced out, earnings were misstated by an estimated $16 billion, fines exceeding one-half billion dollars were imposed, and remedial costs will exceed $2 billion.' Yet Congress did nothing. Fannie and Freddie continued to enjoy a virtual monopoly of the housing finance market, holding nearly half the nation's $12 trillion in mortgage assets in 2007." Fannie and Freddie are nothing more than Democrat Party piggy banks. They are nothing more than instruments and seeing to it that the Democrats can buy vote after vote after vote from people they can put into houses who cannot pay for them, who are then going to be protected and will be allowed to stay in these houses, what with this new bill -- the bailout, the rescue, whatever you want to call it.
"And what happened to Fannie's and Freddie's top executives, almost all with deep ties to the Democratic Party? Did they get perp-walked to prison like WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers, Tyco's Dennis Koslowski, Adelphia's John Rigas, ImClone's Sam Waksal, or," Ken Lay? Nope. As you know by now, "Jim Johnson, former Walter Mondale aide, became head of Barack Obama's vice presidential search committee. Franklin Raines, who headed Fannie from 1998 to 2004, the years of its worst excesses, pocketed nearly $100 million in pay and bonuses from Fannie. He, too, became an adviser to Obama. Other Fannie-Freddie alumni did equally well. Rep. Rahm Emanuel has been front and center in crafting a new rescue bill.
"Ex-Clinton Justice official Jamie Gorelick..." her name is everywhere! I don't care where you find a Democrat scandal and something that has blown up, be it intelligence prior to 9/11 or be it Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, Jamie Gorelick is everywhere! Who does she have pictures of with a goat? "...Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd repeatedly thwarted reforms. Yet today they stand front-and-center as Democrats try to 'fix' a problem they created." That's why blame's important, Obama, you little squirrel. That's why these things cannot be fixed without attaching blame! Of course you want to shove the blame down the road because you know once this gets "fixed," quote, unquote, everybody will breathe a sigh of relief and forget about the blame.
We won't. "There's lots of evidence that the [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] had become little more than taxpayer-guaranteed front companies for Democrats, who used them to reward supporters with cheap loans and to provide jobs for out-of-work politicians."
She deserves her own perp-walk...
The perps behind the Fannie/Freddie debacle are al Democrats, and influential ones, at that. Therefore, you can take it to the bank (sorry for the pun) that there will be no real investigation; and, even if there were an investigation, the MSM would never report on it.
Folks, we are losing our beloved America to the hardcore left, and they will do absolutely ANYTHING to gain and hold on to their power. I am now convinced that there will be a civil war, a revolution the likes of which we’ve never seen in this country. It will be long and bloody, I’m afraid. But it will come to pass. The left in this country are acting just like the communists in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, and everywhere else the communists took control.
Sorry, not drinking the populist koolaid, thank you very much. I'll take the bankers on wall street over the idiot children on parade here, any day and twice on Sundays. These clowns aren't fit to run a hotdog stand, I don't really see cheering for their setting up a guillotine.
>> That’s why these things cannot be fixed without attaching blame!
While Dems certainly mismanaged Fannie and Freddie, you had none other than George Bush noisily agitating for an “ownership society” — including browbeating banks and mortgage lenders into giving no-down-payment loans to minorities.
What shall we do about that inconvenient fact?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUbb2DUYGk
I’m all for assigning blame. Or, more correctly, figuring out what happened, who was wrong and who was incompetent, reversing bad laws, and rooting the bad actors and the incompetent actors out of government.
Unfortunately, that will require rooting out a significant portion of the Republicans also. If you want to go down that path, as I do, you need to understand that both parties will feel the heat. Bring it on, I say.
Call you reps and tell them not to bail out Freddie and Fannie, and not allow funds to go the the corrupt ACORN, which among other things, is involved in voter fraud in getting Dems elected.
That would be nice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.