Posted on 09/17/2008 8:38:12 AM PDT by johncocktoasten
WASHINGTON - The former Fannie Mae accountant who raised questions about the mortgage giant’s bookkeeping said Wednesday that he took his concerns directly to chief executive Franklin Raines in 2002 and asked him to investigate.
The disclosure by Roger Barnes, who left Fannie Mae last November, came as Raines and chief financial officer Timothy Howard defended the company’s accounting and told Congress that regulators’ allegations of earnings manipulation represent an interpretation of complex rules.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Amen to the ego and the twisted underpants. He can’t be transparent, tho’, because he is too full of....well, you know....
It was during that tirade he was unleashing against Neil....I honestly can’t remember what he was talking about when he said the word ...burning....and Neil made that reply....”the only thing you are burning is the truth.....O’Reilly was blustering so much over the fact that Neil was aggressivly challenging him and telling him he essentially didn’t know what he was talking about and, therefore, giving people incorrect information”...
Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120873768732229983.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
Fannie Mae Settlement Proves Anticlimactic
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a car bearing a dysfunctional family flips over and lands in a gulch. “We’ve had an accident!” the children shriek in delight. Then, one of them looks around and says with disappointment, “But nobody’s killed.”
The accounting wrecks suffered by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in 2003 and 2004 are ending in similar anticlimax. Regulators made grave charges; for instance, accusing Fannie executives of having manipulated earnings to fatten up their bonuses. But there have been no perp walks, and no one has gone to jail.
A settlement ...
cooking books?
dem cuisine
leave it to the dems
to find yet another way
to fatten their larder
on the taxpayer’s dime
Corrupt Dems
Culture of Corruption
When voters don’t care
and politicos turn their heads
then we get the gubamint
that we deserve.
Traction?
WHY ARE YOU YELLING IN THE THREAD TITILE?
And the flotsam begins its surfacing....
Accountant Raines on Obama’s Parade.
Obama’s grabbed hold of a tar baby now.
I suspect that would be you, other FReeper FRiends and moi.
Here’s another article I found from 2005 and posted on the compilation thread:
Long article (from 2005), but a lot of history:
The Fall of Fannie Mae
This is not your ordinary accounting fraud. Yes, there’s the matter of $9 billion in overstated earnings. But the fight over Fannie is a nasty political showdown where everyone has his own agenda. And it’s not over yet.
By BETHANY MCLEAN
January 24, 2005
(FORTUNE Magazine)
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/01/24/8234040/index.htm
7 posted on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:02:21 AM by Seattle Conservative (God Bless and protect our troops and their CIC)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2084407/posts
If McCain isn’t hitting this hard, with Ads in battleground states in the next couple of days we can surmise he has Fannie /Freddie dirt on him as well, or he is throwing the election. This is a no brainer, we can’t wait for 527’s to get something together.
McCain’s campaign needs to get out in front on a few things.
It’s really sad that they haven’t already, really. It looks like McCain’s campaign is reacting politically on 0bama’s turf. This is the wrong thing to do. Instead, McCain should be playing experience up again. But not ‘experience’ in general, but rather his specific experience.
McCain sponsored a bill in 2005 to reform Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, so why is he playing defense to 0bama on this issue? What was 0bama doing in 2005? I doubt he even knew what Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were back then. McCain needs to be presenting himself as a knowledgeable and experienced manager who has seen these problems coming for a long time, because he is, and he has. Why his reaction has been what it has been makes no sense at all. It’s not reinforcing confidence in him as a leader who can be turned to in troubled times. If McCain frames the situation in easy to understand terms, and makes the case for his own expertise in dealing with these issues — something 0bama simply cannot match — then McCain wins this argument. But so far, obama is clearly winning it, and that’s a damn shame. Instead of turning to populism and pandering, McCain should be turning to experience and knowledge.
McCain also needs to place the blame squarely on the Clinton administration for repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, instead of blaming Bush. Simply blaming Bush won’t help. In fact it hurts McCain. Because no matter how much McCain distances himself from Bush, he is still going to be more closely tied to Bush’s than 0bama. To the extent that Bush’s policies are blamed, it harms McCain.
The correct way for him to distance himself from Bush is as a manager. He should blame not Bush policies, as that only sticks to himself, but Bush’s management style and priorities. If he wants to distance himself from Bush, it should be as a serious manager who is more interested in solving problems than playing politics. It’s not Bush’s overall philosophies that are unpopular. It is the way he implemented them — or didn’t.
McCain should paint a picture of how he would govern day to day as a manager behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office that differs from both Bush and 0bama. It’s called Leadership. McCain has a huge Leadership advantage over 0bama, so he ought to be exploiting it right now.
McCain talks about making pork barellers ‘famous’. Well, right now he should be making Franklin Raines famous. Very famous. And Robert Rubin. Both of these men are responsible for the banking crisis, and both men are 0bama advisers. McCain needs to lead a charge against them.
McCain should also me calling for more than a commission to look into the problems on Wall Street. He should be calling for a special prosecutor to investigate these 0bama advisers. Right now, Nancy Pelosi is putting together a team of all of the Democrats in congress who are responsible for the meltdown to place the blame on Bush. McCain should not be part of their chorus. He should be offering an alternate view. He should be placing the blame on the guys Nancy has appointed to cover up their mess.
Also McCain should be highlighting 0bama’s recent comments about McCain’s ‘outrage’ at Wall Street, where 0bama says that cutting taxes is an odd way to ‘punish’ them. McCain needs to put these words into perspective. 0bama is saying that investors should be PUNISHED, and the way to do that is raise their taxes. That view speaks volumes about 0bama. McCain needs to point that out.
I can’t believe this is on MSNBC. Should we set up a pool for how long it takes them to bury/retract this?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2084500/posts
great post. Check out mccain’s stump speech today at the thread above. McCain is a little bit more aggressive in his attacks on 0bama. I think alot of this information is being saved for the debates. 0bama is not quick on his feet, and alot of this information will absolutely slam him to the floor. McCain is not the greatest orator, but I think we will be pleasantly surprised at his performance in the debates.
Saving it for the debates, eh?
I hope you are right.
But I have difficulty with that because I don’t think purposefully making himself look foolish and flat-footed in the meantime is a sensible strategy. McCain let 0bama take the lead in the crucial first 3 days when opinions are solidified. McCain’s campaign has been blowing it now ever since they got over confident with their successful lipstick ad.
There is time for McCain to recover on the economy, but I don’t think it will ever be 100%. He’s left far too bad of an impression. He is far more expert than 0bama on these very issues. It is not unfamiliar territory for him. He was a soothsayer on Fanny and Freddy for years. He saw all of this coming. So why does his campaign have him acting like he’s behind the curve? Why?
Why is he not talking to audiences about exactly what happened inside government, the Fed, and the lending institutions to lead to this collapse? Why is he just punting and running to the easy answer that it is because of ‘greedy’ Wall Street?
I hope you are right about the debates, but I cannot agree with you on the nation that perhaps McCain is saving it all up for then. I just hope he manages to pull it together and start getting serious with the ‘Straight Talk’ by then.
Straight Talk is what we need from him right now, even it that means telling it straight about some of his buddies across the aisle in congress.
I want to get myself appointed to the Fannie Mae board....who does that?
BOOMP
Not only that, but Raines was cooking the books in order to boost his own bonuses. He took $100 million in bonuses that he didn’t earn. He resigned with investigators on his tail. He should be in jail.
When our 3rd quarter investment (IRA, 401K) statements are read with dropped jaws, and we hear the wailing from our neighbors' homes, it is already too late. We've been skimmed. It's gone.
We'll need to laserbeam the responsible bastards right into prison with all haste, and suck their assets dry, to be redistributed to our accounts.
Well, one can wish...
.
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