I think you all will find some interesting names and numbers on the board of directors.
Posted on 04/12/2005 5:18:56 AM PDT by OESY
Why isn't TV news giving the Fannie Mae scandals the same level of coverage that it gave to Enron? Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has accounting errors of about $11 billion. That's more than 19 times larger than Enron's $567 million error. Fannie faces a Justice Department inquiry, an SEC investigation and an Office of Federal Housing Enterprise complaint.
The mess has caused the departure of CEO Franklin Raines and several other top executives. And Fannie Mae stock has dropped roughly 30 percent, from nearly $80 a share to around $55. That's an added loss of more than $20 billion.
...TV news is out to lunch.
It's not like network news has ignored this kind of story in the past. When the Enron scandal hit, the networks were delivering what Peter Jennings called "the Enron story for the day."...
In other words, if Fannie Mae has problems, not only does it hurt the mortgage market, but all of us might have to share the bill.
This analysis of network news non-coverage is the result of a new study by the Media Research Center's Free Market Project....
Just doing a LexisNexis search produced 3,017 hits for "Enron" — 1,385 hits on CNN alone. During that nine-month time period, Enron disclosed that it had overstated its earnings by $567 million since 1997.
A similar LexisNexis search was performed for the term "Fannie Mae" for those same media, from June 1, 2004, to March 1, 2005, again during the time the story was breaking. This search discovered a paltry 37 matches. Through those nine months, Fannie Mae was asked by its regulator to revamp its accounting practices, key executives resigned and about $11 billion in accounting errors were revealed....
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
TV news is out to lunch.
Look under the carpet for more Fannie Mae details.
Because George W. Bush isn't involved. If there were any hint of adminstration involvement it would be front-page news.
Also because the main man in the scandals is a person of color. Wouldn't want to appear racist, you know.
What companies purchased all this mortgage debt paper on Wall Street? Fannie and Freddie sold packages of bundled individual mortgages on Wall Street to companies that held the packages for the short term. Then the packages were re-packaged and re-sold on Wall Street. (Repeat, re-sell, yada, yada, yada) This was a modern version of a pyramid scheme because many of the mortgages when they were re-sold were due for foreclosure. Or about one week away from foreclosure notices being sent out.
Who purchased this mortgage paper? Were they Saudi Princes, or foreign banks owned by the Chinese, Germans, French, Russians or dummy corporations owned by the Italian Mob? Have you talked to a friend in the mortgage biz recently about new trends in foreclsure fraud?
I dunno. Do you? Does anyone even care?
Perhaps you will when you wake up to discover that the "booming" U.S. housing market is beginning to tumble and fall.
Raines-FOB, why isn't Raines in jail. He should join Berger by being lock away.
I think you all will find some interesting names and numbers on the board of directors.
Well .. I remember Rush talking about this because he was making a comparison of all the former Clinton people who were now embroiled in some sort of scandal - or had already been embroiled in the last 5 years.
Fascinating to see a particular name on that list....
Outstanding post!; Thanks.
Yep, that list smells like rotting fish to me...wonder if anyone will do anything about it...
Ping
For historical purpose
It should be noted that Franklin Raines is (or was) a key financial advisor to Barry O.
Got that right.
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