This report is instructive: YouTube - Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial and housing crisis; meltdown
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This report is instructive: YouTube - Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial and housing crisis; meltdown
Hello George:
It IS instructive. Thanks for that...
But there's a couple things about it that I'd like to bring to your attention.
You know how the Democrats are in charge today? You know that the Republicans can't get ANY of their stuff passed, because they don't have any POWER.
Well, the REPUBLICANS were in CHARGE of the nation when the meltdown happened, in the same way the Democrats are in charge today. If the Republicans wanted to DO something about Fannie and Freddie THEN, they COULD have. They DIDN'T.
To blame the Democrats for the meltdown, is like blaming the Republicans for the stim.
The NEXT thing to understand is that the breakdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack did NOT cause the worldwide financial panic that is upon is.
It was the packaging of these mortgages into derivatives and credit swaps by Wall Street bankers who sold them to the world and made jillions.
IF the bankers didn't SELL these packages, Fannie and Freddie would have been a snap to bail out if they needed it...
So, it was the deregulated market that Wall Street was dealing in that caused the meltdown. Not the Dems. Not even close to the Dems.
excon
Ex
The Republicans never had the numbers in the Senate . The Dems. Don't at this point either... but all they need to do is peel 3 RINOs like Collins Snowe and Specter to get stuff passed.
The Republicans worked between 2001-2002 with an effective Democrat majority in the Senate (because of the Jeffords betrayal Daschel was the Senate leader ) . Then in 2002 the Republicans got a thin majority in both houses for 4 years.
It is not true that they could've gotten anything they wanted done. Look at how many Bush judiciary selections never got a fair hearing .
In the event you missed Greenspan's comments, this is what I heard from his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on 02/17/2005: "...we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk." Those are fairly plain words from a man who usually spoke circumspectly in public.
Another instructive video: Democrats and Fannie and Freddie
YouTube - Explosive Video, Fannie Mae CEO calling Obama and the Dems the "Family" and "Conscience" of Fannie Mae
Hello again, George:Quote:
Originally Posted by George_1950
I didn't miss them. In fact, I wondered why the REPUBLICANS who were in CHARGE at that time, DIDN'T do something...
Plus, I also noticed that the crisis took a few years to get to the point where Greenspan would make such a warning, being that he's so circumspect... Lo and behold, the REPUBLICANS were in CHARGE of those years too.
Yeah, those terrible Democrats.. Bwa, ha ha ha.
excon
I am just a bit curious:
Political contributions to Barack Obama from Fannie and Freddie: $126,349 in just four years, behind only Chris Dodd, Chair of Senate Banking Committee; how did Obama work his way up the food chain so quickly?
Hello again, George:
Let me see if I can explain it to you once again.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack had only so much capital to lend. If they lent it ALL to sub prime borrowers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack would be broke, and we'd have to cover a few thousand bad mortgages...
We could have done that easily WITHOUT taking the world down.
BUT, Wall Street bankers packaged the loans and sold them to the world. And the world bought them, and bought them, and then bought some more.
It was THAT influx of cash that fueled the housing bubble and that caused it to crash, taking down our economy and the worlds along with it.
I know you're going to stick to the Fanny Mae and Barney Frank stuff, cause that's what the emails are all about.
Maybe the people who keep sending you the emails don't understand international stuff like this. Certainly, the head of your party, the limp one, doesn't.
Besides, Barney Frank is more fun to beat up than the dufus who let this all happen under his watch.
excon
Doesn't Barney Frank look like Mr. McGoo?Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
Funny thing, ex: I don't hear anything about Freddie and Fannie having a lack of money to lend, at least not in these videos. As for Greespan, what part of "...total financial system.." did you not understand?
With their constituency being exposed, Democrats attack the messenger:
YouTube - Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis
You know the Dems are always too busy taking credit for their good intentions to ever accept responsibility for their failures. What I want to know at them moment is when are we going to see the change of tone in Washington that Obama promised? Now they're busy trying to find a ten word slogan for a billboard in Rush's home town. The lucky winner will get a free T-shirt.
Is that the kind of bull excrement you people elected them for? Next time maybe you can vote for some adults to run the country...
Hello again, Steve:
I wish I could think up some funny name for Limprod, but nothing comes to mind.
excon
This quote is from 2005, and much like a weather report to the ill-fated Titanic:
“To place this in some perspective, all Treasury debt held by the public totals $4.4 trillion, and all corporate bonds outstanding total $2.9 trillion. Fannie's and Freddie's liabilities--including both their MBS guarantees and their borrowings--come in right in the middle, at $3.7 trillion. Thus, only two companies--both of which are GSEs and implicitly backed by the U.S. government--account for more default risk than all other U.S. corporations combined. The risks for the taxpayers are obvious, but as many commentators have also pointed out, risk of this size, if concentrated in only two companies, poses a danger to the U.S. economic system as a whole--a danger known as systemic risk…" http://www.aei.org/publications/pubI...pub_detail.asp (2005)
“In February 2005, the House Financial Services Committee heard testimony from Chairman Greenspan on the condition of the economy. After his prepared testimony, in response to a question about the GSEs' portfolios, Greenspan noted, "We have found no reasonable basis for that portfolio above very minimum needs." He then proposed "a $100 billion, $200 billion--whatever the number might turn out to be--limit on the size of the aggregate portfolios of those institutions--and the reason I say that is there are certain purposes which I can see in the holding of mortgages which might be helpful in a number of different areas. But $900 billion for Fannie and somewhat less, obviously, for Freddie, I don't see the purpose of it." Greenspan then articulated his reasons for limiting the GSEs' portfolios: "If [Fannie and Freddie] continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road." He added, "Enabling these institutions to increase in size--and they will, once the crisis, in their judgment, passes--we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."[2]” ibid.
I apologize if I have said Greenspan ever recanted his capitalist philosophy; I know some have, but don't believe I have. His remarks seem to be uttered in frustration over what Congress was doing in the face of reasonable questions about intended and unintended consequences.
With politicians it has always been attack, attack, attack to take the heat off them. This is just another example of the Cinton machine using this sort of strategy to take the heat off them and their failures. Now, EC, you still insist on making false accusations. This whole mess can be traced to Jimmy Carter and his plans to force the banks to offer loans to people who had little chance of ever repaying these loans. It was further pushed over the brink by your beloved Bill ( I didn't inhale) Clinton and his inept Janet Reno further forcing the banking industry to lend money to the poor for houses they had no hope of ever making the payments on. Then you have the ranking member of the banking committee that Barnie Frank dope that has taken tons of money from Freddie and Fannie over the years and has used his power to protect them. While there is no one in congress that has done their job protecting the USA over this mess. The only thing we can do as a country is stop throwing our children's inheritance down the toilet and start getting the likes of Reid, Pelosi, and every other member of congress out and replace then with honest people that are genuinely concerned with the welfare of the country in stead of their own pockets.
The fox is in charge of the hen house. I like a Chris Shays quote: " I am new to this committee and I was absolutely shocked when we looked at Enron and WorldCom. The board of directors did not do their job. The management did not do its job. The employees did not speak out. The lawyers in the firm were facilitators. The rating agencies did not do their job. It scared the hell out of me, frankly.
We passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was a very tough response to that. And then I realized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not even come under it. They were not under the 1934 Act. They were not under the 1933 Act. They play by their own rules, and I am tempted to ask how many people in this room are on the payroll of Fannie Mae, because what they do is they basically hire every lobbyist they can possibly hire. They hire some people to lobby and they hire some people not to lobby so that the opposition cannot hire them.
Fannie Mae has manipulated, in my judgment, OFHEO for years. For OFHEO to finally come out with a report as strong as it is tells me that has got to be the minimum, not the maximum. I congratulate OFHEO for finally stepping up to the plate and not being manipulated by the very organization they are supposed to regulate.
I hear these arguments that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are looking out for the interests of the homeowners, and they score worse in helping minorities than the private sector banks under the 1934 Act and the 1933 Act.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are very generous to members of Congress and very generous to the organizations of caucuses in Congress. They do not have to disclose what they do. They do not have to play by the same rules. They are going to crash if this Congress does not wake up and do something about it.
I am absolutely shocked at the extraordinary tolerance that has taken place in this Congress. This is just the beginning of the story. What did OFHEO say? They said they have accounting methods and practices that did not comply with generally accepted accounting practices, employed an improper cookie jar reserve in its accounting system, deferred expenses to meet compensation targets, did not have proper corporate governance controls in place. We need to wake up and the sooner we do the better it will be for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all their investors, and the better it will be for our government.
The OFHEO Report: Allegations of Accounting and Management Failure at Fannie Mae
I'm sure you'll think of something... else.Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
Fannie and Freddie are GSEs. The bankers do what bankers, or what the average person would do, try to maximize profit while reducing risk. These GSEs had federal backing - that is taxpayor backing. If these did not have taxpayor backing it would have increased there risk and most likely would not have been very attractive to bankers in the first place.
But it was Government INVOLVEMENT that set up the conditions. Yes both GOP and DEMS.
And it is the GOP, under Bush, and the DEMs under Obama that are using taxpayor money of this, the next, and probably the next generation to bailout these banks and companies like GM ,that are not profitable enough to stay in business on their own.
G&P
NEW YORK (Fortune) March 5, 2009:
"Officials shouldn't reveal which Wall Street firms pocketed billions of dollars in the government's bailout of AIG, a top Federal Reserve official said...."
"Firms that did business with the troubled insurer did so "expecting confidentiality," Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn told the Senate Banking Committee in testimony Thursday....
"'Public confidence in what we're doing is at stake, and the public right now is deeply deeply troubled,' said committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn. 'I understand the legal arguments you've given me, but that kind of answer undermines public trust.'" Fed wants to keep AIG secrets - Mar. 5, 2009
"...It also was revealed over the weekend that American International Group Inc. used more than $90 billion in federal aid to pay out foreign and domestic banks, some of whom had received their own multibillion-dollar U.S. government bailouts.
"Some of the biggest recipients of the AIG money were Goldman Sachs at $12.9 billion, and three European banks -- France's Societe Generale at $11.9 billion, Germany's Deutsche Bank at $11.8 billion, and Britain's Barclays PLC at $8.5 billion. Merrill Lynch, which also is undergoing federal scrutiny of its bonus plans, received $6.8 billion as of Dec. 31.
"The money went to banks to cover their losses on complex mortgage investments, as well as for collateral needed for other transactions...
"Frank said he was disgusted, asserting that "these bonuses are going to people who screwed this thing up enormously."
"Maybe it's time to fire some people," he said. "We can't keep them from getting bonuses but we can keep them from having their jobs. ... In high school, they wouldn't have gotten retention (bonuses), they would have gotten detention."
Frank assails bonuses paid to executives at AIG - Yahoo! Finance
At the end of the day, the American taxpayers - born and unborn - saddled with the cost of the welfare state.
Hello George:Quote:
Originally Posted by George_1950
You had it right, until the end...
The ones who saddled us are the Wall Street looters who RIPPED US off. I don't know why you don't look that direction... Oh, yes I do - they're your buddies. They were the Bush buddies too. He called his constituency, "the haves and the have MORES".
Well, they got MORE, all right, and they got it from YOU and ME.
excon
Bwe he he:
"In fact, it was a law approved by Congress in 2000 that allowed companies to place tens of trillions of dollars of these risky credit default swap bets.
After the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a giant hedge fund that pioneered the use of derivatives, the Fed engineered a rescue to prevent the unwinding of risky bets from spreading to the larger financial system. That brought calls for tighter regulation of derivatives, including a push for greater derivatives regulation at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, led by a former Wall Street attorney named Brooksley Born.
But strong opposition to the proposal from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and senior Clinton administration officials sank the idea. On Dec. 21, 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which further eased restrictions on derivatives like credit default swaps."
Congress played major role in AIG mess - Economy in Turmoil- msnbc.com
Further proof that responsibility for the meltdown began long before Bush... and now the guy is tapped for no. 2 at Treasury. Comforting isn't it?
That isn't the only concern about Wolin, either.Quote:
Hmmm. This isn’t exactly confidence inspiring.
Tim Geithner’s new nominee for number two at the Treasury Department, Neal Wolin, played a key role in drafting legislation in the late 1990s deregulating the banking system, a former Treasury Department official confirms to us.
The law that Wolin helped draft has been blamed by some critics, many of them Democrats, for easing up regulatory pressure on huge financial institutions, tangentially helping create today’s mess — and his role drafting it could come under questioning at his upcoming confirmation hearings.
Our reporter, Ryan Derousseau, came across Wolin’s role in researching our big profile of Wolin at WhoRunsGov.com. Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, confirmed that as Treasury’s general counsel at the time, Wolin “provided the technical and legal drafting” for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
As Ryan writes, the Act hasn’t been directly blamed for today’s meltdown. But it did pave the way for the birth of huge financial companies like Citigroup that were deemed “too big to fail” when their mortgage bets went belly-up and the credit market evaporated. The government, of course, had to bail out these institutions with billions in taxpayer dollars.
Wolin — who was picked after several other candidates passed on the slot — did the legal work under then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who is now Obama’s head of the National Economic Council. The difference here is that Summers’ post, unlike Wolin’s, is a non-confirmable one, so he hasn’t been pressed publicly on Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The question now is whether Wolin will come under sharp questioning over his role in creating it.
All right Obamanoids, spin this guy. Maybe you can give the Dems some pointers in defending his work on Gramm-Leach-Bliley during his confirmation hearings, since that is what they claimed was responsible for the meltdown.Quote:
President Barack Obama on Wednesday named a politically connected top executive of a financial services company that’s seeking federal bailout money to be his chief legal counsel on the economy, a move raising ethical concerns with watchdog organizations and casting a shadow on Obama’s campaign theme of change.
In a statement on Wednesday morning, Obama said he appointed Neal Wolin, division president of The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. to become his deputy White House counsel for economic affairs. That makes Wolin the top legal adviser on economic issues.
The Hartford in mid-November purchased a Sanford, Fla. thrift — Federal Trust Bank — a move that allowed it to seek as much as $3.4 billion in Wall Street bailout money. On Nov. 14, it applied to become a thrift holding company entitled to between $1.1 billion and $3.4 billion in funds under the much-maligned Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
Again, for all you folks who think Bush broke it...
Your Treasury chief is admitting that HE didn't do enough to prevent a meltdown. But go ahead, blame Bush some more.Quote:
As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short
Before Timothy Geithner became Treasury chief, he regulated major U.S. banks. Now he says: "We're having a major financial crisis in part because of failures of supervision."... Yet as Geithner and the New York Fed worked to solve narrow mechanical issues in the derivatives market, they missed clear signs of a catastrophe in the making. When the housing market collapsed, derivatives stoked the fires that ignited inside some of the biggest banking companies. The firms' failure to assess an array of risks they were taking has emerged as a key element in the multitrillion-dollar meltdown of the global financial system.
Although Geithner repeatedly raised concerns about the failure of banks to understand their risks, including those taken through derivatives, he and the Federal Reserve system did not act with enough force to blunt the troubles that ensued. That was largely because he and other regulators relied too much on assurances from senior banking executives that their firms were safe and sound, according to interviews and a review of documents by The Washington Post and the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica.
A confidential review ordered by Geithner in 2006 found that banking companies could not properly assess their exposure to a severe economic downturn and were relying on the "intuition" of banking executives rather than hard quantitative analysis, according to interviews with Fed officials and a little-noticed audit by the Government Accountability Office. The Fed did not use key enforcement tools until later, after the credit crisis erupted, according to its records and interviews.
Hello Steve:Quote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT BUSH DID IT.
Ok, Geitner was working for Bush. If Bush didn't like what he was doing, he could have fired him. But, he didn't...
Yup, the dufus is responsible for the financial meltdown, just like he's responsible for the legal meldtown at Justice, cause of the jerk he put in there.
excon
Yesterday it was announced that the accounting rules called Mark to Market ;that were introduced into the finance industry in 2007 ,have been relaxed. Not being an accountant ;I am not sure of the total impact. Economic experts I listen to have been asking for the change for months and yesterday Wall Street reacted favorable to the news. There was also a bipartisan support for the change in Congress.
I'll grant that the buck stopped with Bush, always have, but these Dems that have feigned all that outrage at Bush knew, just like Geithner knew. At least Geithner admits he didn’t do enough, while the Democrat morons in Congress that swore everything was OK at Fannie and Freddie, were apoplectic at the thought of more oversight of the two, demanded that banks loan money to people who weren’t credit worthy and complained that no one warned them even though Bush did don’t have the backbone to do the same.Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
The buck obviously didn't stop anywhere near Barney Frank.
Quote:
WFXT-TV: It all started with a question: "How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?"
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and a conservative Harvard law student debated over how Frank should have handled his role as the House Chairman of the Financial Services Committee. Frank was at Harvard University for a speech at the Kennedy School of Government.
Frank said the student wasn't backing up his claims, invoking some laughter from the crowd, and the student told Frank he wasn't answering his question.
Speaking of Barney Frank . He and Rep. Anthony Weiner (I won't go there... but you can't make it up ) are asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to AGAIN relax tightened standards for mortgages .Together they wrote a letter to the CEO's of Freddie and Fannie, warning them their lending restrictions are too harsh . They are concerned that condos are not being sold because of tighter lending rules.
If I didn't know better I'd swear they want to reinflate the housing bubble.
Are you kidding me?
Sad but true according to the WSJ
Opinion NewsReel - WSJ.com
Hello again:
Those wascally Democwats! Darn them!
excon
I love this from the letter:
What's the point in being cautious? Duh, I don't know, maybe to prevent another freakin' meltdown?Quote:
"While the underlying goal may be to reduce taxpayer exposure relating to the current conservatorship of the GSEs [government sponsored entities], such a goal would not have such an effect if it merely results in a shifting of loans from the GSEs to the FHA." Tougher lending standards will merely shift market share from one government program to another, so what's the point in being cautious?"
My first credit trainer used to say that the best loan was the one he DIDN'T make.
He was saying that loan standards are the key to being repaid and keeping business happily chugging along.
To throw caution to the wind and not require tough lending standards is to essentially say "take my money, don't bother paying it back".
That letter is written in a fool's paradise.
Elliot
If only more people realized that. Problem is I don't think a lot of Democrats give a rip about keeping business chugging happily along.Quote:
Originally Posted by ETWolverine
So you agree with tighter banking regulations Elliot?
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