Jason Mattera Confronts Barney Frank on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Video)

Mattera to Frank: "With the bad economy and all, do you think you can give me advise on how to start my own brothel? Mattera blasts him on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Video)

Sept 11, 2003---Rep Barney Frank (D-Mass), ranking Democrat, Financial Services Committee: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

FRANK OPINED AFTER THE DELUGE “The conservative philosophy of deregulation that was dominant for far too long allowed private businesses to make terrible mistakes,” said Rep. Barney Frank, who became chairman of the Financial Services Committee in 2006. But President Clinton is the one who signed the dereg legislation (passed the Senate 98-0), and Clinton’s then Treasury Secy, Robert Rubin---(a top Obama economic adviser recently ousted from his perch at Citibank-----approved.

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REFERENCE---BARNEY FRANK'S ROLE Barney Frank protected the mortgage giants and he pushed to back risky low-income housing for years. Frank had a conflict of interest because Frank’s then-live-in, Herb Moses, worked at Fannie Mae, helping create affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. The couple broke up in 1988.

Frank Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest
Friday, October 03, 2008
By Bill Sammon, Washington FOX News, Deputy Managing Editor

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefited 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. Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress. ‘I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus,” Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. “On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover.’

The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses ‘helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.’ Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.

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 HUD 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.”

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RAHM EMANUEL'S ROLE In Congress, Rahm Emanuel worked to pass a bailout of Fannie and Freddie, cosponsoring the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which also dissolved OFHEO. It moved their regulatory authority to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which took Fannie and Freddie under conservatorship in September 2008. The same act abolished the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) and replaced it with the FHFA.

After Mr. Emanuel was named Obama's Chief of Staff, the White House denied a Chicago Tribune Freedom of Information Act request for information on his Freddie Mac activities: “The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as a director.

A 2003 report by Freddie Mac’s regulator indicated that Freddie Mac executives had informed the board of their intention to misstate the earnings to insure their own bonuses during the time Mr. Emanuel was a director. But the White House refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune for those board minutes on the grounds that Freddie Mac was a “commercial” entity, even though it was wholly owned by the government at the time the request was made.

The Ohaha White House, under the influence of Rahm Emanuel, (who controls the US Treasury) is moving a trillion-dollar Treasury slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place. This will allow Fannie and Freddie to continue to purchase more toxic assets from banks, acting as a back-door increase of the TARP without congressional approval.

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