The odd thing is that nobody seems to understand that it is not the markets that caused the current credit crisis, but rather accounting rules (some of which were enacted after Enron) that require firms to value their assets according to market value rather than according to performance, with some measure of risk that is realistically heavy tailed.
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Regulation and “Mark to Market” Accounting Rules
Few people realize how much of the present damage to markets is caused by the new regulations imposed by Sabannes Oxley and the “mark to market” rules imposed by FASB. How do you mark to market when there is no market? The market for troubled loans has dissolved for two reasons: no one knows what they are worth, and if an investment bank takes the loans into its portfolio it must mark them at the market price. The market is illiquid and facing not mere risk. They are facing uncertainty. No one knows what the values are or what the probabilities are.
My friend Axel Leijhonhufvud once told me a story about inflation in Latin America. No one knew what a dollar was going to be worth in a few hours. A day was a lifetime for the currency. So, when he tried to buy something a shop owner had in the window, the owner said “It is not for sale.” “Why,” asked Axel. The shop owner replied, “If I name a price and you buy it, I will feel like a fool and that I sold it for too little.” That is the situation investors face with sub prime mortgages (the equivalent of “junk” bonds). Right now only the US Treasury or the Mortgage Trust soon to be set up will buy them. But, the problem remains: how much are they worth? No one knows. They are worth more than the “mark to market” rule implies because they can be held and sold later when the market regains its liquidity.
But, the fact remains that most of these investment banks would not be bankrupt if they could price their mortgage portfolios according to a more realistic standard. Regulation seems to be forcing the bankruptcies.
Dr. Rimmer has a few salient observations to make on the current frenzy to regulate financial markets.
Nobody alive can remember as much regulation of financial markets in the U.S. as what is being proposed to Congress next week. The job will be rushed through, by the most inept Congress in recent memory. The players proposing the rules also have very little understanding of how markets work. The best we can hope for is that some of them have read Nassim’s book. For every new regulation enacted, there will be thousands of people immediatly set to work figuring out how to profit from the regulation, and the seeds for the next disaster will sprout. The odd thing is that nobody seems to understand that it is not the markets that caused the current credit crisis, but rather accounting rules (some of which were enacted after Enron) that require firms to value their assets according to market value rather than according to performance, with some measure of risk that is realistically heavy tailed. Current markets are in fact less volatile than markets ten years ago. This graph illustrates that point.
Auction markets are cruel and predatory. When hardly anybody wants an asset, the market value can quickly become close to zero, at which point someone who has lots of capital will snap it up for huge profit. The problem is not the market, but that many people were encouraged to speculate with extreme leverage, without understanding the risk. How many bank CEOs know enough math to understand stable distributions? Probably none. Does Paulson, unlikely. Does Bernanke, we would hope so, but we can’t be too sure.
Anybody who has mastered seventh grade arithmetic can figure out that no bank or money market can sustain a run. In order to earn a return, liquid assets must be invested in assets that cannot immediately be liquidated, and if many similar assets are liquidated simultaneously in a market the value will fall precipitously. Yet no one ever proposes that bank depositors or money market depositors shouldn’t all have immediate access to all of their deposits, why? How can the government guarantee money market and bank deposits through the FDIC or other agency without creating enormous “moral hazard?”
No regulation of markets will ever overcome such moral hazaard, we should be regulating depositors rather than the market. Depositors should have the expectation that they can receive some portion of their deposit immediately, but if they ask for it all they will have to wait some period of time, that increases proportionately to the size of the amount they want to withdraw AND the number of current withdrawal requests.
This will never happen. Instead we will have recurrent bail outs. The interesting thing is the false concept that the tax payer ultimately foots the bill for these things. That is not true, it is the government bond holder who first pays; he in turn demands higher rates (getting his money back), forcing inflation which pays the interest with inflated dollars. The inflation is paid for mostly by people who are not taxed; it is the ultimate tax the poor scheme — even illegal immigrants pay. I guess this will go on as long as most people cannot understand arithmetic. And the Teacher’s Union makes sure that will never happen.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Suspend Mark-To-Market Now!
This is an immediate fix for the stupid democrate crisis!
Newt Gingrich 09.29.08, 6:05 PM ET
Today, Congress voted against passing the bailout package for Wall Street. The stock market reacted immediately, falling almost 800 points. It is clear that something needs to be done, and in the coming days, a new package must be constructed that has the support of the American people that both deals with the liquidity crisis and sets the stage for long-term economic growth.
However, there is an immediate step that could be taken right now that would calm the markets and dramatically reduce taxpayer risk in any future government intervention.
Today the Treasury secretary released the following statement: "I and my colleagues at the Fed and the SEC continue to address the market challenges we are facing on a daily basis. I am committed to continuing to work with my fellow regulators to use all the tools available to protect our financial system and our economy."
While Congress and the White House consider next steps, the Treasury and its fellow regulators should follow their own counsel and take without delay the one regulatory action within their discretion that can help immediately to calm markets and dramatically reduce the taxpayer risk in any necessary government intervention: suspend mark-to-market.
Chief economist Brian S. Wesbury and his colleague Bob Stein at First Trust Portfolios of Chicago estimate the impact of the "mark-to-market" accounting rule on the current crisis as follows:
"It is true that the root of this crisis is bad mortgage loans, but probably 70% of the real crisis that we face today is caused by mark-to-market accounting in an illiquid market. What's most fascinating is that the Treasury is selling its plan as a way to put a bottom in mortgage pool prices, tipping its hat to the problem of mark-to-market accounting without acknowledging it. It is a real shame that there is so little discussion of this reality." (Emphasis added.)
If regulators on their own--or Congress, if regulators fail to use their discretion--can fix 70% of the financial crisis by changing the mark-to-market accounting rule, we should change the rule first before attempting to pass another reevaluated bailout package.
"Mark-to-Market" Accounting and the Origins of the Financial Crisis: Mark-to-market accounting (also known as "fair value" accounting) means that companies must value the assets on their balance sheets based on the latest market indicators of the price that those assets could be sold for immediately. Under such a rule, declining housing prices don't just reduce the value of defaulting mortgages. They reduce the value of all mortgages and all mortgage-related securities because the housing collateral protecting them is worth less.
Moreover, when a company in financial distress begins fire sales of its assets to raise capital to meet regulatory requirements, the market-bottom prices it sells out for become the new standard for the valuation of all similar securities held by other companies under mark-to-market. This has begun a downward death spiral for financial companies large and small.
More foreclosures and home auctions continue to depress housing prices, further reducing the value of all mortgage-related securities. As capital values decline, firms must scramble to maintain the capital required by regulation. When they try to sell assets to raise that capital, the market values of those assets are driven down further. Under mark-to-market, the company must then mark down the value of all of its assets even more.
The credit agencies see declining capital margins, so they downgrade the company's credit ratings. That makes borrowing to meet capital requirements more difficult. Declining capital and credit ratings cause the company's stock prices to decline.
Panic sets in, and no one wants to buy mortgage-related securities, which drives their value under mark-to-market regulations down toward zero. Balance sheets under mark-to-market suddenly start to show insolvency. This downward spiral shuts down lending to these companies, so they lose all liquidity (cash on hand) needed to keep company operations going. Stockholders--realizing that they will be wiped out if the companies go into bankruptcy or get taken over by the government--start panic selling, even when they know the underlying business of the company is fine.
The end result for the company is stock prices driven toward zero and bankruptcy or government takeover. The criminal liabilities imposed under Sarbanes-Oxley have driven accountants to stricter and stricter accounting evaluations and interpretations and have prevented leading executives from resisting them.
The Problems with Mark-to-Market Accounting: William Isaac, chairman of the FDIC in the 1980s under President Reagan, recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "During the 1980s, our underlying economic problems were far more serious than the economic problems we're facing this time around. ... It could have been much worse. The country's 10 largest banks were loaded up with Third World debt that was valued in the markets at cents on the dollar. If we had marked those loans to market prices, virtually every one of them would have been insolvent."
Isaac continues, "But what do we do when the already thin market for those assets freezes up, and only a handful of transactions occur at extremely depressed prices? ... The accounting profession, scarred by decades of costly litigation, just keeps marking down the assets as fast as it can."
He concludes, "This is contrary to everything we know about bank regulation. When there are temporary impairments of asset values, due to economic and marketplace events, regulators must give institutions an opportunity to survive the temporary impairment. Assets should not be marked to unrealistic fire sale prices. Regulators must evaluate the assets on the basis of their true economic value (a discounted cash flow analysis). If we had followed today's approach during the 1980s, we would have nationalized all of the major banks in the country, and thousands of additional banks and thrifts would have failed. I have little doubt that the country would have gone from a serious recession into a depression."
Similarly, University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein, among the best in the country at law and economics analysis, recently wrote about mark-to-market accounting for today's mortgage-related securities, "Unfortunately, there is no working market to mark this paper down to. To meet their bond covenants and their capital requirements, these firms have to sell their paper at distress prices that don't reflect the upbeat fact that the anticipated income streams from this paper might well keep the firm afloat."
Alex Pollock, former head of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, explains that when the economy is in the midst of a severe downturn, the use of mark-to-market accounting "reinforces the downward cycle of panic-falling prices-losses-illiquidity-credit contraction-more panic-further falling prices-greater reported losses-no active markets. Fair value accounting adds momentum to a destructive downside overshoot."
Reform or Bust: Because existing rules requiring mark-to-market accounting are causing such turmoil on Wall Street, mark-to-market accounting should be suspended immediately so as to relieve the stress on banks and corporations. In the interim, we can use the economic value approach based on a discounted cash flow analysis of anticipated-income streams, as we did for decades before the new mark-to-market began to take hold. We can take the time to evaluate mark-to-market all over again. Perhaps a three-year rolling average to determine mark-to-market prices would be a workable permanent system.
It is not widely understood that the adoption of mark-to-market accounting rules is a major factor in the liquidity crisis which is leading companies to go bankrupt. But it is destructive to have artificial accounting rules ruin companies that would have otherwise survived under previous rules.
For companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ) and American International Group (nyse: AIG - news - people ), suspending mark-to-market rules will come too late. But for the remaining vulnerable banks and corporations, doing away with the current mark-to-market accounting rules will safeguard against destructive pricing volatility, needless bankruptcies, job loss and huge taxpayer bailouts.
Suspending Mark-to-Market Only the First Step to Economic Recovery: In the wake of today's vote, suspending mark-to-market is an extremely important first step to take, but it is only a first step.
Congress should also consider a bold and dramatic program to restart economic growth and rebuild market efforts.
In particular, the Congress should look at the impact of the Irish 12% corporate income tax on attracting investment and jobs to Ireland and consider a dramatic cut in the U.S. corporate income tax (the highest in the world when combined with state taxes) as a step toward attracting high-value productive and desirable jobs back to the United States.
The Congress should look at the Chinese and Singapore growth patterns and match them by zeroing out the capital gains tax to induce massive flows of private capital to rebuild the market and minimize the need for a taxpayer-funded bailout.
The Congress should repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, which failed to warn of every single bankruptcy but provides a $3-million-a-year accounting and regulatory expense for every small company wishing to go public.
This is the kind of pro-growth, pro-entrepreneur program that would accelerate the American recovery and lead to the next economic period of real growth.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Emily Renwick is a research assistant at AEI and also contributed to this op-ed.
Newt Gingrich 09.29.08, 6:05 PM ET
Today, Congress voted against passing the bailout package for Wall Street. The stock market reacted immediately, falling almost 800 points. It is clear that something needs to be done, and in the coming days, a new package must be constructed that has the support of the American people that both deals with the liquidity crisis and sets the stage for long-term economic growth.
However, there is an immediate step that could be taken right now that would calm the markets and dramatically reduce taxpayer risk in any future government intervention.
Today the Treasury secretary released the following statement: "I and my colleagues at the Fed and the SEC continue to address the market challenges we are facing on a daily basis. I am committed to continuing to work with my fellow regulators to use all the tools available to protect our financial system and our economy."
While Congress and the White House consider next steps, the Treasury and its fellow regulators should follow their own counsel and take without delay the one regulatory action within their discretion that can help immediately to calm markets and dramatically reduce the taxpayer risk in any necessary government intervention: suspend mark-to-market.
Chief economist Brian S. Wesbury and his colleague Bob Stein at First Trust Portfolios of Chicago estimate the impact of the "mark-to-market" accounting rule on the current crisis as follows:
"It is true that the root of this crisis is bad mortgage loans, but probably 70% of the real crisis that we face today is caused by mark-to-market accounting in an illiquid market. What's most fascinating is that the Treasury is selling its plan as a way to put a bottom in mortgage pool prices, tipping its hat to the problem of mark-to-market accounting without acknowledging it. It is a real shame that there is so little discussion of this reality." (Emphasis added.)
If regulators on their own--or Congress, if regulators fail to use their discretion--can fix 70% of the financial crisis by changing the mark-to-market accounting rule, we should change the rule first before attempting to pass another reevaluated bailout package.
"Mark-to-Market" Accounting and the Origins of the Financial Crisis: Mark-to-market accounting (also known as "fair value" accounting) means that companies must value the assets on their balance sheets based on the latest market indicators of the price that those assets could be sold for immediately. Under such a rule, declining housing prices don't just reduce the value of defaulting mortgages. They reduce the value of all mortgages and all mortgage-related securities because the housing collateral protecting them is worth less.
Moreover, when a company in financial distress begins fire sales of its assets to raise capital to meet regulatory requirements, the market-bottom prices it sells out for become the new standard for the valuation of all similar securities held by other companies under mark-to-market. This has begun a downward death spiral for financial companies large and small.
More foreclosures and home auctions continue to depress housing prices, further reducing the value of all mortgage-related securities. As capital values decline, firms must scramble to maintain the capital required by regulation. When they try to sell assets to raise that capital, the market values of those assets are driven down further. Under mark-to-market, the company must then mark down the value of all of its assets even more.
The credit agencies see declining capital margins, so they downgrade the company's credit ratings. That makes borrowing to meet capital requirements more difficult. Declining capital and credit ratings cause the company's stock prices to decline.
Panic sets in, and no one wants to buy mortgage-related securities, which drives their value under mark-to-market regulations down toward zero. Balance sheets under mark-to-market suddenly start to show insolvency. This downward spiral shuts down lending to these companies, so they lose all liquidity (cash on hand) needed to keep company operations going. Stockholders--realizing that they will be wiped out if the companies go into bankruptcy or get taken over by the government--start panic selling, even when they know the underlying business of the company is fine.
The end result for the company is stock prices driven toward zero and bankruptcy or government takeover. The criminal liabilities imposed under Sarbanes-Oxley have driven accountants to stricter and stricter accounting evaluations and interpretations and have prevented leading executives from resisting them.
The Problems with Mark-to-Market Accounting: William Isaac, chairman of the FDIC in the 1980s under President Reagan, recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "During the 1980s, our underlying economic problems were far more serious than the economic problems we're facing this time around. ... It could have been much worse. The country's 10 largest banks were loaded up with Third World debt that was valued in the markets at cents on the dollar. If we had marked those loans to market prices, virtually every one of them would have been insolvent."
Isaac continues, "But what do we do when the already thin market for those assets freezes up, and only a handful of transactions occur at extremely depressed prices? ... The accounting profession, scarred by decades of costly litigation, just keeps marking down the assets as fast as it can."
He concludes, "This is contrary to everything we know about bank regulation. When there are temporary impairments of asset values, due to economic and marketplace events, regulators must give institutions an opportunity to survive the temporary impairment. Assets should not be marked to unrealistic fire sale prices. Regulators must evaluate the assets on the basis of their true economic value (a discounted cash flow analysis). If we had followed today's approach during the 1980s, we would have nationalized all of the major banks in the country, and thousands of additional banks and thrifts would have failed. I have little doubt that the country would have gone from a serious recession into a depression."
Similarly, University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein, among the best in the country at law and economics analysis, recently wrote about mark-to-market accounting for today's mortgage-related securities, "Unfortunately, there is no working market to mark this paper down to. To meet their bond covenants and their capital requirements, these firms have to sell their paper at distress prices that don't reflect the upbeat fact that the anticipated income streams from this paper might well keep the firm afloat."
Alex Pollock, former head of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, explains that when the economy is in the midst of a severe downturn, the use of mark-to-market accounting "reinforces the downward cycle of panic-falling prices-losses-illiquidity-credit contraction-more panic-further falling prices-greater reported losses-no active markets. Fair value accounting adds momentum to a destructive downside overshoot."
Reform or Bust: Because existing rules requiring mark-to-market accounting are causing such turmoil on Wall Street, mark-to-market accounting should be suspended immediately so as to relieve the stress on banks and corporations. In the interim, we can use the economic value approach based on a discounted cash flow analysis of anticipated-income streams, as we did for decades before the new mark-to-market began to take hold. We can take the time to evaluate mark-to-market all over again. Perhaps a three-year rolling average to determine mark-to-market prices would be a workable permanent system.
It is not widely understood that the adoption of mark-to-market accounting rules is a major factor in the liquidity crisis which is leading companies to go bankrupt. But it is destructive to have artificial accounting rules ruin companies that would have otherwise survived under previous rules.
For companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ) and American International Group (nyse: AIG - news - people ), suspending mark-to-market rules will come too late. But for the remaining vulnerable banks and corporations, doing away with the current mark-to-market accounting rules will safeguard against destructive pricing volatility, needless bankruptcies, job loss and huge taxpayer bailouts.
Suspending Mark-to-Market Only the First Step to Economic Recovery: In the wake of today's vote, suspending mark-to-market is an extremely important first step to take, but it is only a first step.
Congress should also consider a bold and dramatic program to restart economic growth and rebuild market efforts.
In particular, the Congress should look at the impact of the Irish 12% corporate income tax on attracting investment and jobs to Ireland and consider a dramatic cut in the U.S. corporate income tax (the highest in the world when combined with state taxes) as a step toward attracting high-value productive and desirable jobs back to the United States.
The Congress should look at the Chinese and Singapore growth patterns and match them by zeroing out the capital gains tax to induce massive flows of private capital to rebuild the market and minimize the need for a taxpayer-funded bailout.
The Congress should repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, which failed to warn of every single bankruptcy but provides a $3-million-a-year accounting and regulatory expense for every small company wishing to go public.
This is the kind of pro-growth, pro-entrepreneur program that would accelerate the American recovery and lead to the next economic period of real growth.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Emily Renwick is a research assistant at AEI and also contributed to this op-ed.
The 'bailout' is about people whose votes have been bought stay bought
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Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis
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Here it is in a nut shell and acorn nutshell. Rush Limbaugh has got it right!
Fannie mae and Freddie Mac were turned into some kind of wild west hedge funds by the democrates
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So what got us here? Well, you can say "white guilt" got us here, political correctness got it here, or a combination of all those things. Democrats' desire to socialize the country got us here. Efforts to stop it failing -- and we're on the verge of even more of it, ladies and gentlemen. Stanley Kurtz has been researching Obama, and he has a great piece today. Let me just give you a couple excerpts. "What exactly does a 'community organizer' do?" and one thing a community organizer does, if he's Barack Obama, is pressure banks to make bad loans. Obama's fingerprints are over this, too, because his group ACORN is all involved. The Community Reinvestment Act "was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), and a group that is constantly engaged in illegal voter registration, among other things.
"That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN ... to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in 'subprime' loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers. Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with [these community redevelopment things] -- and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN. In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions." Think of ACORN as a thousand Jesse Jacksons, in terms of shaking down companies and institutions.
"Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets," and by the way, speaking of that, Obama did it again in the debate (which we're going to get to). He said that our reputation in the world, I think everybody would agree, is not what it once was. He said it in Berlin' he said it to a seven-year-old kid asking him why he wants to be president. Frankly, I am fed up with it. Because, folks, if you want to know our reputation around the world -- to the extent that it is -- is in disrepair, you might take a look at the fact that a bunch of foreign banks were lied to by US institutions who said these subprime loans were AAA paper. You can buy 'em up. Do you know where bailing out foreign banks that do business on the United States on this basis because they bought up some of these assets?
So all this talk about how our image in the world has been dinged or damaged, let me tell you: to the extent that that's true, people in financial institutions around the world are saying, "What have you done to us? You've made us take on this worthless garbage paper. What have you done to us? What are you doing to your financial system?" It ain't about Iraq. It ain't about the war on terror. So there is Obama running around talking about how we've lost our esteem. That aggravates me like you cannot believe. We're going to analyzed the debate as things shake out as the program unfolds before your very eyes. Of course Obama is as close to ACORN as anybody can be, closer to ACORN than anybody ever seeking the presidency. And ACORN went out and put their own pressure on these banks and lending institutions, political correctness pressure -- take it, you know, whatever it is -- to spread this misery far and wide under the terms and definitions of things like affordable housing.
I think there's something more devious than that going on. We know several things institutionally. We know that's left wants as large a government as possible. We also know the left wants as many citizens in this country depending on government, not just for their needs but for their wants as well, but particularly their needs. We also know that owning a home in this country has been one of the most desirable things people have had. Many people, most people work themselves to the bone to be able to save up for a down payment, to be able to qualify -- and all of a sudden, the Democrats and the Clinton administration came along and said, "Why make it so hard on people? It's unfair. Let's just get 'em into homes. Let's threaten the lending institutions to loan 'em money they can't pay back. As long as home prices keep going up, this is not going to be a problem. It will be fine." Well, everything goes up goes down eventually. It's galled gravity. It's called supply and demand. It's called economic cycles, and we're where we are. So now the bailout is about making sure that all these people whose votes have been bought stay bought.
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House of Reps. Bailout Vote is TODAY -- Call Your Congressman NOW to Say NO BAILOUT:
1-202-224-3121
ALERT: Our Congressmen and Senators spent all weekend cooking up a "bipartisan compromise" BAILOUT bill -- and they want YOU AND ME to pay for it, for the next few DECADES!
WE MUST STOP THEM TODAY!!!
The Federal Reserve's ("Fed's") recent bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG have cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and the price may ultimately be in the trillions.
The current economic turmoil is a direct result of the Federal Reserve's artificial lowering of interest rates -- which spurred major banks and other corporations to back bad mortgages.
Now, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke want American taxpayers to take on $700 billion in these bad mortgage-related assets…
And our spineless, gutless, poor excuses for “leaders” on Capitol Hill are ready to SELL US OUT, and drive the U.S. economy into the dirt for YEARS to come --
Unless WE stop them, TODAY!
TAKE ACTION: The Federal Reserve's authority to use taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street must be revoked and the "Fed" must be held accountable. We, the people, need to let OUR REPRESENTATIVES in Washington know that it is time to END the Federal Reserve's stranglehold on our economic future!
THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. The House of Representatives is supposed to vote on this "Bailout Bill" TODAY. DEMAND that they reject the Paulson and Bernanke plan to prop up reckless banks at YOUR expense. Please call the Capitol Switchboard number below NOW to tell YOUR Representative to REJECT the Paulson and Bernanke plan to prop up reckless banks at your expense:
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I agree Mr Zimmer your comments about why the bill has failed makes good sense.
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Shocked the Bailout Plan Failed? You Shouldn't Be.
Posted by Robert Zimmer on 09.29.2008
Common sense about the roots of the bailout's failure in Congress, and how to move forward.
Many in the media and political establishment are shocked that the economic bailout plan failed to pass the House of Representatives today. They shouldn't be. Pundits seem puzzled by what happened and I've heard precious little talk of how we salvage things and go forward. Anybody with a pulse on the wrist of the average person in this country senses why public opposition to the bailout is so overwhelming. Those that don't get it are failing on a basic level to understand the mood of the country. Here's why the bill failed:
1. A revolt among conservative ideologues. For this group, this bailout was dead on arrival as it represents a death blow against the principle of unregulated free market capitalism, in favor – as they see it – of out-and-out socialism. They are sick of Bush's runaway spending and his sellout of conservative principles. This group is composed of the far right wing of the Republican party, plus the few libertarians left in the party (the Ron Paul wing).
2. It failed the bullshit detector with blue-collar voters. Those who are living this tough economy every day in their lives, who don't own day trade or large investment portfolios, fail to see the connection between the abstraction of Wall Street and stock market troubles and the kitchen table economic issues framing their lives. All the bailout looks like to them is more idiotic government spending to bail out corrupt rich people who got themselves into this mess and want to stick the taxpayers with the bill. This group includes plenty of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, and it's the largest public constituency that opposed the bailout.
3. Revenge of the anti-Bush left. Some pure ideological leftists simply oppose on principle any expensive proposal, domestic or abroad, brought forth by President Bush and accompanied by the worn-out "just trust us" line from the White House. Bush is dead to them. These folks tend to be more affluent, and are less connected to the average blue-collar American. Anything that stinks of Bush, whether a good idea or not, causes violent opposition with these leftists.
Combine these three groups and it's easy to understand why members of Congress were deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and faxes opposing the bailout as voted upon. Without a doubt, political shenanigans within and between the two political parties had something to do with the bailout's failure, but in large part voter pressure on Congressional members up for re-election is behind what happened today.
Meanwhile, the stock market lost 777 points today, the largest loss in American history. In more concrete terms, this represents a loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in American investments. While not all Americans have stock portfolios, a large percentage do have 401(k) plans that took a huge hit today and lost significant value. Wachovia (my bank, incidentally) failed today. We will be in a deep recession by next year -- not a mental recession, but a very real one, bailout or not.
Congressional action is imperative and leaders of both parties need to set aside the partisan garbage and get legislation passed by the end of this week, no exceptions. What a disgraceful performance by the legislative branch over the past few days. Obama and McCain should both step up and lead, or get out of the way. If Congress at large doesn't pass a new bill, they should all lose their jobs. Members should pledge to their constituents back home that they will resign if a new plan, with overwhelming bipartisan support, isn't on the president's desk by Friday night.
But lets not leave out of the plan legislation to repeal the bad legeslation that congress has passed that brought about this fabricated crisis. Remember congress
is to blame for the mess. Fannie mae and freddie mac were turned into wild west hedge funds run by the democrates for votes. This is a fact and the truth.
1-202-224-3121
Congressman Mike Pence has a good answer for this crisis
PENCE OPPOSES BAILOUT
"There are no easy answers, but the American people deserve to know there are alternatives to massive federal spending
Congressman Pence was the first lawmaker to oppose the Bush Administration's proposed bailout plan and continues to maintain his opposition
Republican Study Committee Alternative Plan
Washington, Sep 29 - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence gave the following speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today regarding the bill to bailout the financial services sector:
“I rise in opposition to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, and urge my colleagues, respectfully, to oppose it.
“Our nation has been confronted by a crisis in our financial markets. The President and this Congress were right to act with all deliberate speed in addressing this crisis.
“And we now have a bill that promises to bring near-term stability to our financial turmoil, but at what price?
“Benjamin Franklin said in 1759: ‘They that can give up liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’
“Economic freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail.
“The decision to give the federal government the ability to nationalize almost every bad mortgage in America interrupts this basic truth of our free market economy.
“It must be said, Republicans in this Congress improved this bill, but it remains the largest corporate bailout in American history, forever changes the relationship between government and the financial sector, and passes the cost along to the American people. I cannot support it.
“There are no easy answers, but the American people deserve to know there are alternatives to massive federal spending.
“The Bush Administration and this Congress have acted quickly but have largely ignored free market solutions to this crisis. The House Republican plan, as a solid alternative, would have set up an FDIC-style mandatory insurance program in which Wall Street firms would have paid to insure their mortgage-backed securities. Doing so would have made Wall Street pay the cost of this rescue, instead of Main Street.
“And while there is an option for an insurance plan in this bill, it falls far short of the substitute that Republicans desired.
“The House Republican plan would have injected liquidity into our markets through fast-acting tax strategies, releasing the economic power inherent in the American economy.
“Temporarily reducing the repatriation tax, as we did in 2005, would have brought hundreds of billions of dollars back into this economy, and the other business deductions would have helped the financial sector back on its feet.
“There were alternatives.
“So, I say to my colleagues, before you vote, ask yourselves why you came here, and vote with courage and integrity to those principles.
“If, like me, you came here because you believe in limited government and the freedom of the American marketplace, I urge you to vote in accordance with your convictions.
“Duty is ours, outcomes belong to God.
“The American people and our posterity deserve to know that there were men and women in this Congress who opposed the leviathan state in this hour.
“And if you do this, I promise you, I will stand with you and I believe with all my heart the American people will stand with you as well.
“Stand up for limited government and economic freedom. Stand up for the American taxpayer. Reject this bailout and vote ‘no’ on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.”
PENCE OPPOSES BAILOUT
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Man Who Never Was...Barack Husain Obama
"The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is."
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If this doesn't send chills down you spine, nothing will!
A sunken, cynical man who will stop at nothing to control your life with socialism and playing the race card. He will lead by example. His example is to accuse then lie about the facts. He will spark a race war and create a wider racial divide. I allready see this happening around me. A black man told me today, quote: "If Obama is not elected it will be because of racism in America." This is and will continue to be the race card that is played by some blacks who parrot Obama's excuse for America not bowing to his cynical lies. This excuse and others like it fosters what is called "white guilt" which is the need felt by many to vote for Obama to not be an example of racism because of not voting for a black man. This is black racism because telling a white man to vote for obama or else is playing the race card. I say don't vote for Obama just because he is black. Vote for him on his qualifications and experience as a community organizer. Vote for him because of his 1,300 or so days in the us senate. Vote for him because as a state senator he voted present.In 1999, Barack Obama was faced with a difficult vote in the Illinois legislature — to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults, a position that risked drawing fire from African-Americans, or to oppose it, possibly undermining his image as a tough-on-crime moderate.
In the end, Mr. Obama chose neither to vote for nor against the bill. He voted “present,” effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator.
Sometimes the “present’ votes were in line with instructions from Democratic leaders or because he objected to provisions in bills that he might otherwise support. At other times, Mr. Obama voted present on questions that had overwhelming bipartisan support. In at least a few cases, the issue was politically sensitive. This guy is like a vulture that only searches for dead meat. A vote for Oama is a vote for a coward in an empty suit. May GOD help us all if this empty suit is elected. (story reports)
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The Man Who Never Was The Man Who Never Was
The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.
While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)
And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.
Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."
I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real-life World War II British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as "Major William Martin, R.M.," which was put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a briefcase containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.
To make the operation credible, British intelligence concocted a fictional life for the corpse, creating a letter from a lover and tickets to a London theater — all the details of a life, but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media have presented to the nation as Obama is not the real man.
The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.
More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov.
Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.
But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.
Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great — and unflattering — details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.
The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.
Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."
That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.
The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.
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RUSH LIMBAUGH QUOTES: Speaking of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you know what really is at the root of this: high-risk loans. High-risk loans. People had no way of paying them back. They weren't even asked about their ability in many cases, they weren't asked to fill out the income or anything like that. High-risk loans were made on not much more than hope that they would be paid back, and each of these dead-end mortgages were pooled and packaged and sold and resold and resold on the hope that they would be paid back.
The loans were pushed by Democrats who actually were acquiring wealth and power for themselves while telling America these risky loans were going to be good for everybody. There was no history of untold numbers of unproven borrowers being capable of paying back loans of this size, but people just felt good about giving people that they knew nothing about the chance to live in a house that they had not earned. It was so typically socialist Democrat. "Oh, this is how we feel good. We gonna let people live in houses that they can't pay back!" By the way, remember this? And this is still true. Do you realize that 95%, 96% of Americans who have a mortgage are still paying them? Do you realize we're talking here four or five percent. How could four or five percent of these mortgages failing cause all this? Well, like Chuck Schumer said yesterday, "Well, the lowly mortgage brought the economy to its knees."
No, what happened is what was done with these mortgages. They were sold; they were resold. They were packaged. They were borrowed against. They were used as collateral for securities purchases. They were worthless from the get-go. It's not so much that it's just four or five percent of people in foreclosure; it's the multiple of people who got rich trading, selling, packaging, borrowing on all this worthless paper -- and that's why it's deep. People just felt good about giving people they knew nothing about a chance to live in a house that they had not earned. When I thought of it that way, when I thought of how good people felt about giving people they know nothing about the chance to live in a house they've not earned, I thought of Barack Obama and the White House. Barack Obama is nothing different than a high-risk loan.
He has no history of accomplishment. He has nothing besides a nice smile and a firm handshake as evidence he can deliver on what he promises. The White House shouldn't be available to high-risk people, such as a 144-day junior senator who has a myriad of highly questionable, high-risk associates -- and when he fails, we will be asked to bail out the United States for the damage that he caused. I'd like a little more collateral on a presidential candidate than just the having Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko as cosigners on his application! We know he's the most liberal senator in America, and our country desperately needs to rein in spending and stimulate the economy -- two things that liberals are totally unsuited for, especially a man who has surrounded himself with communists, Marxists, domestic terrorists, and anti-American bigots! Those are his cosigners, as he seeks a loan to be in the White House for a period of time. It might not be the time in our country's history to take such a massive risk. We can all see how these massive risks can turn out.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The credit mess and who is to blame
Barney (Queer) Frank and Chris Dodd should be charged with fraud. Both have lied
about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bad government policy and empty suit types like
Barack Obama in authority. These people above are the stupid sob's that have caused
the current problem because there was a fix and they said no there is no problem
and stopped the fix for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Democrate idiots. Bill Clinton
today said that the democratic congress was to blame for the current crisis. Even
the know liar is telling the truth about his fellow democrats.
For the Credit Mess
By CHARLES W. CALOMIRIS and PETER J. WALLISON Article
wallstreet journal.com
Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute
financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the
vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global
financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and
Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored
enterprises (GSEs) -- and their sponsors in Washington -- are largely
to blame for our current mess.
How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional
support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of "affordable
housing." They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A
mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually
exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the
subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its
collapse.
It is important to understand that, as GSEs, Fannie and Freddie were
viewed in the capital markets as government-backed buyers (a belief
that has now been reduced to fact). Thus they were able to borrow as
much as they wanted for the purpose of buying mortgages and mortgage-
backed securities. Their buying patterns and interests were followed
closely in the markets. If Fannie and Freddie wanted subprime or Alt-A
loans, the mortgage markets would produce them. By late 2004, Fannie
and Freddie very much wanted subprime and Alt-A loans. Their
accounting had just been revealed as fraudulent, and they were under
pressure from Congress to demonstrate that they deserved their
considerable privileges. Among other problems, economists at the
Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office had begun to study
them in detail, and found that -- despite their subsidized borrowing
rates -- they did not significantly reduce mortgage interest rates. In
the wake of Freddie's 2003 accounting scandal, Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan became a powerful opponent, and began to call for stricter
regulation of the GSEs and limitations on the growth of their highly
profitable, but risky, retained portfolios.
If they were not making mortgages cheaper and were creating risks for
the taxpayers and the economy, what value were they providing? The
answer was their affordable-housing mission. So it was that, beginning
in 2004, their portfolios of subprime and Alt-A loans and securities
began to grow. Subprime and Alt-A originations in the U.S. rose from
less than 8% of all mortgages in 2003 to over 20% in 2006. During this
period the quality of subprime loans also declined, going from fixed
rate, long-term amortizing loans to loans with low down payments and
low (but adjustable) initial rates, indicating that originators were
scraping the bottom of the barrel to find product for buyers like the
GSEs.
The strategy of presenting themselves to Congress as the champions of
affordable housing appears to have worked. Fannie and Freddie retained
the support of many in Congress, particularly Democrats, and they were
allowed to continue unrestrained. Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass), for
example, now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee,
openly described the "arrangement" with the GSEs at a committee
hearing on GSE reform in 2003: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played
a very useful role in helping to make housing more affordable . . . a
mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the
arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable
housing." The hint to Fannie and Freddie was obvious: Concentrate on
affordable housing and, despite your problems, your congressional
support is secure.
In light of the collapse of Fannie and Freddie, both John McCain and
Barack Obama now criticize the risk-tolerant regulatory regime that
produced the current crisis. But Sen. McCain's criticisms are at least
credible, since he has been pointing to systemic risks in the mortgage
market and trying to do something about them for years. In contrast,
Sen. Obama's conversion as a financial reformer marks a reversal from
his actions in previous years, when he did nothing to disturb the
status quo. The first head of Mr. Obama's vice-presidential search
committee, Jim Johnson, a former chairman of Fannie Mae, was the one
who announced Fannie's original affordable-housing program in 1991 --
just as Congress was taking up the first GSE regulatory legislation.
In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control,
adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth
Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman
Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios,
and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital
requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the
current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important
piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All
the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the
Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a
speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats,
remained silent. (In other words he voted present as is his coward way)
Now the Democrats are blaming the financial crisis on "deregulation."
This is a canard. There has indeed been deregulation in our economy --
in long-distance telephone rates, airline fares, securities brokerage
and trucking, to name just a few -- and this has produced much
innovation and lower consumer prices. But the primary "deregulation"
in the financial world in the last 30 years permitted banks to
diversify their risks geographically and across different products,
which is one of the things that has kept banks relatively stable in
this storm.
As a result, U.S. commercial banks have been able to attract more than
$100 billion of new capital in the past year to replace most of their
subprime-related write-downs. Deregulation of branching restrictions
and limitations on bank product offerings also made possible bank
acquisition of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, saving billions in
likely resolution costs for taxpayers.
If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge
growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie
could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would
have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the
lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the
ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped
it.
Mr. Calomiris is a professor of finance and economics at Columbia
Business School and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Mr. Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
was general counsel of the Treasury Department in the Reagan
administration.
about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bad government policy and empty suit types like
Barack Obama in authority. These people above are the stupid sob's that have caused
the current problem because there was a fix and they said no there is no problem
and stopped the fix for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Democrate idiots. Bill Clinton
today said that the democratic congress was to blame for the current crisis. Even
the know liar is telling the truth about his fellow democrats.
For the Credit Mess
By CHARLES W. CALOMIRIS and PETER J. WALLISON Article
wallstreet journal.com
Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute
financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the
vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global
financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and
Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored
enterprises (GSEs) -- and their sponsors in Washington -- are largely
to blame for our current mess.
How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional
support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of "affordable
housing." They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A
mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually
exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the
subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its
collapse.
It is important to understand that, as GSEs, Fannie and Freddie were
viewed in the capital markets as government-backed buyers (a belief
that has now been reduced to fact). Thus they were able to borrow as
much as they wanted for the purpose of buying mortgages and mortgage-
backed securities. Their buying patterns and interests were followed
closely in the markets. If Fannie and Freddie wanted subprime or Alt-A
loans, the mortgage markets would produce them. By late 2004, Fannie
and Freddie very much wanted subprime and Alt-A loans. Their
accounting had just been revealed as fraudulent, and they were under
pressure from Congress to demonstrate that they deserved their
considerable privileges. Among other problems, economists at the
Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office had begun to study
them in detail, and found that -- despite their subsidized borrowing
rates -- they did not significantly reduce mortgage interest rates. In
the wake of Freddie's 2003 accounting scandal, Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan became a powerful opponent, and began to call for stricter
regulation of the GSEs and limitations on the growth of their highly
profitable, but risky, retained portfolios.
If they were not making mortgages cheaper and were creating risks for
the taxpayers and the economy, what value were they providing? The
answer was their affordable-housing mission. So it was that, beginning
in 2004, their portfolios of subprime and Alt-A loans and securities
began to grow. Subprime and Alt-A originations in the U.S. rose from
less than 8% of all mortgages in 2003 to over 20% in 2006. During this
period the quality of subprime loans also declined, going from fixed
rate, long-term amortizing loans to loans with low down payments and
low (but adjustable) initial rates, indicating that originators were
scraping the bottom of the barrel to find product for buyers like the
GSEs.
The strategy of presenting themselves to Congress as the champions of
affordable housing appears to have worked. Fannie and Freddie retained
the support of many in Congress, particularly Democrats, and they were
allowed to continue unrestrained. Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass), for
example, now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee,
openly described the "arrangement" with the GSEs at a committee
hearing on GSE reform in 2003: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played
a very useful role in helping to make housing more affordable . . . a
mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the
arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable
housing." The hint to Fannie and Freddie was obvious: Concentrate on
affordable housing and, despite your problems, your congressional
support is secure.
In light of the collapse of Fannie and Freddie, both John McCain and
Barack Obama now criticize the risk-tolerant regulatory regime that
produced the current crisis. But Sen. McCain's criticisms are at least
credible, since he has been pointing to systemic risks in the mortgage
market and trying to do something about them for years. In contrast,
Sen. Obama's conversion as a financial reformer marks a reversal from
his actions in previous years, when he did nothing to disturb the
status quo. The first head of Mr. Obama's vice-presidential search
committee, Jim Johnson, a former chairman of Fannie Mae, was the one
who announced Fannie's original affordable-housing program in 1991 --
just as Congress was taking up the first GSE regulatory legislation.
In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control,
adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth
Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman
Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios,
and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital
requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the
current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important
piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All
the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the
Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a
speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats,
remained silent. (In other words he voted present as is his coward way)
Now the Democrats are blaming the financial crisis on "deregulation."
This is a canard. There has indeed been deregulation in our economy --
in long-distance telephone rates, airline fares, securities brokerage
and trucking, to name just a few -- and this has produced much
innovation and lower consumer prices. But the primary "deregulation"
in the financial world in the last 30 years permitted banks to
diversify their risks geographically and across different products,
which is one of the things that has kept banks relatively stable in
this storm.
As a result, U.S. commercial banks have been able to attract more than
$100 billion of new capital in the past year to replace most of their
subprime-related write-downs. Deregulation of branching restrictions
and limitations on bank product offerings also made possible bank
acquisition of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, saving billions in
likely resolution costs for taxpayers.
If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge
growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie
could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would
have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the
lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the
ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped
it.
Mr. Calomiris is a professor of finance and economics at Columbia
Business School and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Mr. Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
was general counsel of the Treasury Department in the Reagan
administration.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Bubble Economy Is About To Burst
The Great Depression was the worst economic slump ever in U.S. history, and one which spread to virtually all of the industrialized world. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade. Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade. The maldistribution of wealth in the 1920's existed on many levels. Money was distributed disparately between the rich and the middle-class, between industry and agriculture within the United States, and between the U.S. and Europe. This imbalance of wealth created an unstable economy. The excessive speculation in the late 1920's kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually lead to large market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the maldistribution of wealth, caused the American economy to capsize.
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The sub-prime mess, the huge risks taken by hedge funds, and the conflicts of interest that led to Enron are all the consequences of serial bouts of financial deregulation. Will we reverse field in time to prevent another 1929?
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The Glass-Steagall wall was devised to prevent a repeat of the 1920s' scams, in which banks made speculative investments, turned the debts into securities, and sold them off to unsuspecting investors with the blessing of the bank. With Glass-Steagall, commercial banks were tightly supervised and given access to federal deposit insurance, to keep savings secure and prevent runs on banks. Investment banks, meanwhile, were not government-guaranteed and were free to do more speculative transactions for consenting adult customers. But Roosevelt's newly created SEC subjected securities markets to much tighter structures against self-dealing and insider conflicts of interest.
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Hedged In
The hedge-fund story has close parallels to the sub-prime mess. A hedge fund is a nominally private investment fund designed to make very risky financial bets and reap unusually high returns. Hedge funds are free from the disclosures required of ordinary investment companies, thanks to a loophole that exempts narrowly-held funds that serve very wealthy people, no matter how large the fund or how risky its strategies.
As long as hedge funds were small players, some very smart strategists could reap very large returns by exploiting obscure pricing anomalies in financial markets, with little risk to the larger system. But in the booming 1990s, hedge funds exploded. By 2006, hedge funds and their unregulated cousins, private equity companies, were generating a third to a half of the business executed on Wall Street, and hedge funds held an estimated $1.5 trillion in assets.
In the low-yield environment of the post-2000 crash, everyone was hungry for higher returns. Pension funds, university endowments, and other traditionally prudent investors began to pour their money into hedge funds to get higher yields, driving the funds to make ever more dubious deals, or deals that involved improper insider trades or conflicts of interest, to satisfy investors and keep the money coming in.
Not surprisingly, hedge funds ran into a Lake Wobegon problem: Everybody can't be above average. By 2003, some hedge funds were still producing outsized returns, but the typical fund was no longer even beating the market averages. As the markets discovered in the collapse of August 2007, a lot of hedge funds using sophisticated computer models were making very similar bets. Rather than offsetting each other's risks, they were reinforcing them.
Today, hedge funds are being squeezed from both sides. Many of their investors want out, and a lot of their banks have stopped advancing them credit. The only thing stopping a hemorrhage of investor withdrawals are rules limiting how quickly investors can take their money and run. As their balance sheets worsen, hedge funds are forced to sell off assets, often for big losses. Several have taken big hits. A few smaller ones have gone bust. But a big hedge-fund collapse is the other shoe that hasn't yet dropped.
What would that be like? When Long Term Capital Management, a leading hedge fund of the roaring 1990s, collapsed in 1998, the Federal Reserve went to extraordinary lengths to prevent an economy-wide credit panic. Hedge funds use so-called derivatives to leverage their own capital at ratios unthinkable to ordinary investors -- 20 or even 50 to one. When LTCM suddenly found that its computer models had guessed wrong, so many banks were owed so much money by LTCM that if the fund simply ceased operations, the losses would have wiped out the capital of New York's major banks. So the Fed, technically exceeding its statutory authority, leaned on the big banks to simply buy the fund outright, liquidate its positions in orderly fashion, and eat about $4 billion in losses. Because hedge funds are unregulated, and LTCM was doing business with so many different banks, neither the Fed nor the other regulatory agencies had any idea of the degree of risk LTCM posed until the fund blew up and the Fed had to contain the damage.
In the nine years since LTCM collapsed, the industry has become hydra-headed. More than 9,000 hedge funds have opened up shop, and the kind of rescue that the Fed mounted in 1998 would not be possible today, according to one former senior official of the Fed, because the risks are now so diffuse. In principle, the authorities can monitor hedge funds by keeping tabs on the books of the so-called "counterparties" -- the banks that underwrite their activities. But bank examiners have not been able to keep up with hedge-fund innovations. The industry is a financial black box.
Repealing Roosevelt
Hedge funds, private equity companies, and the sub-prime mortgage industry have two big things in common. First, each represents financial middlemen unproductively extracting wealth from the real economy. Second, each exploits loopholes in what remains of financial regulation.
The Roosevelt schema of financial regulation was built around two principles -- disclosure and outright prohibition of inherent conflicts of interest. All publicly listed and traded companies were required to disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to the public all financial information deemed "material" to investor decisions. The New Deal also prohibited stock trading based on insider information, and it created structural barriers against the kinds of temptations that ruined the economy in the 1920s. The most notable of these was the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited the same financial company from being both a commercial bank and an investment bank.
The Glass-Steagall wall was devised to prevent a repeat of the 1920s' scams, in which banks made speculative investments, turned the debts into securities, and sold them off to unsuspecting investors with the blessing of the bank. With Glass-Steagall, commercial banks were tightly supervised and given access to federal deposit insurance, to keep savings secure and prevent runs on banks. Investment banks, meanwhile, were not government-guaranteed and were free to do more speculative transactions for consenting adult customers. But Roosevelt's newly created SEC subjected securities markets to much tighter structures against self-dealing and insider conflicts of interest.
The New Deal also acted on the home mortgage front. Millions of people were losing their homes and farms to foreclosures, both creating human tragedies and deepening the Depression. In response, the Roosevelt administration literally invented the modern system of home finance. Pre–New Deal mortgages had typically been short-term notes, where most of the principal was due and payable at the end of a brief term, often just three to five years. The New Deal devised the modern long-term, fixed-rate, self-amortizing mortgage. Congress created the Federal Housing Administration to insure these mortgages and win their acceptance among lenders. It also created the Federal National Mortgage Association to sell bonds and buy mortgages, and thus replenish the funds of local lenders. And the New Deal devised a system of federal home loan banks to supervise and advance capital to savings and loan institutions. Deposit insurance was extended to government-supervised mortgage lenders.
The system worked like a watch, combining sound lending standards with expanded opportunity. The rate of home ownership rose from 44 percent in the late 1930s to 64 percent by the mid-1960s. Savings and loan associations almost always ran in the black, there were no serious scandals, and the government deposit-insurance funds regularly returned a profit.
Look Ma, No Hands
If you fast forward to 2000, much of this protective apparatus has been repealed. Regulators who didn't believe in regulation and a compliant Congress have allowed financial engineers to evade what remains. In the 1980s, regulators began allowing exceptions to Glass-Steagall. In 1999, Congress finally repealed it outright, permitting financial supermarkets like Citigroup to operate any kind of financial business they desired, and profit from multiple conflicts of interest. The scandals that pumped up the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, as well as the most flagrant cases like Enron, and the crash that followed, were the result of the SEC and the bank regulators ceasing to police conflicts of interest. In the scandals of the 1990s, corporate CEOs, their accountants, and stock analysts working for their bankers, all conspired to puff up corporate balance sheets and pump up stock prices on which executive bonuses depended. This is a little harder today, thanks to the honest accounting requirements of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (which the Bush administration hopes to water down). But the same kinds of conflicts and potentials for abuse exist when a mega-bank underwrites a leveraged buyout by an affiliated hedge fund, and then hypes the sale of securities when the fund is ready to sell the company back to the public.
Meanwhile, the once staid and socially directed system of providing home mortgages was seized by financial wise guys and turned into another casino. In the early 1980s, exploiting the Reaganite theme of government-bashing, the savings and loan industry persuaded Congress to substantially deregulate S&Ls -- which then speculated with government-insured money and lost many hundreds of billions, costing taxpayers upward of $350 billion in less than a decade.
In 1989 when Congress reregulated S&Ls, the financial engineers just did another end run. Mortgage companies that were exempt from federal regulation came to dominate the mortgage lending business. This loop of the story begins in 1968 with the privatization of Roosevelt's Federal National Mortgage Association. In the wake of that move, investment bankers invented a daisy chain known as "securitization" of mortgage credit. Through securitization, a mortgage broker could originate a loan, sell it to a mortgage banker, who would then sell it to an investment bank like Salomon Brothers, who in turn would package the mortgages into securities. These were then evaluated and coded (for a fee) by private bond-rating agencies according to their supposed risk, and sold off to hedge funds or pension funds. Each of these worthies took their little cut, raising the cost of credit to the borrower. Rather than diffusing risks (a course that economic theory urges on a prudent capitalist nation), however, securitization concentrated them, because everyone was making the same bet on real-estate inflation.
In the sub-prime sector, you could get a loan without a full credit check, or even without income verification. The initial "teaser" rate would be low, but after a few years the monthly payment would rise to unaffordable levels. Both borrower and lender were betting on rising real-estate prices to bail them out, by allowing an early refinancing. But when a soft housing market dashed those hopes, the whole sub-prime sector crashed, and the damage spilled over into other financial sectors.
The Great Enabler
Ever since late July when the credit crunch in sub-prime mortgages became an economy-wide problem, all eyes have been on the Federal Reserve. None other than Milton Friedman, no friend of government meddling in the economy, blamed the Great Depression on the failure of the Fed in the 1930s to intervene aggressively enough. Financial writers have taken to quoting Walter Bagehot, the great financial journalist and commentator of the Victorian era, who correctly counseled that in a financial panic, the job of the lender of last resort is to flood the system with liquidity. This is what the Fed, somewhat belatedly, has been contriving to do.
At first, Chairman Ben Bernanke was reluctant to move too quickly, lest he signal that irresponsible speculators would be bailed out. Then, after pleas from Wall Street became urgent, and credit markets began freezing up in an old-fashioned panic, Bernanke moved.
In mid-August, the Fed flooded the financial markets with cheap money, in order to induce panicky creditors to keep lending and prevent an asset meltdown. Though the Fed's target rate on overnight inter-bank loans (the "federal funds" rate) was kept at 5.25 percent to avoid a sense of desperation, the actual rate fluctuated between 4.5 and 5 percent for several days, thanks to the tens of billions that the central bank poured into the markets.
Then, when that move failed to calm the markets, the Fed took the additional step of reducing the discount rate, the interest rate charged on money that banks borrow directly from the Fed itself. At this writing, the Fed is universally expected to cut the federal funds rate at its next scheduled meeting Sept. 18. The only question is how much.
How aggressively the Fed should move has been the subject of extensive commentary. If the Fed moves too slowly or doesn't cut enough, it ends up playing catch-up behind an advancing panic. If it moves too quickly or too generously, it just invites the next round of speculation with cheap money, and in passing might erode confidence in the none-too-robust dollar. But all of this commentary misses the larger point: If monetary policy is the only tool the government has at its disposal, the Fed can't possibly solve the larger crisis (or prevent the next one) by using interest rates alone.
Indeed, until Congress dismantled financial regulation, the Fed was not called upon to mount these heroic rescues, which have become so common in recent years. Until the 1960s, the central bank could keep interest rates low, confident that they would underwrite the growth of the real economy rather than risky financial speculation, for the simple reason that entire categories of speculation did not exist.
But during the past quarter-century, as deregulation has turned the economy into a casino, the Federal Reserve has had to mount major rescues at least six times. In the early 1980s, it bailed out the big New York banks, some of which lost more than the total amount of their capital in failed speculative third world loans; the money-center banks would have been adjudged insolvent if the Fed hadn't bent its usual capital-adequacy rules. Next, the Fed poured huge quantities of liquidity into financial markets after the stock market crash of 1987, in which the market lost more than 20 percent of its value in a single day. The Fed intervened again on several occasions after speculators destabilized several third world currencies and economies from Mexico to Malaysia. The Fed cleaned up after the aforementioned Long Term Capital Management collapse. It flooded markets with money after the dot-com crash and the attacks of September 11, and most recently in the credit crunch of summer 2007.
Indeed, markets have become so reliant on the Fed's bailouts that they even have a term for it -- "the Greenspan put." A put is a financial term meaning a right to sell a financial security at a predetermined price. The knowledge that the Fed would cheapen money in a crisis reassured speculators that they could always unload their paper. That awareness also influenced financial insiders to behave more recklessly.
The point is not that the Fed should turn its back when financial markets are on the verge of replicating the Great Crash. The point is that the Fed has become the chief enabler of a dangerously speculative economy. It is simply not possible to get the right balance of financial prudence and financial liquidity using monetary policy alone. That's why we once had a more carefully regulated economy.
The Fed, as the designated lender of last resort, does have more arrows in its quiver than monetary policy. It has certain regulatory powers -- but has been loath to use them. For example, the Fed has residual powers to crack down on the credit terms of sub-prime lenders who sell mortgages in financial markets (virtually all of them). For the better part of a decade, the late Federal Reserve Governor Ned Gramlich, who was the Board of Governors' most expert member on housing and mortgage markets, warned Chairman Alan Greenspan about lowered credit standards and the risks of a housing bubble.
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So in summary what has caused this crisis. The STUPID FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!
Too much deregulation.
The big push by democrates for low income family unsecured loans.
Our congress and presidents have set us up again for a DEPRESSION.
Its is comming. All in congress are not to blame. Congressional hearings were held.
Democrates were warned about freddie mac and fannie mae.
Nothing was done except get a bill out of committee by the republicans. No floor vote.
It seems now that with a little research we could have seen it comming. I think most people didn't want to see it comming or care.
Everyone thinks of the fed like insurance. When the insurance company goes belly up
the pot will run dry. It looks like its about to run dry. People are and will panic.
In the end people are like lemmings to some extent.
If we do go into a depression some people will have to learn to grow their own again.
Lets face it, we all can make do on a lot less. We can survive in spite of some
IDIOTS in congress paving the way for dr greed to pocket all he can while he can.
Dr greed is about to find out his stocks aint worth what they use to be.
Check out the price of gold. Panic has begun. A run on the bank has begun..the fed.
The bank will sonner or later close its doors. The next question is will obama or mccain declare marshall law?
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Oh by the way this is all to convenient for the purpose of propelling the empty suit
into the white house. The empty suit is like a blank check to many Americans. The timing of this crisis is very odd. Too odd to ignore for me. I do think people are
working behind the scenes to assure the community organizer will organize America
into a socialist society. Obama won't get elected because of his town meetings thats
for sure. He will be elected for 2 reasons. The democratic controlled congress
generated financial crisis and.....you guessed it White Guilt some of the same people who do and would buy
carbon credits to save us from something that does not exist global warming. Remember
if there is not a crisis the liberal democrates will create one. Its kind of like
telling us that 15 hurricanes will hit next year and not one did, which by the way did happen. Speculation leads to panic and panic leads to an empty suit and socialism. Its that simple forrest. (StoryReports)
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After reading the above it is enough to make one panic.
Keep in mind also the information which I have reproduced below:
We have gone beyond a subprime mortgage crisis. We are, let’s face it, in the midst of a global financial crisis. But it is important for investors to differentiate between the risks they face as shareholders in financial institutions and the risks they face as depositors or insurance holders in the larger banks and financial groups. In extremis, shareholders can and will be wiped out, as they have been in the case of Lehman Brothers and the likes of Northern Rock. But banks and insurers obviously hold a special place in the broader economy, and depositors and holders of insurance have every reason to believe that they will, by and large, be made whole in the event of a commercial banking or insurance group’s insolvency. The challenge for the international banking system is that there are very few private entities with either the capital or the willingness to support ailing rivals. The alternative – sovereign wealth funds – will be increasingly unpalatable as suppliers of emergency capital of last resort, particularly during a US election year. Which leaves the taxpayer to bail out the larger and more significant financial firms that are unable to work through their problems in an orderly fashion.
The financial markets are currently in a process of adjusting, rather painfully, to this new and more uncertain environment. The prices of multiple types of assets are reflecting not necessarily radically worse prospects, but forced, distressed selling on the part of many financial institutions and funds as those organisations scramble to raise liquidity. Some superb longer term opportunities will inevitably arise out of the panic.
As before, we would reiterate the significance of a sound, diversified and balanced investment approach. The world is not ending, though certain members of the investment banking community evidently are, as independent entities at any rate.
Imagine asking the empty suit for advice on investing. Uh, oh uh uh, oh, uh oh oh, eh.
Help Obama's Brother George Out
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George Hussein Onyango Obama, Barach Obama's brother lives in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi in Kenya. Telegraph.co.UK has the original story from August 21 2008.
He is 26 and lives on $12 a year. That is 3 cents a day.
His own flesh and blood has turned his back on him so it is up to us, the good people of America, to help this man out.
We would also like to point out what a difference a country makes. One of the Obamas was born in America and lives in a million dollar house has made over $20 million in the last three years.
George Obama was born in Africa, lives in hut and makes only 1 dollar a month. He needs a hand up and with your help we are going to give it to him.
Barack has not helped his brother out of poverty so we will. Our goal is to get him a clean place with running water, electricity, food, a car and job.
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He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi.
The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".
Of their second meeting, George Obama said: "It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger."
George added he was no longer in contact with his mother and said:"I have had to learn to live and take what I need.
"Huruma is a tough place, last January during the elections there was rioting and six people were hacked to death. The police don't even arrest you they just shoot you.
"I have seen two of my friends killed. I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists.
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Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender.
"No-one knows who I am," he told the magazine, before claiming: "I live here on less than a dollar a month."
According to Italy's Vanity Fair his two metre by three metre shack is decorated with football posters of the Italian football giants AC Milan and Inter, as well as a calendar showing exotic beaches of the world.
Vanity Fair also noted that he had a front page newspaper picture of his famous brother - born of the same father as him, Barack Hussein Obama, but to a different mother, named only as Jael.
He told the magazine: "I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist."
Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation.
"If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed," he said.
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I agree, you should be ashamed of your 'brother' barack obama. You are an example of his fake mass media show. Barack obama shuns you because he does not want to identify with you his own brother. It is similar to they way he shuns the black Americans also. He says he wants to be identified as a black man yet he will make sure not too many black people are seen in his rallys on tv. Why? I know why and so do you. I agree help this brother, his own brother will not.
Help a brother here
As a white man I am offended by a black man who will not help his own brother who lives on $12 a year.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Obama is a community organizer and the "community" is the USA
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The "Organizer's Toolbox"
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Obama wants to organize America into a socialist state. A liberal radical acorn community organizer held up to society as the answer to all our problems by the liberal media. ITS ALL A BIG LIE. Obama is a LIAR. He wants to take your freedoms from you and it is very in your face. He and acorn are really socialists and communists. They are traitors to this nation and will stop at nothing to take you freedom.
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The ACORN Obama knows
by Michelle Malkin
If you don’t know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers — you and me — and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League documents how Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects.
Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn’t being spent on these radical activities?
Don’t bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a “community organizer” and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN’s political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. According to ACORN, Obama trained its Chicago members in leadership seminars; in turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his campaigns. Obama also sat on the boards of the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation, both of which poured money into ACORN’s coffers. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who “best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about” — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money.
Let’s take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.
Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including “Leon Spinks,” “Frekkie Magoal” and “Fruto Boy Crispila.” Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN’s criminal sabotage “an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls.”
The group’s vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: “In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.”
In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney’s office.
Under the guise of “consumer advocacy,” ACORN has lined its pockets. The Department of Housing and Urban Development funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing “anti-poverty” groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since taking office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza (”The Race”) scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.
As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new expose, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters “no lobby” agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment.
Republicans have largely looked the other way as ACORN has expanded its government-funded empire. But finally, a few conservative voices in Congress have called for investigation of the group’s apparent extortion schemes. This week, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney, Jeb Hensarling and Ed Royce called on Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to convene a hearing to probe potential illegalities and abuse of taxpayer funds by ACORN’s management and minions alike.
Where does the candidate of Hope and Change — the candidate of Reform and New Politics — stand on the issue? Barack Obama, ACORN’s senator, is for more of the same old, same old subsidizing of far-left politics in the name of fighting for the poor while enriching ideological cronies. It’s the Chicago way.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac execs now offering advice to Obama
Democratic opposition to change in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulatory structure that remained in place until the Treasury takeover. DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION,
it seems is the reason millions are being lost. As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants. Instead, Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives.
Crazy democrat liberals want your money and want more of it, just listen to obama and biden. Both want tax increases and control of your life. Only an IDIOT would vote for these liberals! The left has a fine crop of idiots and obama is feeding them pig waste. (Story Reports Comment)
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By Jerome R. Corsi
Fannie Mae headquarters in Washington, D.C.
NEW YORK – Campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made to Barack Obama may backfire if the Democratic presidential hopeful wages an aggressive campaign to cast blame on rival John McCain and the Republicans in Congress for the mortgage-related losses that forced the U.S. Treasury to take over the quasi-governmental mortgage giants.
A review of Federal Election Commission records back to 1989 reveals Obama in his three complete years in the Senate is the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions, behind only Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the powerful chairman of the Senate banking committee. Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980.
According to OpenSecrets.com, from 1989 to 2008, Dodd received $165,400 in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, including contributions from PACs and individuals, followed by Obama, who received $126,349 in such contributions since being elected to the Senate in 2004.
In contrast, McCain warned of the coming mortgage crisis as he pressed in 2005 for regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – known as government-sponsored entities or GSEs – and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market," McCain said on the floor of the Senate in 2005, speaking in favor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.
McCain pointed out Fannie Mae's regulator had stated the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The bill passed the House but was never brought up for a vote in the Senate, largely because of Democratic opposition to change in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulatory structure that remained in place until the Treasury takeover two weeks ago.
As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants.
Instead, Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives, where they have earned millions in compensation, despite a continuing series of financial scandals. Enron-like accounting manipulation, for example, boosted earnings to a level at which massive executive bonuses could be paid.
In the aftermath of the U.S. government takeover, attention has focused on three Democrats with close ties to Obama who served as Fannie Mae executives: Franklin Raines, former Clinton administration budget director; James Johnson, former aide to Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale; and Jamie Gorelick, former Clinton administration deputy attorney general.
All three Obama-related executives earned millions in compensation from Fannie Mae.
Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year serving as Fannie Mae CEO from 1991 to 1998; Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004; and Gorelick earned an estimated $26 million serving as vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003, according to author David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
All three have been involved in mortgage-related financial scandals.
In 1998, according to the Washington Post, Gorelick, as Fannie Mae vice chairman, received a bonus of $779,625, despite a scandal in which employees falsified signatures on accounting transactions to manipulate books to meet 1998 earning targets. The moves, in turn, triggered multi-million-dollar bonuses for top executives.
Gorelick was embroiled in another controversy over an alleged conflict of interest when a 1995 memo she authored as deputy attorney general surfaced while she was a member of the 9/11 commission.
The memo, which became known as the "Gorelick Wall," appeared to establish barriers that barred federal anti-terrorist criminal investigators from accessing various federal records and databases that may have assisted them in their criminal investigations.
According to the Associated Press, Raines and several other Fannie Mae top executives were ordered in a civil lawsuit to pay nearly $31.4 million for manipulating Fannie Mae earnings over a period of six years to trigger their massive bonuses.
Raines was also forced in the settlement to give up Fannie Mae stock options valued at $15.6 million.
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Freddie Mac had engaged in accounting fraud from 2000 to 2002, imposing a $50 million fine on the company and on four executives fines for amounts ranging from $65,000 to $250,000.
Raines currently advises Obama on housing policy.
Johnson was appointed to head Obama's vice presidential selection committee, until a controversy concerning an alleged $7 millions in questionable real estate loans he received on favorable terms from failed sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial surfaced and forced him to step down.
WND previously reported a panel chaired by Elena Kagan, dean and professor of law at Harvard Law School, speculated at the June two-day meeting of the American Constitution Society that Gorelick was a possible attorney general cabinet appointment if Obama should be elected president.
The decision by the U.S. Treasury to take over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could end up costing the U.S. taxpayer as much as $100 billion, although the extent of losses at the two giant mortgage companies remains to be determined.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Freddie and Fannie own or guarantee about $5.2 trillion worth of mortgages.
The riskiest loans held by Freddie and Fannie are known as "Alt-A" and sub-prime mortgages, worth about $780 billion, or about 15 percent of the total portfolio.
The federal government takeover of Freddie and Fannie passes to U.S. taxpayers the contingent liability for failures in the entire $5.2 trillion loan portfolio held by the two mortgage giants.
Over the past four quarters, Freddie and Fannie have suffered losses of about $14 billion, as the mortgage market has been hit by a wave of defaults and foreclosures not seen in the U.S. since the 1930s.
it seems is the reason millions are being lost. As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants. Instead, Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives.
Crazy democrat liberals want your money and want more of it, just listen to obama and biden. Both want tax increases and control of your life. Only an IDIOT would vote for these liberals! The left has a fine crop of idiots and obama is feeding them pig waste. (Story Reports Comment)
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By Jerome R. Corsi
Fannie Mae headquarters in Washington, D.C.
NEW YORK – Campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made to Barack Obama may backfire if the Democratic presidential hopeful wages an aggressive campaign to cast blame on rival John McCain and the Republicans in Congress for the mortgage-related losses that forced the U.S. Treasury to take over the quasi-governmental mortgage giants.
A review of Federal Election Commission records back to 1989 reveals Obama in his three complete years in the Senate is the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions, behind only Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the powerful chairman of the Senate banking committee. Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980.
According to OpenSecrets.com, from 1989 to 2008, Dodd received $165,400 in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, including contributions from PACs and individuals, followed by Obama, who received $126,349 in such contributions since being elected to the Senate in 2004.
In contrast, McCain warned of the coming mortgage crisis as he pressed in 2005 for regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – known as government-sponsored entities or GSEs – and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market," McCain said on the floor of the Senate in 2005, speaking in favor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.
McCain pointed out Fannie Mae's regulator had stated the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The bill passed the House but was never brought up for a vote in the Senate, largely because of Democratic opposition to change in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulatory structure that remained in place until the Treasury takeover two weeks ago.
As evidenced by the failure to pass the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly fought back Republican Party efforts to reform the two mortgage banking giants.
Instead, Democrats in Congress have sought to preserve the quasi-governmental status of the mortgage giants, seeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as places to locate former top Democratic Party operatives, where they have earned millions in compensation, despite a continuing series of financial scandals. Enron-like accounting manipulation, for example, boosted earnings to a level at which massive executive bonuses could be paid.
In the aftermath of the U.S. government takeover, attention has focused on three Democrats with close ties to Obama who served as Fannie Mae executives: Franklin Raines, former Clinton administration budget director; James Johnson, former aide to Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale; and Jamie Gorelick, former Clinton administration deputy attorney general.
All three Obama-related executives earned millions in compensation from Fannie Mae.
Johnson earned $21 million in just his last year serving as Fannie Mae CEO from 1991 to 1998; Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004; and Gorelick earned an estimated $26 million serving as vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003, according to author David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
All three have been involved in mortgage-related financial scandals.
In 1998, according to the Washington Post, Gorelick, as Fannie Mae vice chairman, received a bonus of $779,625, despite a scandal in which employees falsified signatures on accounting transactions to manipulate books to meet 1998 earning targets. The moves, in turn, triggered multi-million-dollar bonuses for top executives.
Gorelick was embroiled in another controversy over an alleged conflict of interest when a 1995 memo she authored as deputy attorney general surfaced while she was a member of the 9/11 commission.
The memo, which became known as the "Gorelick Wall," appeared to establish barriers that barred federal anti-terrorist criminal investigators from accessing various federal records and databases that may have assisted them in their criminal investigations.
According to the Associated Press, Raines and several other Fannie Mae top executives were ordered in a civil lawsuit to pay nearly $31.4 million for manipulating Fannie Mae earnings over a period of six years to trigger their massive bonuses.
Raines was also forced in the settlement to give up Fannie Mae stock options valued at $15.6 million.
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Freddie Mac had engaged in accounting fraud from 2000 to 2002, imposing a $50 million fine on the company and on four executives fines for amounts ranging from $65,000 to $250,000.
Raines currently advises Obama on housing policy.
Johnson was appointed to head Obama's vice presidential selection committee, until a controversy concerning an alleged $7 millions in questionable real estate loans he received on favorable terms from failed sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial surfaced and forced him to step down.
WND previously reported a panel chaired by Elena Kagan, dean and professor of law at Harvard Law School, speculated at the June two-day meeting of the American Constitution Society that Gorelick was a possible attorney general cabinet appointment if Obama should be elected president.
The decision by the U.S. Treasury to take over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could end up costing the U.S. taxpayer as much as $100 billion, although the extent of losses at the two giant mortgage companies remains to be determined.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Freddie and Fannie own or guarantee about $5.2 trillion worth of mortgages.
The riskiest loans held by Freddie and Fannie are known as "Alt-A" and sub-prime mortgages, worth about $780 billion, or about 15 percent of the total portfolio.
The federal government takeover of Freddie and Fannie passes to U.S. taxpayers the contingent liability for failures in the entire $5.2 trillion loan portfolio held by the two mortgage giants.
Over the past four quarters, Freddie and Fannie have suffered losses of about $14 billion, as the mortgage market has been hit by a wave of defaults and foreclosures not seen in the U.S. since the 1930s.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship
John McCain in an undated family photo with his wife Carol, Doug, Andy, and daughter Sidney.
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I agree this guy is a scum bag but obama is a socialist scum bag which is worse. Cindy Hensley was right, 'This guy's kind of weird.'
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The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents.
By Richard A. Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 11, 2008
Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain and offered a significant -- but less than exuberant -- endorsement.
"Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed," the Republican matriarch said in March. "Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party." They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.
In a written statement, she described McCain as "a good friend for over 30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain's decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.
The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time.
McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.
In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.
"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."
An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.
Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.
Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn otherwise, according to several close aides.
"Everybody was upset with him," recalled Nancy Reynolds, a top aide to the former president who introduced him to McCain.
By contrast, some of McCain's friends, including the Senate aide who was at the reception where McCain first met Hensley, believed he was separated at that time.
Albert "Pete" Lakeland, the aide who was with McCain at the reception in Hawaii in April 1979, said of the introduction to Hensley: "It was like he was struck by Cupid's arrow. He was just enormously smitten."
As the pair began dating, Lakeland allowed them to spend a weekend together at his summer home in Maryland, he said.
The senator has acknowledged that he behaved badly, and that his swift divorce and remarriage brought a cold shoulder from the Reagans that lasted years.
In a recent interview, McCain said he did not want to revisit the breakup of his marriage. "I have a very good relationship with my first wife," he said. In his autobiography, he wrote: "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was entirely mine."
Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said: "Of course we will not comment on the breakup of the senator's first marriage, other than to note that the senator has always taken responsibility for it."
Carol McCain did not respond to a request for an interview.
About all she has ever said is this to McCain biographer Robert Timberg: "John was turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again."
After leaving the White House, Carol McCain worked in press relations in the Washington area, retiring about five years ago after working for the National Soft Drink Assn. She now lives in Virginia Beach, Va., and has not remarried. She has two sons from an earlier marriage: Andy, a vice president at Cindy McCain's beer distributorship, and Doug, a commercial airline pilot.
Carol and John McCain had a daughter, Sidney, who works in the music industry in Canada.
John McCain, who calls himself "a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution," said in his memoir: "My divorce from Carol, whom the Reagans loved, caused a change in our relationship. Nancy . . . was particularly upset with me and treated me on the few occasions we encountered each other after I came to Congress with a cool correctness that made her displeasure clear.
"I had, of course, deserved the change in our relationship."
Joanne Drake, spokeswoman for Nancy Reagan, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
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The first Mrs. McCain
McCain met Carol Shepp through a mutual friend and fellow midshipman at the Naval Academy, from which McCain graduated in 1958. That friend, Alasdair E. Swanson, married her in 1958. In the early 1960s, the Swansons lived in Pensacola, Fla., where Alasdair Swanson and McCain served as Navy pilots.
But that marriage ended in June 1964 after Carol sued for divorce, alleging that her husband had been unfaithful.
According to McCain, he started seeing Carol shortly afterward. They were married in Philadelphia, her hometown, in July 1965. McCain adopted her two sons, and they had a daughter together. Then in October 1967, McCain's plane was shot down and he was captured by the North Vietnamese.
She became active in the POW-MIA movement. A former model, she dedicated herself to her children and kept the family together, friends said, while awaiting his return.
"She had the perseverance to carry on," said Melinda Fitzwater, a cousin of McCain's who later worked with Carol McCain at the White House. "She had a little baby and small kids. She was a great, unique person."
On Christmas Eve 1969, while she was driving alone in Philadelphia, Carol McCain's car skidded and struck a utility pole. Thrown into the snow, she broke both legs, an arm and her pelvis. She was operated on a dozen times, and in the treatment she lost about 5 inches in height.
After John McCain was released in March 1973 and returned to the U.S., he told friends that Carol was not the woman he had married.
Reynolds, working for then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, said she first met the couple in San Francisco at a reception for ex-prisoners. She later introduced them to the Reagans at their home in Pacific Palisades.
"They were just an attractive couple," Reynolds said. "The Reagans had great admiration and respect for John."
In 1974, Reagan invited McCain to speak at a governor's prayer breakfast in Sacramento. The former prisoner of war told the story of a fellow captive who had scratched a prayer on a cell wall. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were reduced to tears. It was "the most moving speech I had ever heard," Reynolds said.
In the next few years, family and friends said, there was no sign that McCain was unhappy in his marriage. Fitzwater recalled visiting the family on Thanksgivings, and McCain seemed content barbecuing a turkey on his outdoor grill near Jacksonville, Fla.
Navy officers in the squadron McCain commanded in 1977 said they did not know anything was wrong. "When I went to parties at their home, everything seemed fine," said Mike Akin, a naval flying instructor. "They seemed to be a happily married couple."
But two years later, while on a trip as a Navy liaison with the Senate, McCain spied Hensley at the Honolulu reception. In a recent television interview with Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show," Cindy McCain joked about how the Navy captain had pursued her. "He kind of chased me around . . . the hors d'oeuvre table," she said. "I was trying to get something to eat and I thought, 'This guy's kind of weird.' I was kind of trying to get away from him."
John McCain was 42; she was 24. During the next nine months, he would fly to Arizona or she would come to the Washington area, where McCain and Carol had a home.
Carol McCain later told friends, including Reynolds and Fitzwater, that she did not know he was seeing anyone else.
John McCain sued for divorce in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where his friend and fellow former POW, George E. "Bud" Day, practiced law and could represent him.
In the petition, he stated that the couple had "cohabited as husband and wife" until Jan. 7, 1980.
His wife did not contest the divorce, and Day said that the couple had reached an agreement in advance on support and division of property. By then she was living in La Mesa, in San Diego County, with the family of Meese, a close Reagan aide and future attorney general.
"We knew John and Carol both since he came back from Hanoi in 1973," Meese said recently. "They have been friends of ours ever since.
"She was with us for maybe four or five months. Their daughter and our daughter were friends, and they went to school together."
Carol McCain was distraught at being blindsided by her husband's intention to end their marriage, said her friends in the Reagan circle.
"They [the Reagans] weren't happy with him," Fitzwater said. Carol McCain "was this little, frail person. . . . She was brokenhearted."
By that time, Nancy Reagan had come to Carol McCain's aid, hiring her as a press assistant in the 1980 presidential campaign.
When the Reagans moved to Washington, she was named director of the White House Visitors Office.
"Nancy Reagan was crazy about her," Reynolds said. "But everybody was crazy about Carol McCain. . . . And the Meeses were very generous and helpful and comforting to her."
Fitzwater said that living in Southern California and working on the Reagan campaign helped Carol McCain move past the loss of her marriage.
"It was perfect for her. She was traveling, and it took her mind off a very, very sad time for her."
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