Posted on 04/29/2009 2:57:28 PM PDT by dynachrome
Goldman Sachs' new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left Frank's committee in September, will join Goldman as director of government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. This is not Paese's first swing through the Wall Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority counsel at the Financial Services Committee
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
We are governed by scum.
“We are governed by scum.”
Disagree.
We are ruled by scum.
That’s an insult to scum.
There is no corruption like democrat corruption. Even the mafia does not have the power of total corruption like the democrats.
It is breathtaking. What would be even more breathtaking would be making these people accountable for their corruption.
No one could believe how totally corrupt they really are.
Shame there is no MSM left to take this scoop and run with it. They could make a fortune by rooting these worms from the apple.
Now there’s a job recommendation: “Sat on Barney Frank’s staff.”
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October 03, 2008
Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest
By Bill Sammon, FOX News' Washington Deputy Managing Editor.
WASHINGTON -- Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefited from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Franks efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Franks partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agencys 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 Fannies 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."Its 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 whats 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 hes gay. Its the quintessential double standard." A top GOP House aide agreed.
"Cmon, 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 Franks political affiliation was R instead of D?
Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxleys wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCains wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nations housing and banking laws."
Franks 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 Maes affordable housing and home improvement lending programs." Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last months 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 Clintons Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of todays 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.
SOURCE http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,432501,00.html
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Let The Inquisition Start With Barney Frank
Investor's Business Daily | 3/6/09
FR Posted on 03/08/2009 by FreeManN
Congressman Barney Frank says he wants some of those responsible for our current financial meltdown to be prosecuted. And we couldn't agree more. First up in the court dock: Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
Even by the extraordinarily loose standards of Congress, it takes some chutzpah for someone such as Frank to suggest that he'll seek prosecutions for those behind the housing and financial crunch and for what he called "a strongly empowered systemic risk regulator." Frank: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's point man in Washington.
For Frank, perhaps more than any single individual in private or public life, is responsible for both the housing market mess and subsequent bank disaster. And no, this isn't partisan hyperbole or historical exaggeration.
But first, a little trip down memory lane. (Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorial.com ...
So has half of Fire Island.
“Thats an insult to scum.”
Hee! Hee!
Obama/Rahm/Holder will cover-up the details. The Obomamites are already colluding to cover-up info damaging to admin insiders.
Freddie Mac records exempt from FOIA (Obama Admin Denies Request)
Sunlight Foundation | 03/26/2009 | Bill Allison
Posted 03/27/2009 by BuckeyeTexan
Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune report that, while researching what went at Freddie Mac during the period White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel served on the government sponsored enterprises board of directors, they were unable to get minutes of board meetings and other information.
The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuels time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were commercial information exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Freddie Mac executives cooked the books, mismanaged the firm, and ultimately drove it into the ground, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The commercial information exemption is reserved for private companiesFreddie Mac is by no means a private company anymore.
COME AGAIN? Obama said in the FOIA memo, The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Obama added later that In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.
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Rahm Emanuel was director when Freddie Mac board was tipped to fraudulent BONUS scheme
"On (Rahm) Emanuel's watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments.
The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass. The accounting scandal wasn't the only one that brewed during Emanuel's tenure. During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle.
That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.
The board was throttled for its acquiescence to the accounting manipulation in a 2003 report by Armando Falcon Jr., head of a federal oversight agency for Freddie Mac. The scandal forced Freddie Mac to restate $5 billion in earnings and pay $585 million in fines and legal settlements.
It also foreshadowed even harder times at the firm. Many of those same risky investment practices tied to the accounting scandal eventually brought the firm to the brink of insolvency and led to its seizure last year by the Bush administration, which pledged to inject up to $100 billion in new capital to keep the firm afloat. The Obama administration has doubled that commitment."
SOURCE http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-rahm-emanuel-profit-26-mar26,0,5682373.story
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Rahm Emanuel's Profitable Raping of Freddie_Mac
Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.Emanuel should have to pay back the money he raped from Freddie Mac.
SOURCE http://www.duggback.com/politics/Rahm_Emanuel_s_Profitable_Raping_ofFreddie_Mac/
Sat on Barney Franks staff........and man, it felt good....but only when Bwaney twitched.
Barney Fraggot, spokesthing for roto-rooter.
I doubt if Bwaney uses his staff much. He’s probably on the receiving end most of the time.
ping
So what else is new? Do you think those Washington types go there to serve the public?
Why would Goldman Sachs need lobbyists? If you run the government, you don't need to lobby the government...
Interesting. Paese is a former Notre Dame U student body president and Notre Dame Law School graduate. I could say something about “ethically challenged”, but that would not be nice.
Or if the gov’t owns you. But at a certain point no telling who owns who.
incestuocracy
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