Free Republic

Most political scandals involve people who are not really enmeshed in the Washington establishment — people like Representative Anthony Weiner or Representative William Jefferson. Most scandals involve spectacularly bad behavior — like posting pictures of your private parts on the Web or hiding $90,000 in cash in your freezer. But the most devastating scandal in recent history involved dozens of the most respected members of the Washington establishment. Their behavior was not out of the ordinary by any means. For that reason, the Fannie Mae scandal is the most important political scandal since Watergate. It helped sink the American economy....

Fannie Mae CEOs Raines, Johnson got exemptions from standard requirements. Two Barack Obama advisers, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, received preferential home loans as industry favors, apparently in deference to their executive positions heading Fannie Mae. Raines and Johnson, as "friends of Angelo Mozilo," the chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp. ...were funneled millions of dollars for personal home loans. Mozilo himself made exceptions from Countrywide policy to provide the two Fannie Mae CEO's "sweetheart deals." Countrywide was acquired by Bank of America in January in an emergency rescue ... Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year at...

In recent years, under [James] Johnson, a prominent Democrat... Fannie Mae has established itself as perhaps the most politically astute of big corporations. hiring some of the best lobbyists in town, spreading campaign contributions around [snip]The company has repeatedly neutralized efforts to re-examine or scale back the benefits of its Government-chartered status, including its exemption from state and local income taxes and the widely held assumption -- nowhere written down -- that the Government would bail out Fannie Mae if it ever got into financial trouble.[snip]... Mr. Raines no doubt understands full well the power of well-placed campaign contributions. [snip]Fannie...

Much more information over here --->>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301751.html 

Everybody knows that the very first rule in picking a vice president is to do no harm. Really, you can choose anybody. How dumb would you feel if it turned into an embarrassment? This is why the careful, modern candidate sets up a screening system. Now ask yourself: how dumb would you feel if you got in trouble over your selection for the vice-presidential screener. Barack Obama is having the first postprimary crisis, a moment in which the only conceivable response is: what was he thinking? James Johnson, who resigned Wednesday as the leader of the Obama vice-presidential selection committee,...

The R.N.C. just responded to the resignation of James Johnson from Obama's vice presidential search committee, and they are not satisfied. The Republicans obviously feel they have a mini-victory here, but also that they can get more mileage out of the Johnson flap. From R.N.C. spokesperson Alex Conant: “If Barack Obama is concerned his campaign’s ties to special interests are distracting from his VP search and message, why is Eric Holder still on his search committee? Why is registered federal lobbyist Steve Farber leading the convention for Obama’s supposedly ‘lobbyist-free’ campaign? Obama’s hypocritical attacks show he can’t stand up to...

<p>US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today said the head of his vice presidential search team and former head of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae had decided to step aside.</p>

Could Become a Political Liability Long-standing ties between a member of Senator Obama's new vice presidential search team and a prominent mortgage executive the senator has pilloried could become a political liability that hampers the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's ability to tap into public ire over the subprime mortgage crisis. James Johnson, one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street...

Why does Barack Obama have trouble finding untainted members for his three person panel vetting vice presidential candidates? Eric Holder vetted the March Rich pardon for Bill Clinton. That bad judgment should disqualify him. Now comes news that a second member of the panel, James Johnson -- former head of Fannie Mae -- received a sweetheart "mortgage" from disgraced Countrywide Finance, one of the major sources of our mortgage crisis . Johnson was forced out of Fannie Mae when a regulator found the company had violated accounting rules in an effort to conceal fluctuations in profit and had failed to...

Fat Cats' Friend? By Jim McTague August 21, 2006 JAMES JOHNSON, A former chairman of Fannie Mae, just can't stay away from boardrooms. He sits on the boards of no fewer than six corporations, and is chairman of the compensation committees of five of them. That's a full plate for anyone in these times of increased scrutiny of boards' actions. Only 350 of the nation's 50,000 corporate directors sit on four boards, and most are content with one. But that's not all that makes Johnson's board work stand out. When Johnson joins a board, executive compensation controversies often follow. The...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Justice Department has opened an investigation of possible accounting fraud at Fannie Mae, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, after a federal regulator said the mortgage giant may have manipulated its earnings targets. The Journal reported that the investigation is still in the preliminary stages. Fannie has been under fire since the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, or Ofheo, accused the company of improper accounting that allowed senior executives to pocket multimillion-dollar bonuses. According to the newspaper, officials have said that some Fannie Mae executives may have misled regulators, which in some cases...

For years, mortgage giant Fannie Mae has produced smoothly growing earnings. And for years, observers have wondered how Fannie could manage its inherently risky portfolio without a whiff of volatility.... The magnitude of Fannie's machinations is stunning, and in two key areas in particular they deserve to be better understood. By improperly delaying the recognition of income, it created a cookie jar of reserves.... Lower rates caused a lot of mortgage holders to prepay their existing home mortgages. And Fannie was suddenly facing an estimated expense of $400 million. Well, in its wisdom, Fannie decided to recognize only $200 million,...

Filed at 10:04 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush signed an order Wednesday creating a commission to explore the U.S. Postal Service's mission and operations during a time of increasing competition from private companies and challenges from new technology, including electronic commerce over the Internet. The commission, which would include members of the business community, would make recommendations to President Bush sometime next year, according to Postal Service official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The panel's recommendations -- depending on their magnitude -- could result in the first major overhaul of the Postal Service since the early 1970s,...