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Did you vote for Obama?  "What Were You Thinking?"

Judicial Watch: Corruption at Fannie Mae

    Judicial Watch is a private government oversight organization dedicated to "Promoting Integrity, Transparency and Accountability in Government, Politics and the Law."  They do so, in the words on their masthead, "Because no one is above the law."  Anyone can sign up on their website for a weekly News Update.

    Today's update included information that should give pause to those who continue to blame the previous administration for the problems in the housing finance markets.  Here's the lead-in to the article:

    New Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch Show Congress Ignored Corruption at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for Years

    Barney Frank and his liberal allies in Congress have more explaining to do.

    According to new documents we uncovered this week, members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues even while liberals in Congress (led by Frank) continued to block attempts to regulate the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs).

    We obtained these documents from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we submitted back on December 4, 2008. This is part of our comprehensive investigation of the government's role in the financial crisis, but our particular concern in this case was the policy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase lending to individuals with poor credit risk, as well as correspondence and records about contacts between FHFA and Fannie and Freddie.

You should read the entire article, and also read and evaluate the original documents.  If this isn't enough evidence to convince you that voting for this current bunch was the wrong thing to do, I don't know what will.

 

"What Were You Thinking?"

Barney "Porker" Frank

    Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass) has been named Porker of the Month for March by Citizens Against Government Waste.  Newsmax reports the following:

Chairman Frank has never been shy about rewarding failure in the past and he generally favors using taxpayer dollars to do it.  He was front and center in support of enactment of TARP, which noticeably had no enforceable strings attached related to executive compensation.  Indeed, he helped promote perks for bank executives.  According to a January 24, 2009 Boston Herald editorial, Chairman Frank made sure "one of the recipients of a $12 million infusion of federal cash was the troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston - a bank that had already been accused of 'unsafe and unsound banking practices.'  Its CEO, Kevin Cohee had also been criticized by regulators for 'excessive' pay that included a Porsche."  Chairman Frank included specific provisions in TARP aimed at bailing out OneUnited and spoke directly to Treasury officials about it.

    This shouldn't be a big surprise to thinking folks who follow the news.  Unless they only follow the mainstream media, that is.  Two-faced Barney is notable only for the extreme partisanship he exhibits in his public dealings.  It's a sad day for Massachusetts when they can't find a better person for the job.

 

"What Were You Thinking?"

Slouching toward Mediocrity

Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, points out the rabble-rousing Mob Mentality involved in the conduct of those most invoolved in creating the current economic situation in today's article at Townhall.com titled "Cheap Political Theater."

 

A couple of excerpts from this illuminating article:

    Death threats to executives at AIG, because of the bonuses they received, are one more sign of the utter degeneration of politics in our time.

    Congressman Barney Frank has threatened to summon these executives before his committee and force them to reveal their home addresses-- which would of course put their wives and children at the mercy of whatever kooks might want to literally take a shot at them.
    Whatever the political or economic issues involved, this is not the way such issues should be resolved in America. We are not yet a banana republic, though that is the direction in which some of our politicians are taking us-- especially those politicians who make a lot of noise about "compassion" and "social justice."

    What makes this all the more painfully ironic is that it is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.

Read the entire article and then ask yourself, "Is this the kind of America I want my children and grandchildren to inherit?"

"What Were You Thinking?"

Does Anger Help?

    Even pundits in the liberal press are beginning to see the problems in the hysteria being kicked up by our president and congress.  Steven Pearlstein, business columnist for the Washington Post, says, "Let's Put Down The Pitchforks."  He writes:

"At the end of the day, the thing to get outraged about is not the $440 million in bonuses at AIG or the $10 million that Citigroup is spending to redesign its shrunken executive suite. These may seem like princely sums, but they are almost insignificant compared with the real outrage: the hundreds of billion dollars of taxpayer funds that have been put at risk to keep AIG and Citi from failing and taking the whole financial system down with them. Let's keep our attention on the elephant rather than the pimples on its behind."

    Exactly.

"What Were You Thinking?"

Monster Response to a Pygmy Problem

    In typical fashion, our elected representatives in Washington are doing all they can to distract attention from their own Profligate, Porcine spending by expressing outrage at a tiny percentage of waste occuring in the boardrooms of private business.  Charles Krauthammer has an article today at Townhall.com describing the hypocrisy:

"A $14 trillion economy hangs by a thread composed of (a) a comically cynical, pitchfork-wielding Congress, (b) a hopelessly understaffed, stumbling Obama administration, and (c) $165 million.  That's $165 million in bonus money handed out to AIG debt manipulators who may be the only ones who know how to defuse the bomb they themselves built. Now, in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It's less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone."

    So where does the blame belong for this particular waste?  Is it with the people who received these bonuses?  They had contracts with their employers before the bailout.  Congress, the Administration, and the Treasury Department had to know (or should have known) about it.  What are we paying these bureaucrats for, if not that?  No, they had to pass the Stimulus bill without time even to read, let alone evaluate, the thing.  So now Congress is pushing through a bill to extract the money legally paid to these people.  First Congress will abrogate legal contracts, what's next?  What other parts of the Constitution will be rendered 'null and void' just because a populist president and a myopic congress, aided and abetted by a puckish press, are able to rile up the citizenry to a fever pitch on such a triviality? 

    Mona Charen has also written an article in which she compares the actions of those in private business, now being bailed out, with those of the politicians that some say pushed the private businesses to take the actions they did.  Her article concludes:

    "... the most sinister move came from Frank. He demanded that Liddy reveal the names of the 73 executives who had received retention bonuses. Liddy said he would do so if he could receive a promise of confidentiality. Frank refused and threatened to subpoena the names. Liddy said if subpoenaed he would obey the law, but he then read to the committee some of the death threats his company had been getting over the past few days. Some threats spoke of hanging the executives with piano wire, others of finding where their kids went to school.

    That is the sort of ugliness and criminality that Frank is willing tacitly to encourage by demanding the names. And for what? The bonuses amounted to just one tenth of 1 percent of the AIG bailout (to say nothing of the stimulus bill and the gargantuan budget bill Congress and the president are hanging around our necks). If politicians want to metaphorically flay away at evil businessmen, well, that's regrettable. But when they cross the line into encouraging the targeting of actual individuals, they are no longer 'honorable gentlemen,' but leaders of a mob."

    Read these articles, then consider the duplicity of these corrupt and contentious idiots we've elected.  And consider the fallen nature of mankind that leads to the mob mentality being appealed to by those we've put in positions of power.  One Tenth of One Percent!  What have we become?

"What Were You Thinking?"