Posted on 05/27/2011 11:05:13 AM PDT by CharlyFord
Nothing improper here, folks. Just move along. You're a homophobe if you think there was anything unseemly going on.
The Fannie Mae executive who hired U.S. Rep. Barney Frank’s former lover was a campaign donor and once worked for the congressman — but denies the Newton Democrat’s recommendation played a role in the controversial 1991 hiring.
There’s nothing sadder than an old queen.
Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefited from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions. Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives.
Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie. Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Critics, however, remain skeptical. ‘It’s absolutely a conflict,’ said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane? “If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane,’ added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. ‘But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.’
A top GOP House aide agreed. ‘C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?’ the aide told FOX News. ‘No media ever takes note?
Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.’
Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress. ‘I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus,” Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. “On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover.’
The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses ‘helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.’ Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.
Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants.
In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis. ‘I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,’ Clinton said recently.”
BACKSTORY Lefty financier Sussman (Maine Cong'woman’s fiancée) dodged US taxes as Virgin Island Resident
Weekly Standard | Oct 15, 2010 | ALANA GOODMAN
FR Posted Oct 16, 2010 by fight_truth_decay
Liberal financier and "philanthropist," S. Donald Sussman, the hedge-fund billionaire has pumped millions into the coffers of Democratic politicians and their political pet projects since 1989. Sussman, the "philanthropist," sits on the board of the non-profit Center for American Progress, the non-profit Democracy Alliance and the dovish non-profit Israel Policy Forum---Sussman's been one of the top contributors to left-leaning 527 non-profit organizations.
Progressive organizations and Democratic pols have taken significant financial contributions from Sussman – and have also vilified offshore tax havens, pointing to them as evidence of corporate greed gone wild.
Sussman's girlfriend, with whom he lives, Rep. Pingree (D-Maine) has been an outspoken critic of this type of tax evasion, and made it one of the cornerstones of her unsuccessful 2002 senate bid against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). (Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Sussman has long kept a behind-the-scenes profile, a recent ethics controversy in Maine has flung him into the center of a complicated dispute over state residency, tax dodging and congressional ethics – the implications of which extend all the way from the rocky coast of southern Maine to the offshore tax haven of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
According to Sussman’s fiancée, Rep Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the philanthropist lives with her and has been a resident of Maine since 2009. But financial records and other documents indicate that Sussman has claimed full-time residency and extensive tax breaks in the U.S. Virgin Islands for years – and may be continuing to claim them.
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USING THE MADOFF MO? The Virgin Islands is a premier offshore money laundering haven.
The court-appointee ID'ing Ponzi Madoff's assets, unearthed a labyrinth of interrelated international funds, institutions and entities of almost unparalleled complexity and breadth....and assets and businesses in 11 places overseas.
No question,tax evasion and money laundering was the name of the game for the wealthiest ----- posing as philanthropists----businessmen who were funneling income to Madoff to avoid US taxes. The crooks take on the image of "philanthropists" ....forming non-profits that contribute to their fave "charities"....the MO for tax evasion and money laundering.
Frank's and Sussman's connections to Israel, and the non-profit Israel Policy Forum, should be rigorously scrutinized----Israel is the only place in the world, one can debark, go to a bank with a suitcase full of cash, and nobody asks where it came from or if taxes were paid on it.
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Can Sussman prove where he spent the TARP bailout? Oh, never mind, the FBI, CIA, GAO, DOJ can find out (/snix).
L/E might consider:
(a) conspiracy to defraud the IRS (stolen money is taxable),
(b) international money laundering,
(c) conspiracy to commit money laundering, and,
(d) aiding and abetting the preparation of false federal/state income tax returns,
(e) evading US banking laws.
Authorities might examine federal documents to verify falsifications (a felony); bogus allocations to non-profits (kickbacks); multiple conspiracies and transfers of funds as part of a money-laundering conspiracy.
Government audits might show off-the-books bank accounts that were accessed solely by insiders, and that government-funds were used in various illegal schemes that might have integrated:
(1) money laundering,
(2) tax evasion (stolen money is taxable),
(3) violations of US banking and currency laws,
(4) conspiracy to commit wire fraud,
(5) commercial bribery in various financial schemes,
(6) establishing secret offshore bank accounts outside the purview of the IRS and US banking laws,
(7) fraudulent and casual accounting practices,
(8) non-existent financial oversight,
(9) Having a hidden financial interest in companies faking business with Jennings,
(10) Putting phantom employees on the payroll (money laundering).
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Other crimes might include forgery, extortion, govt fraud and electronic/postal fraud, falsifying documents, making false statements to government officials, and concealment of facts on government documents.
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Sussman might have been running simultaneous scams using govt funds:
(1) a tax evasion scheme for his Dem buddies;
(2) a money-laundering scam;
(3) a protection racket for lefty Dems,
(4) aiding and abetting tax-exempt lefty Dems to evade US banking laws and the IRS.
(5) hiding govt money offshore, some of which was used for campaign donations (FEC fraud).
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REPORT SUSPECTED GOVT FRAUD HERE
FBI TIP PAGE http://tips.fbi.gov/ (you may remain anonymous)
Report US Postal Fraud:
EMAIL PAGE https://postalinspectors.USPIS.gov
REPORT GOVT FRAUD AND ILLEGAL CONVERSIONS OF GOVT FUNDS
Enforcement@SEC.gov
REPORT SUSPECTED TAX FRAUD HERE
IRS TOLL-FREE 1-800-829-0433----you may remain anonymous.
You needed to fund scores of party hacks and friends? Give 'em big-paying jobs in the Post Office, appoint 'em postmasters around the country, anything whatever it takes.
Chump change, budget dust compared to the billions handed out to sorry hacks getting tons of money from Barney Mae.
WHAT DID OBAMA KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? Then-Congressman Rahm Emanuel (later Ohaha's WH COS--now Chi Mayor) worked to pass a bailout of Fannie and Freddie, cosponsoring the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which also dissolved OFHEO. It moved their regulatory authority to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which took Fannie and Freddie under conservatorship in September 2008. The same act abolished the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) and replaced it with the FHFA.
After Mr. Emanuel was named Obama's Chief of Staff, the White House denied a Chicago Tribune Freedom of Information Act request for information on his Freddie Mac activities: “The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as a director.
A 2003 report by Freddie Mac’s regulator indicated that Freddie Mac executives had informed the board of their intention to misstate the earnings to insure their own bonuses during the time Mr. Emanuel was a director.
But the White House refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune for those board minutes on the grounds that Freddie Mac was a “commercial” entity, even though it was wholly owned by the government at the time the request was made.
The Ohaha White House, under the influence of Rahm Emanuel, (who controlled activities of the US Treasury) is moving a trillion-dollar Treasury slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place. This will allow Fannie and Freddie to continue to purchase more toxic assets from banks, acting as a back-door increase of the TARP without congressional approval.
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Federal regulator OFHEO released a damning report on accounting irregularities at mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae. One critical finding was that in 1998, Fannie misstated expenses in order to meet earnings targets that triggered huge executive bonuses.
An SEC complaint claims Freddie Mac circa 2000-02 misreported profits by $$billions to deceive investors ----the self-same scam used by Fannie Mae that skyrocketed executive bonuses.
That would indicate officials at Fannie and Freddie were colluding in ways to bilk the system for personal enrichment. Fannie and Freddie’s PAC, employees and lobbyists donated $4.8M to Congress since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In Obama’s short time in the Senate, $125,000 was poured into his campaign coffers. That’s second only to Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd’s $165,000 longtime total.
In the last 10 years, Freddie Mac spent almost $95 million for lobbyists; Fannie Mae spent more than $79 million on lobbying. In 2006, a record $3.8 million FEC fine was levied on Freddie Mac for illegal political fundraising for a member of the House committee overseeing the corporation. Democrats argue that slide into the abyss began in 1999, when much of the banking world was deregulated under the leadership of Gramm, leading to the financial derivatives that led to the current credit crisis.
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LAUGHATHON----mayoral candidate Rahm announced at a presser that he had raised "$10 million in just three days." ROTFL. It only takes a nanosecond to wire-transfer funds from offshore accounts.
I heard he has no teeth. I also heard why. Shudder.
In the private sector, many crooked democrat party hacks in Washington like Barney Frank would be in jail for long, long sentances.
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