Posted on 04/19/2016 8:53:22 AM PDT by Lorianne
The "most transparent administration in history" has spent years trying to hide embarrassing financial secrets from the public ___ It's not quite the Panama papers, but one hell of a big pile of carefully guarded secrets may soon be made public.
For years now, the federal government has been quietly fighting to keep a lid on an 11,000-document cache of government communications relating to financial policy. The sheer breadth of the effort to keep this material secret may not have a precedent in modern presidential times.
"It's the mother of all privilege logs," explains one lawyer connected with the case.
The Obama administration invoked executive privilege, attorney-client and deliberative process over these documents and insisted that their release would negatively impact global financial markets. But in finally unsealing some of these materials last week, a federal judge named Margaret Sweeney said the government's sole motivation was avoiding embarrassment.
"Instead of harm to the Nation resulting from disclosure, the only 'harm' presented is the potential for criticism," Sweeney wrote. "The court will not condone the misuse of a protective order as a shield to insulate public officials from criticism in the way they execute their public duties."
So what's so embarrassing? Mainly, it's a sordid history of the government's seizure of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, also known as the government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.
The papers being fought over concern both past and future controversies, all of them quite complicated. At the root of all of them, however, is a fight over the assets and financial power of the currently zombified GSEs. It's a pitched battle over the future of the American housing market, and the sealed papers likely contain a covert history of the war to date.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollingstone.com ...
Same reason Bush and Clinton did. Citizens cannot be allowed to know information they may use in decision making at election time.
For the same reason Obama has spent a small fortune fighting to keep his own ID documents secret?
Because obama’s a bad joke with a stupid punchline and January can’t come fast enough to suit anyone with half a brain.
To ask this question is to answer it.
bump
After the CRA and it’s NINJA loans, both Fannie Mae and Freddie MAC should have been shut down or as a minimum prevented from making anymore loans.
Why is the Government in the mortgage business?
That’s the proper question.
Great question. Do you recall the discussions we had on the CRA after this nation was 8 trillion in debt and was bailing out the banks? This was in 2007-8. If you look up the Community Reinvestment Act you will get some good data. Also one or more elected types made a lot of money in either Fannie or Freddie. Let me check.
Just checked and the CRA is alive and still going.
http://occ.gov/news-issuances/bulletins/2015/bulletin-2015-10.html
Barney Frank was tied into a number of scams.
Lehman Brothers went under due to Fannie and Freddie loans and we bailed them out. Cruz and his wife are part of Goldman Sachs same type deals plus their trade crap (TPP).
“Lehman Brothers went under due to Fannie and Freddie loans and we bailed them out.”
No, those were not Fannie and Freddie loans. F&F wrote conforming paper even during the bubble and conforming paper was as safe as it has always been. That’s why lenders only used to deal in conforming loans.
The loans that killed Lehman were high risk NINJA, Option ARM, No Down exotic paper issued by F&F’s private sector rivals.
Moreover the CRA only applied to deposit taking banks, a small segment of mortgage lenders. It didn’t apply at all to the shadow banking sector of investment banks, hedge funds and other non-deposit lenders. Lehman Brothers was an investment bank and paid no attention to the CRA.
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