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Media Mum on Barney Frank's Fannie Mae Love Connection
Businessandmedia.org ^ | September 24, 2008 | Jeff Poor

Posted on 08/20/2009 1:50:06 PM PDT by khnyny

Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews launched several vitriolic attacks on the Republican Party on his Sept. 17, 2008, show, suggesting blame for Wall Street problems should be focused in a partisan way. However, he and other media have failed to thoroughly examine the Democratic side of the blame game.

Prominent Democrats ran Fannie Mae, the same government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that donated campaign cash to top Democrats. And one of Fannie Mae’s main defenders in the House – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., a recipient of more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 – was once romantically involved with a Fannie Mae executive.

The media coverage of Frank’s coziness with Fannie Mae and his pro-Fannie Mae stances has been lacking. Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest. Only six of the appearances dealt with the economy in general and two of those appearances, including an April 6, 2008 appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” were about his opposition to a manned mission to Mars.

Frank has argued that family life “should be fair game for campaign discussion,” wrote the Associated Press on Sept. 2. The comment was in reference to GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. “They’re the ones that made an issue of her family,” the Massachusetts Democrat said to the AP.

The news media have covered the relationship in the past, but there have been no mentions since 2005, according to Nexis and despite the collapse of Fannie Mae.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessandmedia.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 111th; bankingcrisis; barneyfrank; business; cultureofcorruption; democratscandals; economy; fanniemae; frank; inbedwithfanniemae; insidejob; itsjustsex; mediablackout; newsblackout; pravdamedia
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The July 3, 1998, Reliable Source column in The Washington Post reported Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae.
1 posted on 08/20/2009 1:50:06 PM PDT by khnyny
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To: khnyny

Fanny Mae: appropriate. Wonder who comes out on top?


2 posted on 08/20/2009 1:52:59 PM PDT by IbJensen (If Caltholic voters were true to their faith there would be no abortion and no President Obama.)
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To: khnyny

Media Mum on Barney Frank’s Fannie Mae Love Connection...

This isn’t really news...its pretty well known that Barney loves Fannies.


3 posted on 08/20/2009 1:53:43 PM PDT by skully (How much evil can an evil monger monger; if an evil monger can monger evil??!!)
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To: khnyny
Barney.....Fanny...Connection?

goes together somehow? (faggot pos)


4 posted on 08/20/2009 1:55:25 PM PDT by Vaquero ("an armed society is a polite society" Robert A. Heinlein)
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To: khnyny
was once romantically involved with a Fannie Mae executive.

I don't think it counts as romance if fecal matter is involved.

5 posted on 08/20/2009 1:55:44 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (Health Care Reform has met the DEATH Panel.)
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To: khnyny

To even ask the question: “Is the media playing favorites” shows how stunningly out of touch the author of this piece is.
This question was answered long ago-the media and the Democrat party are one and the same.


6 posted on 08/20/2009 1:58:15 PM PDT by Larry381 ("in the final instance civilization is always saved by a platoon of soldiers" Oswald Spengler)
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To: khnyny

Barney Frank called Herb Moses his “spouse”.


7 posted on 08/20/2009 2:02:24 PM PDT by reagandemocrat
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To: khnyny
The media coverage of Frank’s coziness with Fannie Mae and his pro-Fannie Mae stances has been lacking.

Something about that sentence just isn't right.

8 posted on 08/20/2009 2:03:58 PM PDT by crusty old prospector
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To: khnyny

In a “NORMAL” world, Barney Frank would be in jail for either the male prostitution out of his house or what he did with Freddie and Fannie. Unfortunately, it is politically incorrect to charge gay politicians with crimes. Toss the bum in jail and throw away the key. He would probably enjoy it.


9 posted on 08/20/2009 2:09:41 PM PDT by kevinm13 (Tim Geithner is a tax cheat. Manmade "Global Warming" is a HOAX!)
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To: Jeff Chandler
I don't think it counts as romance if fecal matter is involved.

There's no accounting for taste.

10 posted on 08/20/2009 2:12:10 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine (Is /sarc really necessary?)
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To: kevinm13

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

Quote in article from 2003 by Barney Frank:

‘’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.’’

YES- BARNEY SHOULD BE IN JAIL.


11 posted on 08/20/2009 2:14:29 PM PDT by khnyny ("Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy")
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To: Pearls Before Swine

“taste” and “fecal matter” should never be used in the same post.


12 posted on 08/20/2009 2:16:48 PM PDT by BJClinton (One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: khnyny; IbJensen; skully; Larry381; reagandemocrat; crusty old prospector; kevinm13; ...
Frank Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest
Friday, October 03, 2008
By Bill Sammon, Washington FOX News, Deputy Managing Editor

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.”

==========================================

Let The Inquisition Start With Barney Frank
Investor's Business Daily | 3/6/09
FR Posted on 03/08/2009 by FreeManN

Congressman Barney Frank says he wants some of those responsible for our current financial meltdown to be prosecuted. And we couldn't agree more. First up in the court dock: Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Even by the extraordinarily loose standards of Congress, it takes some chutzpah for someone such as Frank to suggest that he'll seek prosecutions for those behind the housing and financial crunch and for what he called "a strongly empowered systemic risk regulator." Frank: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's point man in Washington.

For Frank, perhaps more than any single individual in private or public life, is responsible for both the housing market mess and subsequent bank disaster. And no, this isn't partisan hyperbole or historical exaggeration.

But first, a little trip down memory lane. (Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorial.com ...

13 posted on 08/20/2009 2:22:30 PM PDT by Liz (When people fear govt, we have tyranny; when govt fears the people, we have freedom.)
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To: All
February 10, 2006
SENATE POKES FANNIE, OTHERS
http://www.nypost.com/business/59852.htm

(Bloomberg) A Senate investigation into whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's charitable foundations violated lobbying and campaign finance laws will also look at groups run by other U.S. companies, the senator leading the probe said. The Senate Finance Committee "started with Fannie and Freddie; others are now being included," committee Chairman Charles Grassley said yesterday.

While declining to identify the other firms, the Iowa Republican said, "I'm making sure that it doesn't look like we're just after Fannie and Freddie." Grassley declined to disclose the amount of money involved in any questionable campaign giving by the charitable foundations of the two government-chartered mortgage-finance companies. The panel hasn't set a target date for ending the probe, Grassley told reporters.

14 posted on 08/20/2009 2:25:42 PM PDT by Liz (When people fear govt, we have tyranny; when govt fears the people, we have freedom.)
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To: Pearls Before Swine
There's no accounting for taste.

I suppose not.

15 posted on 08/20/2009 2:30:43 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (Health Care Reform has met the DEATH Panel.)
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To: Liz

16 posted on 08/20/2009 2:40:01 PM PDT by khnyny ("Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy")
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To: khnyny

Frank is the poster child for strict TERM LIMITS!

MAY WE ASK - WHY this completely corrupt fruitcake is still dragging about the halls of our government?

Frank is a FRAUD AND A THIEF.

Get this headcase OUT now!


17 posted on 08/20/2009 2:53:34 PM PDT by Altera (Plz see, "Culture of Corruption" by Michelle Malkin)
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To: khnyny

Mortgages are from Fannie......Barney, is from Uranus.


18 posted on 08/20/2009 2:55:08 PM PDT by Michigan Bowhunter (Democrat socialist liberal scumbags.....how did we let this happen!)
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To: AdmSmith; Berosus; bigheadfred; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Fred Nerks; ...
Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest... Frank has argued that family life "should be fair game for campaign discussion," wrote the Associated Press on Sept. 2. The comment was in reference to GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. "They're the ones that made an issue of her family," the Massachusetts Democrat said to the AP. The news media have covered the relationship in the past, but there have been no mentions since 2005, according to Nexis and despite the collapse of Fannie Mae.
In Barney's defense, gargling on another man's hoo-ha isn't really about family.
19 posted on 08/20/2009 5:30:31 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: khnyny

MSM bias - getting hard to ignore.


20 posted on 08/20/2009 7:25:39 PM PDT by GOPJ ("Fishy rumors posters" Check 'em out:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2311664/posts)
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