Political Punch

In September of 2003 the Bush administration recommened that a new agency be formed to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One of this new agency's responsibility was to make sure that Fannie and Freddie were "adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios". The Bush administration recognized that Fannie and Freddie were broken. "A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates."

Barney Frank's response was:

"These two entities-Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Thank, again, for the Democrats failure to act that we are yet in another mess. Wasn't Bill Clinton's failure, and the attacks of 9-11 as the results, enough?

Twice Warned, Twice Denied. How the Democrats Endanger us All

Come on. What is Barney Frank's role in this financial mes? Why wasn't he screaming, yelling, and calling press conferences to try to bring attention to these problems?

to Paul,
Unfortunately you missed the point - which doesn't surprise me. Let me say it again - businesses drive the economy not the middle class. Without business, there is no middle class. And. Without the middle class, there is no business. Obamas idea of taxing the very people who put their life savings on the line to start a business and who are now reaping the benefit of that sacrifice is fundamentally un-American. Did you sacrifice your time and money to start a business that now employs 35 tax paying people? I pay 100% of our employees health benefits with no tax incentive so you are right, I could eliminate this benefit to pay obamas higher tax bracket. Why should I have to reduce my ROI when I'm the one who sacrificed everything to get to where I am today financially. Why? What incentive do I have to continue to invest in any business -mine or the stock market - when I know the risk, due to higher taxes - is now not worth it? I challenge you Paul - start your own business, succeed at it, and then have an overzealous politician take the reward away from you. You will understand my position. I assure you, every small business owner feels this way. They generate 80% of the new jobs in this country so there can be a middle class. I already have a huge tax burden - with employee FICA, unemployment, health premiums, FEderal, State, Sales, and many other municipal taxes, my tax burden is around 73%...and obama wants more??? I am disgusted. I may take your advice and sell out. With obamas higher tax burden, it's just not worth the risk anymore. Let obama create high paying jobs for the 35 that work for me now...

Well, I personally know of a couple who were not finacially sound. Shakey jobs for both, and no savings. They got a hughe loan on a brand new house. As soon as they moved in the woman kicked out the guy and moved in her mother,sister and boyfriend,there were 3 kids total also. They never made 1 payment and forecloser followed a year later. Stupid Bank if you ask me. And with the conspiracy of corp's sending American jobs out of country.... tisk,tisk,tisk. Now they are ALL So Suprised as to this hughe problem. Yeah Right!! And we are suppose to be this stupid?

Who cares what Barney Frank says about anything. In 2007 he though Fannie?Freddie would be a good investment in the future. He will be in jail soon anyway and that will be the only housing he should concern himself with. He has done quite enough damage!

Paulson and Cox need to go to jail! All wall street salaries should be taxed at 80% to get back the money they stole from our retirement accounts.

Obama/Biden 08!

The policy itself doesn't bother me. Trying to help more poor people establish a base to pull themselves up through home ownership is a noble goal. Less poor equals less crime, a bigger work force and more tax income. Good for everyone.

What angers me to no end is that Frank and others were apparently told time and time again that the policy wasn't working, and was in fact potentially catastrophic, yet he/they did absolutely nothing. Jail is too good for this swine. Yet not only won't he be tried, I'll be shocked if he isn't re-elected. Pitiful.

Corporate America is in this situation because the mortgages they paid a hefty sum to collect interest on suddenly become virtually worthless as people walked away from their devalued homes. They didn't know the risk because they didn't properly investigate the risk since they were loaning the capital to themselves so they could provide the loans in the first place. Even if they had investigated the risk, they may have decided to take a gamble on earning a huge gain versus a HUGE loss because they knew if a huge loss occurred that the government would use taxpayer money to bail-out the Corporations to save the investments of their constituents.

When the Republicans repealed parts of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1998, allowing investment banks and commercial banks to merge, they removed the checks and balances that having separate commercial and investment banks offered. Before, if a commercial bank wanted to provide a loan, they would go through an investment bank to get the money for the loan. At this point, the investment bank would evaluate the risk of loaning the money to commercial bank. After, investment banks were essentially loaning the money to themselves, since they were also commercial banks. Would you consider a loan to yourself a risky one? Of course not!

Had these banks properly managed or self-regulated their risk, this panic would not have happened. Had the Republicans included some kind of regulation of risk, this would not have happened. Had the separation of commercial and investment banks not been repealed by Republicans, this would not have happened.

If banks of any kind have such a large influence on our economy, the amount of risk they take on should be regulated.

Also, any person of retirement age should have moved their savings from high risk stocks to low risk bonds and money markets. I'm not of retirement age, so this bailout did little to help me now and most likely will leave me with the unimaginable debt that this will create.

Soros?

Wow. What a lovely combination: racism ánd anti-semitism in one thread

okay, i'll say it again and maybe abc won't pull it from the comments too quickly...

SANDLER and SOROS...hummm

it's the same old story - people who can operate the bank and finance systems with no intent of adding any value to our economy, only seeing ways to make money off of a shell-game at someone elses expense. every time the fed. govt. lets these people play this way, the taxpayer ends up footing the bill and our general economy suffers.

SNL had a really funny skit about the Race Card.

Can't you see that both the democrates and republicans, except for a few, are just in it for themselves and to line their own pockets. That's why you don't hear them talking about any real differences and about the differences we used to think were between them. You won't hear any real substance about basic differences in the debate tonight - beacuse the traditional differences are not there any more. They are both just competing to get into the president seat and make many $$$$$$ for themselves and their sponsors. Vote them all out. Ron Paul or Bob Barr for President!

Barney franks is race-baiting and should be ashamed of him self.

You don't need to rely on Barney Frank's take on this. Watch the McCain/Palin commercial about Frannie and Freddie. Ominous music...dark backgrounds...unflattering closeups of two black guys...ending with a frightened white woman.

If there's anything dumber than racism, it's pretending that racism is something other than racism and then yowling about how someone's "played the race card."

The "race card" does get played. Republicans have been dealing it regularly since LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act of 1964...the year that the "solid Democratic South" turned into the "solid Republican South."

jcf: "Democrats pushing for affordable mortgages for everyone is certainly a piece of that pie."

And we have another one misrepresenting what the CRA was and is about.

CRA did not cause this financial crisis. Even Federal Board Chairman Bernanke -- no liberal he -- noted that CRA has helped institutions discover and enter new markets that may have been previously under-served and ignored by insured depositories.

He lauds it.

I agree:

Allow wages to increase with the rate of inflation, and many of the economical woes would have been solved.
However, the inherit pitfall of human nature is to hoard for #1,
close the mind to the needs of others, then point the finger when we all find ourselves in the same boat.

Puppet:

Dow is at 9447.11 right now. And Futures are down another 426 ...

Thanks to 6 years of Reps controlling all three branches of Government; 8 years of Republicans controlling the Executive; 12 years of controlling Congress (14 when you count the recent 2 years of filibusters and vetoes).

When Clinton was President, the Republicans in Congress shut down Government in 1995 and threatened to do so in '98 in order to ram through their Contract On America.

You want to know one of the reasons for shutting down Congress in 95? With the support of John McCain?

Deregulation of Financial Businesses...

What a coward this guy is. There is plenty of blame to go around here. Democrats pushing for affordable mortgages for everyone is certainly a piece of that pie. They deserve a portion of the blame. Deflecting that blame by playing the 'republicans are racist' card is cowardly and disgusting.

BTW, "American business, typically a reliable Republican cheerleader, is decidedly lukewarm about Senator John McCain’s proposal to overhaul the health care system by revamping the tax treatment of health benefits, officials with leading trade groups say.

The officials, with organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, predicted in recent interviews that the McCain plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits from income taxes, would accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million."

@jpv who is the real john mccain? He's the guy who supported Bush's policies 90% of the time, refuses to lose the "War on Terror" which has cost us hundreds of billions and will give the wealthiest Americans which make up 1% of the population HUGE tax cuts while giving the hard working middle class meager tax cuts. The middle class make up more than 50% of this country. Under his new tax proposal, the middle class will have to cut back on spending as debts increase and prices rise on everything from food to heat. For you mccain supporters; think about this for a minute. The middle class are responsible for the pay check of the entire country - not the Govt. If the Govt is hostile to the middle class, the middle class will not be able to spend money on products/services from businesses or on trying to create a new business themselves. The middle class is where money is spent which creates demand which allows businesses to exist in the first place - not business owners who only care about their bottom line.

If the middle class stopped spending its money completely, the economy would collapse. If the middle class did a run on the banks and pulled out all their money, the economy would collapse.

If you as a business decide to fire employees instead of finding other areas to cut back or taking a pay cut yourself from that $250,000 a year you are earning, then you will be hurting the economy in the short term but the economy will survive in the long term. If you punish your own business so that you can continue to pay yourself $250,000 a year, then most likely your products and customer service will reduce in quality and a competitor who's willing to sacrifice more of his profits to beat you will put you out of business and takeover your market, which will hurt the economy in the short term but the economy will survive in the long term.

Don't like it? Well then stop running your business, I'm sure there's someone else out there who is more than happy to take your place.