Free Republic

For those who want a smoking gun to show the genesis of the financial collapse, this short sequence from a longer video I posted this week will do it. Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo announced a settlement of a lending discrimination complaint with Accubanc, a Texas lender whose prerequisites for mortgages came under attack from “community organizers” at the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission and the city of Dallas. I clipped out this sequence to underscore its importance: (video at link) CUOMO: To take a greater risk on these mortgages, yes. To give families mortgages that they would not have...

For John McCain and the Republicans, there’s nowhere to go but up. Cut through all of the self-congratulatory talk about how foresighted and responsible they were in voting for the $700 billion mortgage bailout and the truth is that the GOP today is staring into a political abyss. The stock market has fallen, and the remarkable political bounce that Republicans had gained with Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential nomination is gone. Obama has surged into the lead in the polls by depicting McCain as out of touch, aided by the Arizona senator’s erratic, muddled performance on the bailout. First, he temporarily suspended...

[UPDATE: If you read the Ambinder piece, you'll see that this was leaked to Marc: it's an internal document designed to make sure that the GOP's people are up to speed on this issue. - Moe Lane] This makes a good point. Congress (Republican and Democratic) attacked Enron, but nothing against the politically connected Fannie Mae. Here's a slide show, care of Marc Ambinder, that the McCain campaign is passing around:

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The Debate: John McCain rightly laid the blame for the economic crisis on Fannie and Freddie, and the blame for that on the Democrats. But he missed opportunities and left much too much on the podium.When moderator Tom Brokaw opened the Nashville debate by asking both candidates, "What's the fastest, most positive solution to bail these people out of the economic ruin?" Sen. McCain should have responded by saying the first thing we should do is not put in power those who caused the crisis in the first place. Instead McCain, at the advice of those with a political death...

Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. That has worked well for Obama, Biden and Pelosi in laying blame on “failed” Bush economic policies. The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (F & F) fiasco and the “Bail-Out” are tied directly to the Clinton Administration and Congressional Democrats. It’s laudable to make mortgages available to most people; unfortunately, too many could not afford them. Bad lending practices are at the core of this mess. Why were F & F unregulated? It was by courting politicians with lobbying budgets and political contributions. The top three U.S. senators in the F &...

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ACORN: The Poisonous NUT That Ended Democracy in America By Cristi Adkins Saturday, October 4, 2008 Within its shell, ACORN contains all the makings of an intriguing government political conspiracy movie: drama, injustice, organized crime, election fraud, intimidation, violence, money, lies, extortion and a presidential candidate.[1] If you are a patriotic, middle class American who spends most of your time working for your family and enjoying your FREEDOM, you have probably not been bothered by the sounds of an ACORN dropping before now. But, while you were sleeping peacefully at night, the roots...

Johan Norberg, on his blog JohanNorberg.net, points out the Democratic intervention that caused the financial crisis SOME milestones in the prehistory of the crisis. 1933: As part of the New Deal, investment banks are stopped from also acting as commercial banks (which would have given them bank deposits and more stability). 1938: As part of the New Deal, president (Franklin D.) Roosevelt creates Fannie Mae and in 1970 Congress creates Freddie Mac. With their implicit government guarantees they can offer cheaper loans and expand until they dominate the American mortgage market. 1989: The American government step(s) in and pay(s) for...

MR. RUBIN: Hi. I'm Bob Rubin, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and I'm going to introduce today's topic. The President, as you know, has a broad, comprehensive strategy for dealing with the economic problems of the country for putting the country back on the right track for the long-term. A lot of the legislative and executive actions that have taken place in 1993 have been pursuant to that long-term economic strategy of the President's. An important component of that strategy is to deal with the problems of the inner city and distressed rural communities -- pursuant to...

BOSTON (AP) - Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated. The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country's mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act.

2004 Video: Democrats Defend Fannie/Freddie from Regulation: "We've been through nearly a dozen hearings where frankly we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and in particular at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines."-Rep. Maxine Waters, 2004http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL36nwCSYUMHistory of Fannie Mae scandal Associated Press, December 7, 2006 "Fannie Mae announces its long-awaited restatement, erasing $6.3 billion in profit from 2001 through June 30, 2004."http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/12/07/history_of_fannie_mae_scandal/?page=1_________________________________________________________ Bailout Politics: The Congressional Dems who enabled this crisis are now being trusted to fix it?Thomas Sowell, September 30, 2008http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWE3OWU3OTExYzNlNTUzMzY2YmJmOWZjMzcwN2M1NjU=_________________________________________________________ Guilty...

DJIA just prior to House defeat of bailout: 10843 DJIA close the day after House defeat of bailout: 10850 DJIA just prior to Senate approval of bailout: 10831 DJIA close the day after Senate approval of bailout: 10482 DJIA just prior to House approval of bailout: 10679 DJIA close the day after House approval of bailout:??? 9999 and dropping

During the last few months, some site commenters have feared (or gleefully predicted) that an all-out right wing Rove-style assault would swing public opinion against Obama in the closing weeks of the campaign. The assault has commenced. If the best the McCain campaign can muster is a rehash of accusations that the public has already assessed and rejected, there isn't much to fear. The reality of looming economic disaster leaves voters with no time or patience for the politics of distraction. Campaigns go negative because it works, but the strategy has a cost. Nate Silver analyzes the risk McCain runs...

The oil crisis and the credit crunch mark the end of one epoch and the painful but promising beginnings of another that won't come from Wall Street or Washington.

[B]oth Democratic and Republican nominees for President, self-professed agents of reform, followed the cattle call to back the bailout. Sen. Obama, who claims to be the messiah of change, sure is showing his true colors in two huge decisions – first by his appointment of politics-as-usual Joe Biden and now by his vote to pass this economic bailout bill and drive us deeper into debt. And, quite frankly, Sen. McCain is also disappointing me at this point. At the Republican Convention, John talked about bringing the power back to the people. So he chose Sarah Palin, and finally gained my...

As our financial markets totter, as homes go into foreclosure, as Wall Street executives lose millions, as Americans have more and more difficulty getting loans, can anyone be happy? Certainly. Those on the left who now, with unbounded glee, pen obituaries for the free market. One can sense their joy as they have, they think, the last laugh. Bernie Sanders, the far left senator from Vermont, was almost giddy on Larry Kudlow's TV show recently to hear free-marketer Kudlow endorse the bailout and tell Kudlow that he is glad to see he has become a socialist. The Washington Post's Harold...

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana What would Santayana (1863-1952) say were he with us today? Although born in Madrid, Santayana lived and taught in the United States for decades, an amused, slightly detached observer of the human panoply and its addiction to folly. Recalling the disater of the Carter years–the economic dégringolade (remember the “misery index“?), the foreign policy disasters (remember the Iran hostage crisis?), recalling above all the hang-dog, defeatist attitude of the Carter years (remember the “malaise” speech?)–Santayana would doubtless have shaken his head as so many Americans (and even more,...

If McCain Doesn't Want to Talk Fannie and Freddie, Why Is He Running? Palin is bringing up Barack Obama's long connection to William Ayers... okay. I don't doubt that not enough Americans know about Obama and his ties to Ayers, and what an unrepentant domestic terrorist and SOB Ayers is. But that message is going to come up against a media that is hostile, determined to downplay the ties and/or willing to lie. (What the heck got into CNN lately? The past few weeks, they're getting things 180 degrees flat wrong, again and again, about easily verifiable facts and the...

The Curve in the Road Necessary but Not Sufficient Why the Government Had to Step In All the King's Horses How Can I Be 59? The "Bailout Plan" was passed. Will it work? The answer depends on what your definition of "work" is. If by work you mean no more government intervention and no further costly programs and a functioning market, then the answer is no. But there are things it will do. This week I try to help you see what might lie ahead around the Curve in the Road. We look at how the rescue plan will function,...

--> The United States prides itself on being the home of free market capitalism, governed by the rule of law. However, the rapidly developing capital market crisis demonstrates once again that, faced with a systemic crisis, rules and ideology take second place to pragmatism. A similar incident happened on 15 August 1971 when Nixon arbitrarily ditched the solemn US international pledge to honour the Bretton Woods Agreements making the dollar convertible into gold at US$35 an ounce. Cynics might say that the US lives by the Gold Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.Hence, the unprecedented developments in...