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I am making public the letter that I wrote to Senator Grassley (Feb. 23, 2011) regarding circumstances that led to my firing after 2.5 months by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), particularly my writing about mortgage fraud and its roots in mortgage securitization that CBO sought to deny was a problem. I was repeatedly pressured by the CBO Assistant Director, Deborah Lucas… to not write nor discuss issues in the banking sector and mortgage markets that might suggest weakness in these sectors and their consequences on the economy and households... …Issues at the heart of the foreclosure problems pertain to...

Chelsea Clinton is close to signing another deal with NBC, despite criticism of her reporting. Clinton is nearing the end of a 90-day contract as an NBC News special correspondent, where she contributes to the “Making a Difference” segments that air during “Rock Center With Brian Williams.” While her reports have been tepidly received by critics, sparking strong rumors and reports she would not sign again, sources tell us NBC plans to keep her involved with the network.

There’s been no shortage of establishment-minded Republicans and members of Congress to have served in the 1990s that have come out and endorsed Mitt Romney for president, or raised concerns about Newt Gingrich’s candidacy. But perhaps more unexpected has been the emergence of outside-the-Beltway conservatives to bolster Romney’s candidacy in the few weeks before primary voting begins Jan. 3 in Iowa. A surprising group of conservatives have lined up for Mitt Romney – or, at least, against Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who’s zoomed to frontrunner status on the strength of his support from anti-establishment Republicans.

Embattled government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were under fire again Thursday as the House Committee on Financial Services grilled leaders on "lavish" spending and executive pay. This after the government mortgage giants both posted huge losses last quarter and have appealed to the Treasury Department for more funds—almost $14 billion between them—to shore up their shaky balance sheets. With a hefty dose of indignation, Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer railed on Fannie Mae chief Michael Williams about more than $5 million budgeted for "meals and social activities" for employees—wondering why a taxpayer-funded organization in major financial trouble...

Top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Wednesday defended their companies' pay practices which have drawn opposition after it was disclosed the government-controlled firms were paying out nearly $13 million in executive bonuses. Michael Williams, chief executive of Fannie Mae, and Charles Haldeman, Freddie Mac's chief executive, both argued the compensation structures at the mortgage finance firms were warranted to retain and attract qualified staff. A bill to block the pay packages was approved by the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday in a 52-4 vote. The full House must still vote on the measure. A similar bill...

Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received the biggest federal bailout of the financial crisis. And nearly $100 million of those tax dollars went to lucrative pay packages for top executives, filings show. The top five executives at Fannie Mae received $33.3 million in 2009 and 2010, while the top five at Freddie Mac received $28.1 million. And each company has set pay targets of as much as $17 million for its top managers for 2011. That's a total of $95.4 million, which will essentially be coming from taxpayers, who have been keeping the mortgage finance giants alive...

Fannie Mae taps $7.8 billion from Treasury, loss widens Photo 6:42pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fannie Mae, the biggest source of money for U.S. home loans, on Tuesday said it needed a further $7.8 billion in federal aid to stay afloat as a shaky housing market widened its third-quarter loss to $5.1 billion. Fannie Mae also attributed the deeper cash drain to losses on derivatives that are used to hedge the firm's exposure to swings in interest rates and expenses related to home loans made prior to the 2008 financial collapse. In the year-earlier quarter it had a loss of...

Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it lost $4.4 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the July-September quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. This quarter's $6 billion request from taxpayers is the largest since April 2010.

The Obama administration’s efforts to fix the housing crisis may have fallen well short of helping millions of distressed mortgage holders, but they have led to seven-figure paydays for some top executives at troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-sponsored corporations last year met modest performance targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of foreclosure. The executives got the bonuses about two years after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly $170 billion in...

Charles E. "Ed" Haldeman, Jr., has announced his plans to step down as chief executive officer of mortgage giant Freddie Mac sometime in the next year. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Freddie and its counterpart Fannie Mae, announced Wednesday that Haldeman is looking to leave the government-sponsored enterprise some time next year.

There is currently $600 trillion in derivative positions on a global economy of $60 trillion. Not a problem eh? The “cause” is the BANKS lootin and pillaging.­They deliberate­ly helped Greece hide its debt. The “problem ” was the US allowed the banks to defraud the western world. Finance Superstars Talk About the Massive Fraud in Our Economic System Nobel Prize-winn­ing economist Joe Stiglitz stated how reducing transparen­cy and hiding informatio­n was an essential element to the crisis. Stiglitz concluded, “Innovatio­n was regulator and tax arbitrage Wall Street and the banks deliberate­ly added opacity and complexity to confuse clients and consumers....

Talking to "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory on Sunday's NBC Today, co-host Jenna Wolfe asked about President Obama's proposed "Buffet Rule," designed to increases taxes on the rich, which she assumed "will sit well with the American people overall." David Gregory agreed but lamented: "...the President's got to think about what he can do to actually get some agreement with Republicans. And I don't see this getting anywhere." Gregory complained: "If Democrats are supposed to cut entitlements, aren't Republicans going to have to give at all on the idea of tax increases?... But we saw in the debt fight...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is wondering why Fannie Mae agreed to buy 400,000 mortgages from Bank of America and whether its purchase of the risky assets constitutes a "backdoor bailout" of the bank. Issa sent a letter Thursday to Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that regulates Fannie, asking for a justification of the deal, especially in light of the bank's recently announced spate of layoffs. "The transaction appears to have shifted a significant amount of risk from BofA's portfolio to Fannie.

Brian Williams must crave attention. In the latest Republican debate, instead of moderating, he personally debated all the participants. The actual discussion between candidates was more civil and constructive than the endless string of gotcha speeches foisted as questions on the panel by NBC's Williams and his Politico sidekick, John Harris. Question after question was an attempt to put each GOP candidate on the defensive. More accusation and White House talking points passed from the lips of Williams and Harris than legitimate questions looking to determine the ideas of the candidates and how they differed. As a result the debate...

Employees of media giant Comcast have contributed more money to President Obama’s reelection bid than employees from any other organization, according to a new analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics. Comcast employees contributed nearly $80,000 directly to Obama for America and roughly $200,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint account benefitting both the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee, through the first half of 2011 records show. Comcast, the nation’s largest video and internet services provider, is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns broadcast networks NBC and Telemundo among other assets. President...

<p>What is $150 billion really worth? It’s enough to buy each and every NFL franchise about five times. Or it could pay the median household income more than 3 million times over in the United States. It could even pay for 500 days of the war in Afghanistan at $300 million a day.</p>

As efforts to avoid an unprecedented U.S. default entered crunch time Friday, President Obama faced growing tensions with senior congressional Democrats, who are angry at White House concessions to Republicans and at being left out of the talks. With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, Obama and the senior Republican in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, worked toward a plan that could include up to $3 trillion in spending cuts but might leave tax reform for later, congressional aides said. Friday is essentially the start of crunch time. The White House initially...

As Noel Sheppard reported earlier, in the show-opening feature of its coverage of the final round of the US Open golf championship today, NBC--twice--edited out the words "under God" from its clip of school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Clearly many Americans were offended and let NBC know about it. Because later in the broadcast, one of the announcers issued an apology. But the network simply compounded one omission with another. The apology spoke of "a portion of the Pledge" being edited out--but never mentioned that the omitted words were "under God." View video here.

Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners: (VIDEO)

With data showing that the housing market has gone into reverse, another of Obama’s blue ribbon panels is about to report to the president on ways to get the U.S. economy going. Heading up the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is corporate welfare queen GE’s Jeffery Immelt.Expect, then, Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness headed by Immelt to recommend more of the top-down central planning where Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government connive to divide up the jobs pie at the expense of the rest of us, the little guys. The program will kind of be like Obamacare,...

Subprime Scandal: Turns out the true cost of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is double what the White House claims. Yet reforming the failed mortgage giants remains in limbo. In a new report delivered to the House Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office puts the bailout figure at $317 billion — not the $130 billion claimed by the Obama administration, which has vowed to "reform" Fannie and Freddie. And CBO says costs to taxpayers will continue to rise as the housing market weakens. Why low-ball the bleeding from these quasi-governmental agencies? Because the White House doesn't really want...

When the federal government stepped in to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from collapsing in 2008, it stuck the taxpayers with a hefty bill. Since 2008, the federal government has sunk $162.4 billion into these government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) without any form of taxpayer protection. But the true magnitude of the cost this bailout has foisted upon the taxpayer is actually far greater, according to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week. By putting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, the federal government effectively became the owner of both entities. Yet the government’s accounting...

Democrats, watch out. The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction — and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener’s rogue body parts. If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle — a big if — then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981. The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form: Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson,...

Fanniegate: Gamechanger For The GOP? Walter Russell Mead Democrats, watch out.The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction — and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener’s rogue body parts. If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle — a big if — then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981.The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form: Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led...

Yesterday, this column jibed Joe Scarborough & Co. for blacking out, during Morning Joe's first half-hour, coverage of Anthony Weiner's epic news conference of the day before. Today, a defiant Scarborough dismissed the criticism the show received, boasting "we'll talk about what we feel like talking about." When the show opened today, it at first seemed that Scarborough was about to make amends for yesterday's poor news judgment. But Joe's mock contrition was just a set-up for a joke. View video here.

(CNSNews.com) – The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the real cost of the federal government guaranteeing the business of failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is $317 billion -- not the $130 billion normally claimed by the Obama administration. In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for. “Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by...

EXPLOSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DEBT COLLECTOR WHO FOUND OBAMA ALIAS HARRISON J BOUNELL WHO IS RELATED TO MICHELLE OBAMA Barack Obama / Barry Sotero / Harrison J Bounel Blatant Real Estate / Tax Fraud? LONG LEGGED MAC DADDY has even more names. Harrison J Bounell J Harrison Bounell 5046 South Greenwood Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60615 This address where real estate fraud has been committed is owned by Judge Jane L Stuart. Obamanation’s book keeper Esquire Harvey Weinberg cooked the books on this fraudulent Real Estate deal for Obamanation at the tune of about 1.23 million dollars. SS#042-68-4425 Real Estate and Tax...

~ EXCERPT ~ WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage buyer Fannie Mae reported a loss of $8.7 billion for the January-March quarter, and asked for an additional $8.5 billion in federal aid. The new request is more than three times the $2.6 billion in government aid it sought in the final three months of last year. The loss was caused by declining home prices around the country, Fannie Mae said. It said prices declined on average 1.8 percent, leading more homeowners to default on loans that the mortgage giant had guaranteed. The government rescued Fannie Mae and sibling company Freddie Mac in...

The problem with winding down Fannie and Freddie is the GSEs buy about 70% of all mortgages originated in the U.S. and there just isn't enough capital or risk appetite in the private sector to fill the void. "You can't pull that much liquidity out of the mortgage market without crashing it," Muolo says. "If you crash it, home prices will fall by 50% and we'll be in a worse situation than we were three years ago." Given that and the political calendar, Muolo predicts there will be a lot of talk but very little action on Fannie and Freddie...

Mind you, Fannie and Freddie have cost the taxpayers $160 billion in direct subsidies since they were taken over in August 2008. The country would be better off if they shut down today. Housing finance is incredibly simple to get right: Require 20 percent down payments and make sure the borrowers have income of at least 2½ times their monthly nut, and guess what happens? Nothing -- no defaults; no bubble. That's how housing markets work when the government stays out of them, and it's how ours worked for the half century before the feds started twisting the arms of...

There is no pretense of partiality with Meet the Press David Gregory. On last Sunday’s show Gregory attacked Americans with some of the same Orwellian language as Uber-partisan Nancy Pelosi used when she infamously labeled Americans who protested Obamacare by calling them Astro Turf. But Gregory doesn’t directly attack. No he cowardly assaults Americans by proxy through the people’s elected representative House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Gregory’s strategy? Gregory believes if he can badger Rep. Cantor into calling Americans who want the same proof of Barry Hussein Soetoro’s eligibility that 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain showed, a long form...

It's common for companies to indemnify their officers and directors against lawsuits. But what happens when the company gets taken over by the government? Oh, you know.... Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud. The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress. This would be amusing if it wasn't so outrageous. Remember, most of these allegations date...

The Obama administration gave corporate giant General Electric—the parent company of NBC--$24.9 million in grants from the $787-billion economic “stimulus” law President Barack Obama signed in February 2009, according to records posted by the administration at Recovery.gov. Despite getting $24.9 million from U.S. taxpayers, GE decreased its U.S.-based employees by 18,000 in 2009, according to the company’s 2009 annual report. According to Standard & Poor's, GE took in $156 billion in revenue in 2009. GE was the primary recipient of 14 stimulus grants, a spokeswoman for Recovery.gov confirmed to CNSNews.com. These 14 grants provided GE with $24.9 million in tax...

CNN's John King on Wednesday mocked Barack Obama for calling Fox News a "destructive" force in our society while at practically the same time a White House spokesman was saying MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow provide "an invaluable service" to the country. JOHN KING, HOST: "Sometimes you feel sad to be left out of a big debate. This is not one of those sometimes. In an interview with "Rolling Stone," President Obama voiced the opinion that Fox News is a "destructive" force in our society. On the other hand, the left hand in this case, Obama spokesman Bill Burton...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration called for "fundamental change" at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but a long, politically explosive debate lies ahead on the future of the bailed-out mortgage finance giants and U.S. housing policy. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday raised basic questions with housing industry leaders about the U.S. government's long-standing role in subsidizing and supporting the $10.7 trillion housing market. "It is not tenable to leave in place the system we have today," Geithner said at a conference hosted by the Treasury Department almost two years after the government seized Fannie Mae and Freddie...

Talk of shrinking the government's involvement in the mortgage market is growing. Just don't expect action any time soon. A conference Tuesday at the Treasury Department is the first of many steps toward restructuring the nearly $11 trillion mortgage market. So far, rescuing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has cost the government more than $148 billion. That number is expected to grow. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will address the conference but is not expected to offer an exit strategy Tuesday. The administration has said it won't offer its plan until next year. Officials are pledging dramatic changes to...

If you thought it ended with ObamaCare, think again. By “it,” we mean the irresponsible act of Congress to ramrod massive legislation through its chambers with far more regard for incestuous political praise than public service, only to find out, after the fact, that assaults on our Constitution and our individual freedoms were buried in the thousands of pages that this same Congress didn’t have time to read. Bob Beauprez (R) is a former Congressman from Colorado, now political commentator, who can only sum up what he is witnessing in the past 18 months under an Obama, Reid and Pelosi...

The National Academy of Sciences creates virtual blacklists of scientists who dare to disagree with 'the consensus.' While most people understand that governmental entities are politicized, there are some we like to think maintain enough integrity to serve the public good. We hope, for example, that the Centers for Disease Control would be free of politicized determinations for what to do about swine flu. And we hope that the Food and Drug Administration were more concerned about whether a drug were beneficial than about how the cost of that drug might influence new healthcare legislation.One such entity we have relied...

Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market. Increased guarantees for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Government National Mortgage Association and the Veterans administration increased the government's commitments by $512.4 billion alone in the year to...

Remember when the bailout was going to cost $700 million? Yeah, not so much. Reuters: Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market. Of course, Fannie and Freddie went completely untouched in financial reform.

Countrywide probe snares Fannie, Freddie execs By: Jake Sherman July 20, 2010 02:34 PM EDT Employees at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — including top executives — received more than 170 cut rate loans from Countrywide Financial, according to a congressional probe, the latest accusation that the lender tried to curry influence with people in power. The investigation revealed that Fannie Mae employees — including an assistant to the CEO, a government relations lobbyist and a vice president for sales — received 153 favorable loans, while 20 VIP loans were issued to employees at Freddie Mac. Countrywide Financial collapsed in...

With talk of a price on Carbon, (in reality Carbon Dioxide) just what is the scope of this, and when you see, it then becomes patently obvious that this whole so called debate is not about the environment. It’s just about the money, and just how much money is involved. At the proposed $25 per ton, and there are CO2 emissions of 3.25 billion tons just to produce the electrical power we all need to have access to, then that amount comes in at nearly $82 Billion. Electrical power emits one third of all emissions, so now the total comes...

Congressional budget experts say a climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade. The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was the second positive analysis of the bill by a government agency in a month, but is likely to carry more weight than a similar report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The CBO is the entity responsible for providing Congress with nonpartisan analyses of economic and budget issues, and lawmakers rely on it for guidance. The CBO report was immediately hailed by the bill's...

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said after meeting with President Obama and other senators on Tuesday that he is ready to “scale back” the reach of energy legislation to get Republican support. “We believe we have compromised significantly, but we are prepared to compromise further,” he told reporters outside the White House. “If Republicans can step forward, we can find a place of compromise.” Kerry said that in the meeting with nearly two dozen senators of both parties, Obama was “very clear about putting a price on carbon” and curbing greenhouse gases. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Obama made an “effective...

For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion. Two things are clear: Taxpayers don’t want to foot the bill, and Fannie and Freddie, taken over by the government in 2008 to stanch the financial bloodletting, need a major overhaul.

Legislation could include a carbon cap on utility companies. With the gulf oil spill creating political opportunity, Senate Democrats will begin crafting a sweeping energy bill this week that could include a first-ever, though more modest, cap on global-warming pollution. Republicans dismiss such a cap-and-trade system as a new tax on households and business — "cap-and-tax," they call it.

Nearly two years after the American financial system teetered on the verge of collapse, congressional negotiators reached agreement early Friday morning to reconcile competing versions of the biggest overhaul of financial regulations since the Great Depression. A 20-hour marathon by members of a House-Senate conference committee to complete work on toughened financial regulations culminated at 5:39 a.m. Friday in agreements on the two most contentious portions of the financial regulatory overhaul and a host of other provisions. On a party-line vote, the House conferees voted 20-11 to approve the bill; the Senate conferees voted 7-5 to approve.

Unlike Katie Couric on Monday night, on Wednesday evening NBC's Brian Williams didn't hide the bad news for President Obama in the network's latest poll, but Williams and Savannah Guthrie sure seemed to lament the public mood's swing against Obama as Williams attributed it to how Obama “had to touch” the gulf oil leak, “he had to own it and now he's getting tagged with how he's reacting to it.” As if Obama had nothing to do with it, Guthrie agreed he's “had a barrage of bad headlines on some of these very issues of leadership, handling a crisis...” “If...

Here is a video of Obama speaking to Organizing for America about the way that they plan to use the oil spill in the gulf to redo the American economy. Does anyone really believe that Obama is trying in good faith to stop the spill or mitigate the damage it is causing?