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To: Pan_Yan
the Republicans were in charge of the House for 12 years and they didn’t fix it either. Hell, they had the House, Senate and White House for 6 straight years. There is plent of blame and corruption to go around.

SEE HERE :

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/why_barney_frank_resisted_addi.html

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.

Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank.


Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis.

"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.

The Democrats totally succumbed and demanded that these institutions write more and more shaky mortgages as a matter of social justice under the Community Reinvestment Act.

See more here : http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/wrecks_lies_and_barney_frank.html

As Marc Sheppard of the American Thinker Writes:

--------------------------------------------------------

In truth, the Bill that would have likely averted the Fannie/Freddy failure -- the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 (S. 190) -- was Republican legislation introduced by Sen. Charles Hagel [R-NE] in January of 2005. And it was the Democrats who opposed it in committee, fearing that its restrictions and portfolio caps might impair mortgage market liquidity, and subsequently, affordable housing. Despite the "nay" votes of all 9 Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the bill moved to the Senate floor, where it died in limbo lacking a filibuster-proof majority. The Bill was reintroduced in the 110th Congress as S. 1100, but was kept on ice by committee chairman Chris Dodd, who, coincidently, received $133,900 in grease from Fannie and Freddie over the past decade.

What's more, the "regulation" Frank now takes credit for was not his (H.R.1427 passed the House last year but never escaped Senate committee) but rather Nancy Pelosi's (H.R. 3221 - The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008). And Pelosi's version, not surprisingly and unlike its Republican predecessors, was signed marked up with over 66 pages of Liberal wealth redistribution wish-fulfillment under the guise of assuring "affordable housing." While it did establish (and way too late, Barney) the Federal Housing Finance Agency, with regulatory authority over Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Banks, and the Office of Finance, it's bogged down with tons of pork-fat. This oinker even increased the national debt limit from $9.82 trillion to $10.62 trillion, and commissioned a boatload of programs for low income families to spend it on.

Frank did, however, introduce legislation of his own in October of last year. Would you believe that H.R. 3838 was actually an attempt to temporarily increase the caps on Fannie/Freddie portfolios and to mandate the "use of 85% of such increase for refinancing subprime mortgages at risk of foreclosure?"

Funny how the congressman neglected to mention that when he assured another C-SPAN caller that:

"Yes, I did want to help affordable housing, but I also wanted to prevent bad loans."

Simply hilarious, especially considering the joyous September 18th 2007 announcement on the congressman's own website that Maxine Waters' H.R.1852 had passed the House. As proudly emphasized by co-sponsor Frank at the time, the Bill authorized "zero and lower down payment loans for borrowers that can afford mortgage payments, but lack the cash for a required down payment." It also "more than doubled" funding to counsel "subprime homebuyers and borrowers late on mortgage loan payments" and directed the FHA "to provide mortgage loans to higher risk (but qualified) borrowers, without authorizing unnecessary fee hikes on such borrowers." It also raised "FHA single family loan limits, which now bar loans above 95% of the median home price in each local area and shut FHA out of higher cost home markets."

That was last year. Four years after the Bush Administration had sounded the alarm. Yet, shortly after his C-SPAN appearance last Sunday, Frank responded to the Boston Herald questioning his awful projections of half a decade ago with "in 2003, nobody that I knew of foresaw the crisis of subprime lending, and that is what caused this problem."

Does anybody really believe that the chairman of Financial Services somehow fails to understand the ingredients of the bad loans that have created all of the toxic paper at the root of this problem?

Frankly My Dear, They Don't Give a Damn (Unless, Of Course, You're Destitute)

The Democrats' campaign to sully the President and Conservative fiscal policies is a childish ruse to shield their own failed politically correct credit ideology. And their shockingly deceitful insistence that it was they who foresaw peril and championed regulation is equally sophomoric.

Yet without acceptance, there can be no transcendence.

Not only was their so-called "regulation" Bill loaded with the same irresponsible disregard for reality that created the need to regulate in the first place, but they continue to inject their disastrous PC claptrap into all attempts to remedy the nightmare they have created.

On September 9th, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that when asked about the bailout condition which would force Fannie/Freddie to "reduce the size of their high-risk mortgage-backed securities portfolios starting in 2010," Frank responded "‘Good luck on that,' and that it would never happen." The Journal also reported that Frank had coerced the creation of an "affordable housing" trust fund in backing the bailout, stating that:

"This fund siphons off a portion of Fannie and Freddie profits -- as much as $500 million a year each -- to a fund that politicians can then disburse to their favorite special interests."

Frank took issue and again found time to submit a rebuttal, again taking bizarre bows for July's too-little-too-late legislation, and referred to WSJ writers as "right-wing ideologues" who believe that "funding to build affordable residential housing is ‘loot.'"

Of course, he's not the only left-wing-nutjob in town that just doesn't get that some people simply do not earn enough to be homeowners - precisely the reason rentals exist.

On Tuesday morning's Morning Joe on MSNBC, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) announced that the Congressional Black Caucus voted against the measure largely because it didn't include bankruptcy protection for homeowners. The CBC backs a fantasy-land proposal that would allow bankruptcy judges to unilaterally restructure home mortgages for those facing bankruptcy.

During Pelosi's poison-Bill speech on Monday, she blamed "failed economic policies -- policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system." Actually, the Speaker was right on the money describing the policies that precipitated this credit wreck.

But she couldn't have been more wrong in her choice of targets at which to aim her rage.
30 posted on 10/05/2008 6:50:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Cutting and pasting a hundred lines about how Barney Frank was completely in the tank for Fannie and Freddie does not excuse the weak, inept leadership of the Republicans. I'm no Newt Gingrich fan, but after he left the house the Republicans buried themselves so far in pork and filth that they were indistinguishable from Tammany Hall. Tom DeLay may be a brilliant conservative leader but his K Street project just went to prove the when it comes to corruption Democrats no longer have the clear advantage.
31 posted on 10/05/2008 7:49:15 AM PDT by Pan_Yan (All gray areas are fabrications.)
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