Ann Coulter: INVESTIGATE THIS! [financial crisis, Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]

www.anncoulter.com ^ | January 5, 2011 | Ann Coulter

[RonDog]

INVESTIGATE THIS!
by Ann Coulter
January 5, 2011

The Republicans are back in charge in the House of Representatives this week, and not a moment too soon!

Forget "stimulus" bills and "shovel-ready" bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they're teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years.

As even Obama's treasury secretary admitted in congressional hearings, "Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system." And if it's something Tim Geithner noticed, it's probably something that's fairly obvious.

Goo-goo liberals with federal titles pressured banks into making absurd loans to high-risk borrowers -- demanding, for example, that the banks accept unemployment benefits as collateral. Then Fannie repackaged the bad loans as "prime mortgages" and sold them to banks, thus poisoning the entire financial market with hidden bad loans.

Believe it or not, the loans went belly up, banks went under, and the Democrats used taxpayer money to bail out their friends on Wall Street.

So far, Fannie and Freddie's default on loans that should never have been made has cost the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars. Some estimates say the final cost to the taxpayer will be more than $1 trillion. To put that number in perspective, for a trillion dollars, President Obama could pass another stupid, useless stimulus package that doesn't create a single real job.

Obama's own Federal Housing Finance Agency reported recently that by 2014, Freddie and Fannie will cost taxpayers between $221 billion to $363 billion.

Over and over again, Republicans tried to rein in the politically correct policies being foisted on mortgage lenders by Fannie Mae, only to be met by a Praetorian Guard of Democrats howling that Republicans hated the poor.

In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.

In the House, Barney Frank angrily proclaimed that Fannie Mae was "just fine."

Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., accused Republicans of going on a "witch hunt" against Fannie Mae and attempting a "political lynching of Franklin Raines" (which, in a game of "bad metaphor Scrabble" would have been a double word score).

Fannie was pressuring banks to write mortgages with no money down and no proof of income. What could go wrong?

In 2004, Bush's White House Chief Economist Gregory Mankiw warned that Fannie was creating "systemic risk for our financial system." In response, Barney Frank went to a champagne brunch with his partner "just because."

Democrats saw nothing of concern in the Fannie debacle. Bad mortgages don't contain sodium, do they? They don't engage in "hate speech." And they don't emit carbon dioxide. There was nothing to catch a Democrat's eye.

In 2005, when the housing bubble burst, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a bill allowing Fannie Mae to buy up even more schlock mortgages, apparently reasoning that if owning some toxic mortgages is bad, owning lots of them must be better!

CLICK HERE to read the REST of Ann's wonderful column this week

[RonDog]

Better LATE, than NEVER, here's Ann!

[RonDog]

FR has been acting up lately, but it’s up now...

[Seaplaner]

Oh, and Ann starts the new year with another great article, n'est ce pas?

...Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a bill allowing Fannie Mae to buy up even more schlock mortgages, apparently reasoning that if owning some toxic mortgages is bad, owning lots of them must be better!

All Dems believe in the alchemy that for every dollar you borrow to give to those who didn't work for it, you get two (or three) dollars back into the economy.

I talk to Dems all the time, and they repeat this over, and over. They preface their fools' mantra with... "It's been proven...".

I haven't met a Dem that doesn't believe this.

.

[goldstategop]

Democrat corruption never gets reported in the MSM. They are on the good side of the angels and what always counts anyway is their good intentions!

[moodyskeptic]

Ann’s on a cogent roll these days!

[FlyVet]

That sounds like Pelosi's reasoning that, for every dollar spent on unemployment compensation, something like $1.70 is generated in the economy.

Therefore, everyone should quit their job, and go on unemployment, and our national debt will disappear. Right?

[spyone]

Tens of billions? Try hundreds of billions Anne.

[Rummyfan]

[Rummyfan]

He accused Republican opponents of his suicidal bill of being against affordable housing. (And that is a specific example of how liberals love the poor so much, they promoted policies to create millions more of them.)

LOL! Way to go Ann!

[RonDog]

:o)

[Vehmgericht]

Why isn’t the name Alberto Ramirez a household name? He is the $14,000 a year strawberry picker who bought a $720,000 home. http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/Bakersfieldbubble/8815/ Was this “affordable housing?”

[Liz]

<><><> Fannie/Freddie are the key mechanisms of the criminal enterprise that is the thieving Democrat party, and its minions. <><><>

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

REFERENCE---MICHELE MALKIN Fannie Mae serves as an industrial-sized Dem patronage factory -- sharing profits with political allies, spreading taxpayer funds to voting blocs----like ethnic groups-----and doling out jobs to left-wing academics, Washington has-beens and back-scratching buddies. Obama insider Fannie Mae exec Jim Johnson got sweetheart loans from shady subprime Countrywide. Pols raked in six-figure salaries as F/F engaged in Enron-style accounting, plunged into debt, and helped usher in the subprime housing meltdown through cockamamie lending practices.

Bill Clinton appointed Franklin Raines, Daley and Rahm Emanuel just as the quasi-governmental F/M engaged in rampant book-cooking so that F/M insider could help themselves to massive bonuses. The Chi/Tribune exposed how Emanuel's "profitable stint" was low-show w/ no woek involved. Emanuel was not even assigned to committees, according to company proxy statements.

Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other insiders qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, public records indicate. W/ Wall Street Emanuel there, accounting tricks were used to mislead shareholders about outsize profits F/M reaped from risky investments. The goal was to cook the books to keep fraudulent earnings on the books, to make Freddie Mac look profitable on paper-----AND to fraudulently obtain humongous annual bonuses for political insiders.

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

The Government filed suit against F/M head Franklin Raines when the depth of the F/M accounting scandal became clear. READ IT HERE http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/

The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner."

These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the mis-stated Fannie Mae profits. (Soon going to trial.)

[Liz]

OBAMA COVERUP Freddie Mac records exempt from FOIA
Sunlight Foundation | 03/26/2009 | Bill Allison
FR Posted 03/27/2009 by BuckeyeTexan

Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune report that, while researching what went at Freddie Mac during the period White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel served on the government-sponsored enterprise’s board of directors, they were unable to get minutes of board meetings and other information.

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. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were “commercial information” exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Freddie Mac executives cooked the books, mismanaged the firm, and ultimately drove it into the ground, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The “commercial information” exemption is reserved for private companies–Freddie Mac is by no means a private company anymore.

TWO-FACED OBAMA Obama "said" in the FOIA memo, “The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”

Obama added later that “In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.”

[AFreeBird]

Yea, well, globull warming has been proven too. The “consensus” says so.

[NTHockey]

The Democratic Party is a criminal enterprise, engaged in criminal activities; to wit, bribery, voter fraud, money laundering, soliciting and accepting illegal campaign contributions, making false statements regarding campaign funding, etc.

They need to be prosecuted under the RICO Act.

BTW, I’m hoping that next President Sarah Palin has a choice spot in her cabinet for Ann Coulter. The confirmation hearings alone would be worth it.

[RonDog]

BTW, I’m hoping that next President Sarah Palin has a choice spot in her cabinet for Ann Coulter.

The confirmation hearings alone would be worth it.

That works for me!

See also, from HandOfSarah.com:

[Rearden]

Why is it that conservative women are so damned attractive and liberal women not so much?

[Rennes Templar]

“Why is it that conservative women are so damned attractive and liberal women not so much?”

For the same reason that patients in an institution for the mentally ill are not too attractive.

[jellybean]

Ann had me literally ROTFLOL with this zinger:

Have you ever noticed that whenever there's a major calamity in this country, the name "Jamie Gorelick" always pops up? I think I'll pull some articles about the Great Chicago Fire from Nexis to see if there was a "Gorelick" living on Catherine O'Leary's block.
~Ann Coulter

Let me know if you'd like to be added to the Ann Coulter ping list.

[Rummyfan]

Their internal ugliness is reflected on the outside? With respect to liberal women I mean.....