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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.
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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.)
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.”