Posted on 09/25/2008 6:17:09 PM PDT by markomalley
It’s unlikely Democrats engineered the current financial crisis as an "October Surprise" to capture the election, but, since it has happened, they’ll use it to try to capture the election.
Look at the timeline: 2001 — the president’s budget warns about large government sponsored enterprises. 2002 — the president calls for governance standards. 2003—the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight warns of systemic risk. Treasury asks Congress for new regulation. SEC investigations expose Fannie Mae earnings manipulations. 2004 — the president again advises action because of the Fannie Mae risk. Treasury calls for reform. 2005 — Senator John McCain and 3 other Republicans sponsor a bill, defeated by Democrats, to reform the government lending. 2007 — Bush advises, "first things first when it comes to [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]. Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options." 2008 —E very month Bush calls on Congress to act.
Democrat house leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, and Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Chris Dodd have consistently opposed changes.
Why did Democrats consistently scuttle tighter Fannie Mae rules? Follow the money and lust for power — through ACORN, Fannie Mae, greedy banks, and Democrats in power.
Since the middle 1990s, Democrats have been using Fannie Mae and friendly outside groups to build a political base. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the "sounds-good-at-first" group, operating all over the country, whose subsidiaries, according to the Wall Street Journal are scandal-prone and repeatedly get hauled into court for bogus voter registrations. National Review writes that the group has received millions of dollars in government grants to provide low rent housing & loan counseling services to low income individuals, but the money is fungible — dollars given to do "A" liberate other money to do "B." ACORN received grants from friendly Fannie Mae executives and from the $50 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge back when Barak Obama was its CEO. Democratic congressional bigwigs have slipped your tax money to ACORN subsidiaries through earmarks.
Barak Obama, received Fannie Mae money and likely benefited from ACORN voter registrations. Obama represented ACORN to sue Fannie Mae to reduce the requirements for getting mortgages. Lowering those mortgage requirements set the stage for waves of big bank scams that lined the pockets of the banks, bank officials, Fannie Mae executives, and — surprise — Democratic politicians. Weak supervision allowed them to milk Fannie Mae for money and political advantage.
Reckless deregulation didn’t cause this problem; Congressional meddling did. They want power. To get power, they would undermine the institutions that make this country work to make you more dependent on them. It’s audacious for key Democrats to want to take more tax money out of your pocket to prop up mortgages that never should have been made in the first place. They play this dangerous game because they don’t believe the press will call them out. The prize must seem worth it. Only if they wanted power so badly would they risk screwing up society to win it.
So don’t panic. Remember, Wall Street is only a small corner of a broad economy that, despite problems, is still doing okay. The underlying economy is sound. If it weren’t, unemployment would be at 25 percent instead of 5-6 percent. Don’t let political theater stampede you to the wrong decision on Election Day.
This is a fairly nice summation, however, links to the resources would make have made it great.
Thanks for the post.
McCain and his campaign have brilliantly shoved Obama into a corner. Since we know there will be no deal by the debate, no debate, just Obama blinking, alone on the stage, while McCain is filmed in DC helping save the economy.
I might be more prone to believe that if Raines , former CEO of Freddie Mac, were not Obama's "economic" advisor.
Abd how, in the face of al of this red-ink, do we explain Bush’s failure to veto any of the pork-ladden bills presented to him and to chamion the current (and future) budget busting presciption drug program.
As a (Now) nominal Republican, I am disgusted with W and the rest of the good ole boy club.
A curse on all of their houses!
We must hope that the McCain/Palin team will be able to hang the financial crisis around Obama’s neck when they start campaigning again: between Obama’s old outfit ACORN pushing Fannie and Freddie to lend to both deadbeats and decent folk who just didn’t have the income to support the loans, the fat campaign contributions he took form them, and the presence among his economic advisors of Raines and Johnson who built the house of cards and walked off with fat bonuses through crooked accounting that also hid how bad it really was, it’s Obama that should take the hit for this in terms of the campaign.
Of course, the MSM wants to spin it as ‘Wall Street’ being to blame, and McCain is going along on that a bit. That might be shrewd, or it might not.
Now eventually, the house of cards had to collapse. The real question is whether the collapse happening before the election was precipitated by trading by (or at the behest of) the billionaires who are supporting Obama (Soros and Buffet come to mind, but there may be a few others), who figured any financial crisis could be pinned on ‘Wall Street’ and the usual class-envy stuff the demonRATs always use given a big boost.
Someone really should investigate that question.
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