Posted on 09/17/2008 3:14:24 AM PDT by red flanker
WASHINGTON -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd was spitting nails Tuesday at the Bush administration, blaming its deregulatory philosophy for fostering abuses that have put financial markets in crisis.
"It's important to note that these events that we talked about are not natural disasters. They happened, in my view, because of mismanagement and deregulation that occurred on basically an eight-year-old coffee break by the administration," Dodd said during a press conference in the U.S. Capitol.
The Connecticut senator briefed reporters Tuesday on what steps he is taking to address what he described as a deepening economic crisis that at its core revolves around bad mortgage loans that have hammered the nation's real estate market.
Dodd had scheduled Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart to appear Tuesday before his committee to answer questions about the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
But, that hearing was postponed until Thursday -- superceded by events over the weekend that saw Merrill Lynch acquired by Bank of America, Lehman Brothers file for bankruptcy and American International Group labor to find $75 billion in financing to stay afloat.
"I hold my breath every Friday afternoon around 4:30," Dodd said, referring to telephone calls he has received from Paulson to alert him to the administration's plans to address instabilities in the financial markets.
(Excerpt) Read more at connpost.com ...
An intelligent article by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that blows the cover off Dodd and DEM's CYA attempts can be found here.
There is no doubt Republicans were compromised or influenced, so McCain has to take the lead and denounce people like Oxley (OH) and Senator Bennett (UT). But it's clear that the people who were actually running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the the majority who were financially benefiting were close associates of Dems.
A panelist who was commenting on the current financial situation said that it reminded him of what happened to LTCM (Long Term Capital Management) in 1998. Reading what the Clinton administration and Congress did or did not do after the collapse and bailout of LTCM, an observer gets an idea of how an institution can implode itself and jeopardize the world financial markets.
Leaders in Congress did not just balk at proposals to rein in Fannie and Freddie, they mocked the proposals as unserious and unnecessary,” the two wrote.....In other words “Leave our piggy bank alone”.
Didn’t I see Dodd’s name at the top of the list of people who had received contributions from AIG? Anybody have that list, it was posted last night. IIRC, all the nominees had received contributions, but they paled in comparison to what Dodd had received from AIG.
The GOP better go on the offense here. If they don’t they deserve what they get... but we don’t!
Ironic how Dems protest against preemptive strikes militarily and GOP is generally pro self-defense, but it’s the exact opposite when it comes to political matters. The GOP likes to get beat up by the bully then says “thank you sir, may I have another.”
Yes, you did. IIRC,
Dodd was the number 1 receipient of political contributions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, too.
Nobama was the number 2 receipient of politcal contributions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. - source Fox and Friends.
This whole thing is about the slum lord industry...
Barack Obama was second in line.
McCain needs to be all over this one. He should be calling on Barack Obama to GIVE BACK THE MONEY. He should beat Obama like a rented mule on this issue for the next two weeks.
The Democrats are going to try to get out in front of this issue. McCain has to tie it to their tails, like Mowgli tied the burning branch to Shere Khan's tail at the end of The Jungle Book. The way to do that is to name names.
Start with Dodd.
Start with Obama.
Start with the Dirty Dozen Senators who got the most money, Democrat or Republican, and let the chips fall where they may.
Start with Jim Johnson, who Obama picked to find a VEEP
Start with Penny Pritzker - National Finance Chair for Obama
McCain is the Maverick. Palin is the Barracuda. McCain and Palin will clean up this mess. McCain will name names and take on the crooks in Congress who got us in this jam. Palin will clean out the vipers nest and introduce transparency and competition, like she did in Alaska with the oil contracts.
That is the theme. McCain and Palin need to hammer it home.
Tie it to Rezko. Tie it to Obama’s house.
McCain has to hang this thing like a millstone around Obama’s neck.
This is no time for half measures. The Donks are going to try to get out in front of this. McCain can’t let them.
Let the chips fall where they may.
“If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.” John McCain, May 2006
McPalin is going to debate Θbama next week and that is going to be his biggest chance and audience he'll ever get. The RNC has to keep on hammering for next 50 days. The Dems have the media to spin and confuse the public, so the debate is his best chance.
Dems return to their tried-and-true tactic: We can lie faster than you can tell the truth.
Dodd- I got mine,blank you! Freddie and Fannie are just
dumping ground for Dem operatives!
So Dodd is pissed that his “Housing Reform Act” or whatever the title was, that was sold to the American people as a “help to the embattled homeowner” is now actually being scrutinized for what it really was, a bailout bill for big banks and whomever else wants to feed at the government trough. It’s common knowledge in banking circles and amongst Congressional staffers that the Dodd “reform” bill is known as the “Bank of America Bill”, as they are the ones that wrote it and gave it to Dodd to push, as they stuffed him fat with special mortgage deals from BOA’s takeover of Countrywide.
If anyone is not familiar with the 900 page behemoth “Housing Reform” Bill, it’s job is to shore up (bailout) Fannie and Freddie and the Federal Home Loan Banks and their partners. The partners of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks, are in fact all 8,000 banks scattered around the country.
Dodd is scum.
Economic Hot Seat Atop Bank Panel
New York Times, The (NY) - November 22, 2006
Author: STEPHEN LABATON
Abstract: Lobbyists and lawmakers are questioning whether Sen Christopher J Dodd will become populist champion on issues that broadly affect middle class or does he shrink from controversial issues that offend huge donors as he prepares to take over leadership of Senate Banking Committee; Dodd has shown through 25-year record in Senate that he is adept to going both ways; at various times he has broken with big corporate interests in support of principle; at other times, he has broken ranks with his more liberal party peers to advance causes associated with corporate patrons; how Dodd balances competing interests of corporations and financial institutions with those of investors will define his chairmanship; graphs; photo (M)
As Senator Christopher J. Dodd prepares to take over the leadership of the Senate Banking Committee while also considering a run for the presidency, lobbyists and lawmakers are all asking the same question.
“Does he become a populist champion on issues that broadly affect the middle class” asked Travis B. Plunkett, the legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, “or does he shrink from controversial issues that offend huge donors?”
It is a question facing not only Mr. Dodd , but the Democratic Party more generally as it assumes control of Congress.
In his case, Mr. Dodd has shown through a 25-year record in the Senate that he is adept at going both ways. He has, at various times, broken with big corporate interests in support of a principle. At other times, he has broken ranks with his more liberal party peers to advance causes associated with corporate patrons.
Mr. Dodd takes the gavel at a pivotal moment.
As Enron and WorldCom fade from the news, some of his constituents are seeking to water down the Sarbanes-Oxley Act , passed in 2002 to strengthen the role of corporate gatekeepers in response to a wave of scandals.
The accounting firms have been asking for limits on their legal liability. Large companies are battling against renewed attempts to give shareholders a greater say in corporate affairs and to ward off efforts to curtail high executive pay packages. Hedge funds are resisting calls for greater regulation and transparency.
How Mr. Dodd balances the competing interests of corporations and financial institutions with those of investors will define his chairmanship.
In a recent interview, Mr. Dodd said that he had hoped to be seen as unpredictably independent and willing to listen to both corporate interests and consumers.
Sounding as much like a presidential candidate as a new committee chairman, he said he planned to broaden the agenda of the committee. He proposes to look at issues of national security, including the way the administration reviews foreign investment in vital American companies, and prosperity, by examining everything from affordable housing to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States.
He also laid down some early markers for the new legislative session. He said he was satisfied with Sarbanes-Oxley , which he played a significant role in drafting. He said he had not yet reached the same conclusions as the Bush administration and some Democrats that the law, combined with excessive litigation, had driven companies to issue stock in overseas markets instead of on Wall Street.
“I’m open to listening,” he said. “But if I get a sense that these new proposals are going to weaken transparency and stability and the competence in the system, then I’m going to be resistant.”
A liberal Democrat on many social and foreign policy issues, Mr. Dodd , who is 62 and is the senior senator from Connecticut, has had a reputation for using his skills as a legislative deal maker to benefit many of America’s most powerful corporate interests, who also happen to be from his home state. They include the insurers, accounting firms, hedge funds and military contractors that are responsible for making Connecticut the state with the highest per capita income in the nation.
The companies have returned the support, pouring millions of dollars into campaigns that have repeatedly returned Mr. Dodd to Washington, the last two times beating opponents by margins of greater than two to one. Over the last 20 years, he has received millions of dollars from Wall Street, the insurance industry and the largest accounting firms. But he has also taken on large corporate interests.
Mr. Dodd worked closely with consumer groups to battle the large banks and credit card companies in their ultimately successful attempt to overhaul the bankruptcy system. While Mr. Dodd and his allies failed to block the legislation, they managed to delay its passage by nearly a decade and to water down some of provisions that were especially tough on debtors.
“There was no payoff for opposing all of the bankruptcy amendments and in fact all of the money was on the other side and there was plenty of political cover to vote for them,” recalled Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, a bankruptcy expert who fought the measure. “But Dodd led the push on the other side. He had an abiding interest in the gritty details of the financial instruments that slowly drive money out of the pockets of middle-class families.”
In a more recent fight, Mr. Dodd and the consumer groups have promoted a measure to curtail high credit card fees. At a hearing this year, he said that credit cards increasingly were little more than “pocket-sized predatory loans” and he has proposed legislation that would curtail the ability of the companies to market credit cards to students who are not able to afford debt.
On the other hand, Mr. Dodd was on the opposite side from against consumer groups in the 1990s when he sponsored legislation that made it more difficult for investors’ lawyers to sue corporations. In that fight, he also broke ranks with many Democrats, including President Bill Clinton, who vetoed the legislation but then did nothing to stop Mr. Dodd from marshaling enough votes to override the veto.
More recently, Mr. Dodd and consumer groups were at odds over a plan supported by the insurance industry to extend a federal terrorism insurance program.
More often than not, Senator Dodd is known for being effective.
“He’s been a consumer champion on some issues and opposed to us on some issues,” Mr. Plunkett said. “He is extremely effective, so you always want him on your side. When we see he is going to be in the opposition, we definitely wince.”
More than a week after the election, Mr. Dodd still seemed surprised that the Democrats had recaptured the Senate and was just beginning to figure out in what direction he hoped to take the committee.
Mr. Dodd , who has formed a presidential exploratory committee and will decide early next year whether to enter the race formally, said a candidacy would help get him out of Washington to hear the views of a wider variety of people. “One of the advantages, if I do this, is that I know who I am,” he said. “And I’m not going through some metamorphosis here. This is not a warm-up for something. For me to go around and become someone I’m not would be ridiculous on its face. I wouldn’t be comfortable with it anyway.”
He said he prided himself on not always taking positions that sided with either business or the consumer.
“We spent a lot of time on the credit card issue from a consumer perspective,” he said. “Obviously I’ve got to pay attention to the provider side. I saw an article describing me and that said I wasn’t allergic to business. That’s true.
“I’ve got business interests I’ve got to pay attention to,” he added. “But I also want to make sure that, in the process of doing so, that we recognize there is a consumer at the end of that product.”
He said he wants to always be known for “maintaining independence in terms of approach.”
“I don’t ever want to be a predictable member of that committee,” he said, “to be branded somehow, one way or the other, but to be fair and open and listen to arguments.”
His support of his home state industries is hardly reflexive. Some of the biggest insurers in his state, for instance, have been lobbying hard for legislation that would permit them to be regulated by Washington instead of the states. But Mr. Dodd has not signed on. He said he was not convinced that Washington could do a better job than state commissioners had been doing.
” Dodd has been a question mark on the proposal,” said Frank Keating, the former governor of Oklahoma who is the president of the American Council of Life Insurers. He said the issue of a federal charter for insurers is the single biggest one for the industry. “He has always been very open minded and a fair broker on the issues,” Mr. Keating added. “But he’s also a tough and questioning legislator.”
Mr. Dodd ‘s ascension to the committee chair comes at a moment of transition for the banking panel.
Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, the cerebral senior Democrat of the committee who was the most important lawmaker behind the landmark legislation that is named after him, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, is retiring. So is Mr. Sarbanes’s top adviser, Steven B. Harris, who has been a senior Democratic aide to the committee for 20 years, and is widely credited with stewarding the legislation through Congress.
Mr. Dodd will oversee a committee loaded with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who have also raised millions of dollars and supported the causes of the big banks, Wall Street and the major insurance companies. Some members have begun to publicly question important parts of the Sarbanes-Oxley law.
And the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, has said that he thinks regulators can make adjustments to the law so that it is less burdensome on small business.
Mr. Dodd ‘s own imprint was on that law. Months before Mr. Sarbanes filed the legislation, Mr. Dodd and a Democratic colleague from the committee, Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey (now New Jersey’s governor), outlined their ideas for legislation over lunch, as Mr. Dodd describes it, “on a napkin in a Senate cafeteria.”
“I came away thinking we’ll plant a flag,” Mr. Dodd recalled. Their proposal, to restrict accountants from offering both auditing and consulting work at the same companies, became a cornerstone of the Sarbanes-Oxley law.
Mr. Dodd said Sarbanes-Oxley had gone far to promote better corporate governance and transparency.
“I’ve always felt that the most important thing you have to worry about is investor confidence,” he said. “I have no obligation whatsoever to guarantee that you’re going to make sure that you are going to make money on your investment. But I feel a very strong obligation,” he added, that “you didn’t lose it because the system broke down. That to me is going to be very important when I listen to these arguments.”
Caption: Photo: Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut will become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times)(pg. C1)
Inside the Campaign Chest
Since 1989, financial services firms have been the largest source of campaign contributions for Senator Christopher Dodd .
CORPORATE CONTRIBUTORS, 1989-2006
Deloitte & Touche: $194,970
Greenwich Capital Markets: 182,000
Bear Stearns: 159,650
Citigroup: 157,000
Goldman Sachs: 146,516
United Technologies: 124,550
PricewaterhouseCoopers: 113,850
J.P. Morgan Chase: 108,423
Morgan Stanley: 99,725
American International Group: 97,338
Lehman Brothers: 96,000
Ernst & Young: 86,000
INDUSTRY CONTRIBUTORS, 1989-2006
Securities and investment: $2,187,311
Lawyers/law firms: 1,282,123
Insurance: 1,080,590
Real estate: 799,692
Accountants: 573,403
Commercial banks: 553,719
TV/movies/music: 548,294
Lobbyists: 470,339
Pharmaceuticals/health products: 414,378
Pro-Israel: 396,150
Retired: 275,775
Health professionals: 275,043
(Source by The Center for Responsive Politics)(pg. C5)
A.C.O.R.N.
I appreciate your information. Where can we find sources and documented facts about what you’re stating?
McCain should write a check to every Freddie/Fannie contributor today, reimbursing them for any donations. He should then turn up at the debate with copies of the checks. He can tell Barack that he returned the money, and ask where Obama’s cancelled checks are.
I don't know if I buy it this time having repubs hammering it home. I think the DBM/dems are going to hang for this one, it's so obvious!
OPEN SECRETS: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac invest in Democrats.
Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008
Name / Office / Party-State / Total
1. Dodd, Christopher J / Senate / D-CT / $133,900
2. Kerry, John / Senate / D-MA / $111,000
3. Obama, Barack / Senate / D-IL / $105,849
4. Clinton, Hillary / Senate / D-NY / $75,550
5. Kanjorski, Paul E / House / D-PA / $65,500
6. Bennett, Robert F / Senate / R-UT / $61,499
7. Johnson, Tim / Senate / D-SD / $61,000
...and so on down the line...
Apparently, Barack Obama has moved from the #3 spot to the #2 spot since these figures were released, bumping John Kerry.
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