The latest, "Reckless Endangerment," shreds the narrative carefully constructed by Democrats and the liberal media that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only bit players in the crisis and followed Wall Street into subprime lending. .....
"I wish I hadn't done it," Reid said. The Senate majority leader complained that Georgiou, one of six Democrats appointed to the 10-member panel, misled him about his affiliations.
Reid's sudden renouncement casts doubt on the FCIC's findings, which were released in its final report last January. The panel pinned the mortgage mess on Wall Street......when many savvy observers say Fannie and Freddy bore the responsibility.
Peter J. Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) panel. His dissent from the FCIC report was published recently.
Excerpts from Peter Wallison's review of Reckless Endangerment (2011) by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner (Times Books, 352 pages) in
Fannie, Freddie and Other Villains: A new book exposes the true culprits in the financial crisis - B, 2011 July 02, edited by Gene Epstein
Among the many deficiencies of the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — repeated in numerous popular books on this subject — was the failure to examine just how the U.S. financial system became larded with subprime and other high-risk mortgages before the 2008 crisis struck. It's as though all the bad mortgages simply sprang into being between 2004 and 2007. This new book by New York Times business reporter Gretchen Morgenson and financial analyst Joshua Rosner remedies that deficiency. It starts at the beginning — in 1991, when Jim Johnson, a political operative and former top aide to Sen. Walter Mondale, took over as Fannie Mae's CEO. Previously, Fannie had been run as a business; afterward, it was run like a political machine. The story is all here, covering the political manipulations, the excessive compensation, the improper use of the Fannie Mae Foundation, the corruption of Congress and the thuggery and lies during and after the Jim Johnson era. ..... < snip >
..... A major myth about the financial crisis, also perpetuated by the inquiry commission, is that Wall Street led the way into subprime lending, and Fannie and Freddie followed. The authors show that it was exactly the reverse. After Johnson saw that lending to low-income borrowers would guarantee Fannie's support in Congress, the affordable-housing requirements were soon enacted by Congress, and were tightened and expanded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
By 2002, government participation in nonconventional mortgages was far greater than private-sector involvement, which totaled only 4% of the market. By mid-2008, toxic private mortgage-backed securities were still less than a third of all subprime and other weak loans outstanding. More than two-thirds were held or guaranteed by Fannie, Freddie, other government agencies and banks subject to government requirements under the Community Reinvestment Act. In contrast, the FCIC said Fannie's role in the crisis was "marginal." ..... < snip >
Wallison notes that the politics was paramount for Johnson. He realized that a [later] discredited study published by Boston Fed which said there was "racial discrimination" in bank-mortgage industry "could help his company's expansion efforts, as well as its image," and used it to fan the flames of preferential lending to minorities, at the same time protecting GSEs against additional regulation or full privatization (taking away implicit government-backing guarantees) by promoting and exploiting Clinton's interest in extending mortgage credit to low-income borrowers.
Wallison also notes some flaws in the book, e.g., how the authors described the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act wrong as a matter of law. In fact, banks could and did buy and sell mortgages and packaged MBS, CDOs and SIVs before and after the repeal and repeal has not granted the banks any new powers or affected them in any way relevant to mortgage crisis. It is clear, in the aftermath of the crisis, that the [post-repeal] integrated U.S. consumer-investment banks that survived the financial liquidity crisis the best, while single-purpose non-integrated consumer banks (Countrywide, IndyMac, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, and many smaller consumer banks and lending institutions) and non-integrated investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch etc.) didn't survive and were liquidated, while some other large non-integrated investment banks (Morgan-Stanley, Goldman Sachs) were on the brink of liquidation, yet large integrated (post-repeal) JPMorgan, BoA, Citigroup, Wells Fargo etc. not only survived but actually helped in handling of the crisis by absorbing failed consumer and/or investment banks (in some cases at the expense of their balance sheets and shareholders). So the repeal of Glass-Steagall was actually helpful in resolving the crisis.
Wallison concludes his review by writing that not only the government, the media and the FCIC misled the public about real reasons, causes and origins of mortgage, financial and liquidity crises, but that the most ardent supporters of Fannie and Freddie, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, became the principals in Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Because Dodd and Frank ignored the role of GSEs and government policies such as CRA and "ownership society" and of abusive "enforcement" powers by HUD and DOJ of the policies based on politically biased assumptions that they supported, the new reform Act only put the financial institutions in a regulatory straitjacket which is making the U.S. financial system less competitive and is delaying a normal economic recovery.
Of course, in addition to Dodd-Frank Act and creation of extra-constitutional "consumer czar" (Elizabeth Warren) and rule-making Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (embedded into and financed by the Federal Reserve yet unaccountable to either the Fed or the Congress) the Chicago gang took over the IMF after the conveniently timely "incident" and arrest of DSK and his resignation, replacing him with a former Chicago lawyer Chrisine Lagarde -
Lagarde Names Obama Aide Lipton Top Deputy at International Monetary Fund - BL, by Sandrine Rastello, 2011 July 12
Christine Lagarde chose David Lipton, an adviser to President Barack Obama and a former U.S. Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration, to be her top deputy at the International Monetary Fund. ..... < snip > ..... Lipton, who worked at the IMF for eight years after receiving a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, held various positions at Treasury from 1993 through 1998, including undersecretary for international affairs at the time of the Asian crisis. Before the White House job, Lipton was head of global country risk management at Citigroup Inc., taking home a $1,275,000 bonus in 2008 and a $762,000 bonus in 2009 ..... < snip >
With Hillary Clinton (another Chicagoan and Alinskyite) looking to be appointed as chief of the World Bank, the takeover of the U.S. and the world financial system would be complete... All done simply by firing up a populist sentiment against the generic "fat cat Wall Street bankers".
And there are new rules and regulations from Elizabeth Warren's BFFs in Obama's circle, outgoing FDIC Chair Sheila Bair and SEC's Mary Schapiro (who was promoted into the SEC after chairing FInRA and missing massive Madoff's Ponzi scheme and many "mini-Madoffs").
From Dodd-Frank Rulings on Risk Make Mortgages Less Profitable: One Year Later - BL, by Lorraine Woellert and Carter Dougherty, 2011 July 12
< snip > ..... "The rules have been changed so many times," McHugh said. "If you're not on top of all the issues it's very, very difficult to stay in business today." Lots of changes that have already taken place in the almost $11 trillion U.S. mortgage market have nothing to do with Dodd- Frank. Government-backed mortgage securitizers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have raised underwriting standards, the Federal Housing Administration more than doubled its fees, and many banks remain reluctant to lend at all. Even without the new law, mortgages are more expensive and harder to get.
Still, Dodd-Frank, which marks its one-year anniversary on July 21, is expected to take those changes a few steps farther. The new rules are designed to tighten additional weaknesses in the mortgage system that contributed to the crisis, including no-downpayment loans, the "originate-to-distribute" business model, and mortgages with confusing terms and deceptively low teaser rates. ..... < snip > ..... For mortgage originators like McHugh, the most notable Dodd-Frank provision is a risk retention measure that would require most lenders and investors to keep a 5 percent stake in loans they bundle or sell. For McHugh, the outcome could mean life or death for his business. "We don't make 5 percent on a loan. To put 5 percent up on risk retention would put us out of business," he said. ..... < snip >
No wonder the Wall Street is finally shifting campaign contributions (usually "pay-for-play" or protezione money to elected Democrats) from Obama and Democrats to Republicans. Wall(et) Street - NYP, by Janet Whitman, 2011 July 10
< snip > ..... Despite the spending shift, industry experts don't expect big banks to get easier treatment as new rules are written over the next few years. With the US home mortgage market still a colossal mess, banks will continue to generate plenty of outrage among voters, making any step toward leniency a risky move for lawmakers. "Financial reform is going to form a big part of the political rhetoric, everything from CEO pay to responsibility, not just to shareholders but to depositors, too," says Phillip Phan, a professor and executive vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore. "It's all going to come up again because of the continuing mortgage crisis."
Big banks are getting increasingly jittery about the cumulative effect of a regulatory revamp as both the internationally agreed Basel banking regulations and the massive Dodd-Frank financial reforms in the US start going into effect. ..... < snip >
A major myth about the financial crisis plaguing the nation-----calculatedly perpetuated by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (staffed with political appointees tasked to do a cover-up)-----is that Wall Street led the sub-prime lending debacle, and Fannie and Freddie followed. "Reckless Endangerment" authors show it was exactly the reverse. Dem political appointees saw that F/F lending policies to low-income borrowers would curry favor with vote-crazed Congress; the ruinous "affordable-housing requirements" were enacted by Congress, and were tightened and expanded by opportunistic HUD Democrats.
Village Voice 8-5-08
ANDREW CUOMO CREATED CONDITIONS FOR MELTDOWN
Clinton's appointee, Andrew Cuomo, the youngest HUD Secy in US history, made a series of opportunistic decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the sub-prime markets without putting in place the means to monitor the increasingly risky investments. Andrew Cuomo turned the FHA mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down.....Cuomo legalized what a federal judge has branded “kickbacks” to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why. . . SOURCE http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-05/news/how-andrew-cuomo-gave-birth-to-the-crisis-at-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac/
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Feb 8, 2010
Editorial, The Wall St Journal
FR Posted February 08, 2010 by The Raven ...
HUD's Web visitors learn that in 1999 "Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance—to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years. This will mean new affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families. The historic action raised the required percentage of mortgage loans for low- and moderate-income families that the companies must buy from the current 42 percent of their total purchases to a new high of 50 percent—a 19 percent increase—in the year 2001." ... (Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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REFERENCE Entitled, "Highlights of HUD Accomplishments 1997-1999," the document chronicles the "accomplishments under the leadership of Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who took office in January 1997." HUD's Web visitors learn that in 1999: "Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance—to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years. This will mean new affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo's historic action raised the required percentage of mortgage loans for low-and moderate-income families that the companies must buy from the current 42% of their total purchases to a new high of 50%—---a 19% increase—in the year 2001."
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Do you know how you got the lucrative HUD job?
"Sure, I know how I got the job. Clinton needed my daddy in his corner,
so I got the HUD job. HUD is also where Dems load up on campaign loot.
I myself got $18M to run for Governor...and enough to finance higher office."