Posted on 09/30/2008 6:27:48 AM PDT by LibFreeUSA
[note: this article is from July 23, 2008]
A $25 billion bailout of government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae is now planned. But Fannie Mae has such political power that its crooked managers will probably never be held accountable for their fraud in any way, unlike the Enron executives who went to jail. Instead, its lending authority will likely expand under federal mortgage bailout bills.
Paul Gigot, a Wall Street Journal editor, describes the personal vilification he has received over the years after the Journal began warning, prophetically, that Fannie Mae was engaged in fraudulent accounting, and that the taxpayers might some day have to pick up the tab. (To award themselves millions of dollars in bonuses, Fannie Mae’s managers used Enron-style fraudulent accounting). Fannie Mae’s managers, he notes, were ”unique in their thuggery” and arrogance.
When conservative Congressmen tried to rein it in, Fannie Mae responded with an avalanche of lies and political reprisals. It told Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s constituents that he wanted to raise the rates on their existing mortgages, a complete fabrication. And when Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns began investigating its fraudulent accounting, it got jurisdiction over its accounting practices transferred to another committee run by Michael G. Oxley, who worked in tandem with liberal stalwart Barney Frank to cover up the abuses at Fannie Mae and kill any reform legislation.
(Congressman Michael Oxley was the co-author of the devastatingly-costly and wasteful Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which ”created more busywork for accountants than real protection against abuses,” according to David Ignatius in the Washington Post. Oxley received generous donations from the big accounting firms, which were responsible for failing to detect Enron’s fraudulent accounting. The Sarbanes-Oxley law has made those firms fabulously wealthy, increasing the volume of work they receive by making auditing of public companies needlessly complicated. The big accounting firms now must be paid to evaluate and supervise companies’ “internal controls,” such as which employee has access to which computer password. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has cost the stock market over a trillion dollars in value, and imposed ongoing compliance costs exceeding $35 billion per year, while diverting attention away from corporate incompetence at mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, a close Fannie Mae ally. It also created an unaccountable agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, to create mountains of red tape to enrich big accounting firms at the expense of productive businesses. Like Fannie Mae, it is nominally “private” to evade accountability and open-government laws (even though in reality, it is a governmental agency, and unlike Fannie, qualifies as such under the Supreme Court’s Lebron decision).
Fannie Mae was run by liberal power brokers like Franklin D. Raines who even now are unrepentant about their thuggery and accounting fraud. Franklin Raines recently took to the pages of the Washington Post to attack as “ideologues” the banking experts in the Bush Administration who had long and prophetically warned about the dangers of Fannie Mae’s risky practices. I published a letter to the editor in response criticizing Raines for his utter gall in lecturing whistleblowers about how Fannie should be managed. But amazingly enough, he continues to be treated like a financial hotshot. Law Professor James Lindgren has a post about Fannie Mae aptly entitled “Fannie Mae’s Thugs.”
Surprise! Socialists are a nasty lot and will go to any lengths to discredit their opponents. And isn’t that exactly what Marx advised, and what Koba the Dread raised to an art form?
Dat's racist!
This kind of information makes my blood boil, I swear. Why isn’t the GOP hopping all over this? Why aren’t they raising red flags and beating this to a pulp so the general public cannot turn a blind eye to the horrible mess CRA, Fannie and Freddie, ACORN, LaRaza and other left wing instruments have caused?
Why aren’t they pointing the finger at those who really benefited from these parasites on society?...namely the DEMs.
There is enough ‘infestation’ being discovered to plan for a complete take-over of Congress for the 2010 elections (ala-Gingrich in 1994) - with the foundation and a re-built leadership from the ‘core’ conservative House Republicans - not the RINO BONER/BUSH leadership we have now!
Sorry to say, it’s too late this time. But, out of this mess, we can rise up with better leadership and foundation.
“And when Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns began investigating its fraudulent accounting, it got jurisdiction over its accounting practices transferred to another committee run by Michael G. Oxley, who worked in tandem with liberal stalwart Barney Frank to cover up the abuses at Fannie Mae and kill any reform legislation.”
Why are Barney Frank and the rest of the rats involved in this scam not sitting in jail?
Yes. It's very obvious to all (sad, very sad), no question about it.
I watched the first 15 min of ABC WORLDNEWS last night, and not ONCE did they present the REAL reason of WHY this bailout was defeated (real reason: the people did not support it).
It is very sickening to watch our media become a utter and complete PROPAGANDA MACHINE on ideological (and Democrat Pary) grounds.
They rival the media in CUBA and NORTH KOREA with the utter propaganda techniques!
B-U-M-P everyone’s accusing me
I don’t get to listen everyday, but Rush had a great first hour yesterday.
Great commentary and replay of a bevy of comments by all the unindicted
co-conspirators-pirates that looted Fannie/Freddie.
Including a clip from one Democrat claiming that the investigation
of Franklin Raines was a lynching.
I couldn’t motivate the folks that were still calling House members yesterday
after the bailout bill failed...probably telling them to NEVER vote
for a bailout like that.
I don’t get to listen everyday, but Rush had a great first hour yesterday.
Great commentary and replay of a bevy of comments by all the unindicted
co-conspirators-pirates that looted Fannie/Freddie.
Including a clip from one Democrat claiming that the investigation
of Franklin Raines was a lynching.
I couldn’t motivate the folks that were still calling House members yesterday
after the bailout bill failed...probably telling them to NEVER vote
for a bailout like that.
I don’t get to listen everyday, but Rush had a great first hour yesterday.
Great commentary and replay of a bevy of comments by all the unindicted
co-conspirators-pirates that looted Fannie/Freddie.
Including a clip from one Democrat claiming that the investigation
of Franklin Raines was a lynching.
I couldn’t help wondering if Rush’s show motivated the folks that
were still calling House members yesterday after the bailout bill failed...
probably telling them to NEVER vote for a bailout like that.
I go for Newt’s ideas:
“Gingrich’s four-point plan includes:
(1) suspending immediately mark to market provisions (the accounting practice of valuing a financial position in an investment at its current market price) in the hopes of stopping the downward spiral in asset values and eventually replacing it with a three year rolling average;
(2) repealing immediately Sarbanes-Oxley, the 2002 accounting law Gingrich described as “an enormous drag on small business”;
(3) setting the capital gains tax rate at zero “matching the Chinese and Singapore” (to encourage private capital to flood into the market picking up properties without the taxpayers being at risk); and
(4) passing an “extraordinarily powerful” energy bill (”to return $500 billion a year to the American economy that are currently going overseas”).”
Trust me, they will be put in charge of the investigative hearings.
Afraid you are right and given that our FBI and SEC seem poised to do nothing of consequence regarding this...they will continue in the biggest corruption scandal in American history.....Very sad day for America.
Raines is a criminal and should be in prison.
The politicians continue to cry for “action.” Hunting down those responsible for the disaster and throwing them in jain is the type of action that is truly needed.
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