Free Republic

WASHINGTON — On a trip to Ireland in 1998, Speaker Newt Gingrich researched his Irish roots, discussed the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland and entertained speculation about his presidential ambitions. He even donned work gloves and blue jeans to help build a home in Belfast for a good-will project. Two of the sponsors for part of the Ireland trip were frequent partners of Mr. Gingrich: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — the government-backed housing industry giants that Mr. Gingrich has denounced as he fights to stay in contention against Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries.

The Bush Admin and Senator McCain warned repeatedly about Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and what thus became the 2008 financial crisis -- starting in 2002 (and actually even earlier -- in the Clinton and Carter White Houses. Democrats resisted and kept to their party line, extending loans to people who couldn't afford them -- just like you would expect of socialists.

Chris Arnold at National Public Radio (NRP) posted this story today: “Freddie Mac Betting Against Struggling Homeowners.” The article quotes Chris Mayer from Columbia University, one of the authors of the Boyce, Hubbard and Mayer (MHM) streamlined mortgage refi plan. Streamlined mortgage refis come at a cost to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, pension funds and foreign investors who trusted the U.S. to play be the rules. I don’t really care if the benefits outweigh the costs since I am opposed to massive government intervention into the free market. It never works as expected and usually generates unintended consequences. Why isn’t...

Top Romney advisers lobbied for Freddie Mac 11:22 AM 01/25/2012 Mitt Romney’s campaign is attacking Newt Gingrich as an “influence peddler.” But it turns out that some of Romney’s closest advisers (or the firms they lobbied for) were paid hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of dollars on behalf of failed mortgage giant Freddie Mac. The Romney campaign did not respond to requests for comment. According to the AP, former Rep. Susan Molinari — a top Romney surrogate and adviser (watch her attacking Gingrich in this video) — was one of the former GOP lawmakers paid quite handsomely to...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already cost US taxpayers over $200 billion. If Obama gets his way on mortgage writedowns, the GSEs estimate it would take another $100 billion. Since such estimates are always overly-optimistic by a factor of 3 to 10, I estimate the cost to taxpayers would be $300 billion minimum. Please consider Fannie, Freddie writedowns too costly: regulator The regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told lawmakers that forcing the two mortgage firms to write down loan principal would require more than $100 billion in fresh taxpayer funds. In a letter sent on Friday to...

Document Shows No Lobbying By Former Speaker ATLANTA - The Gingrich Group, LLC today announced it is releasing a contract written by Freddie Mac for consulting services it contracted with the organization. “Subject to a conversation between our counsel and Freddie Mac, we have received permission to release the attached contract,” said Nancy Desmond, Chairman and CEO of the Gingrich Group. “As noted under the scope of work section on Page 14, the contract was solely for consulting purposes and not lobbying. “Freddie Mac and The Gingrich Group have agreed that this release is limited to the contract alone and...

I understand why he'd want to hit Newt hard on Freddie in Florida, which has taken a beating from the housing downturn. What I don't understand is what he'll say when Newt reminds the world tonight that Mitt put more than $250,000 in mutual funds that invested in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, among other government entities. Romney will come prepared with some sort of spin, but I think details are almost meaningless to most voters with tu quoques like this, especially with a candidate like Mitt who’s already perceived as two-faced. (Why is a guy who’s famously worth nine...

Senator Moura goes on to question the logic behind turning down homeowners who want to repay their loans under revised terms, but are denied and foreclosed on. “Fannie and/or Freddie take an enormous loss up-front and elect to do so.” For her, the alarms went off when Freddie Mac recently asked Congress for $124 Billion dollars. Moura says, “I believe they are intentionally creating these huge losses in mortgage defaults so they can justify on paper their requests for hundreds of billions in taxpayer money. The longer they take to review modification applications, the further behind the homeowners end up,...

<p>This seems like a really bad idea to me. Talk about crony capitalism. Individual buyers will be shut out from buying these properties.</p>

This seems like a really bad idea to me. Talk about crony capitalism. Individual buyers will be shut out from buting these properties.

Unemployed homeowners will be allowed to suspend or reduce mortgage payments for as long as a year under a new policy announced by mortgage finance firm Freddie Mac on Friday. The new rules take effect on Feb. 1. Freddie Mac will give mortgage servicers the authority to provide six months of forbearance to unemployed borrowers without prior approval, and the agency can approve an additional six months of forbearance after that. Homeowners are still responsible for paying off their full mortgage plus interest after the forbearance period ends. According to a Freddie Mac news release, unemployed borrowers can now avoid...

As the results of the Iowa caucus dribbled in, Americans got to see how the GOP candidates greeted victory and defeat. Top vote-getter Mitt Romney was gracious toward Rick Santorum, who came in second by eight thin votes, but uninspiring as he pledged to get America back to work. Santorum pronounced, "Game on," then hailed his Italian grandfather's decision to leave Italy to dig coal, if that's what it took to bring his family to the United States. Ron Paul, who came in third, saluted the work of his enthusiastic volunteers and credited his success to his role as a...

The U.S. government-run mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could play a bigger role in turning around the battered U.S. housing market, the Federal Reserve told Congress, a call that looks set to run into stiff political opposition. The Fed, in a paper sent to lawmakers on Wednesday, outlined an array of steps that could be taken to help the housing sector, including allowing Fannie and Freddie to provide cheaper mortgages to a broader pool of homeowners. The two companies, the biggest sources of U.S. mortgage funding, were seized by the government in 2008 when they were on...

This could be just the beginning. If President Barack Obama’s legally dodgy appointment of Richard Cordray to head the consumer finance agency should stick, it may open the door to more such actions. Here’s Jaret Seiberg of the Washington Research Group: To us, the most important takeaway from a recess appointment of Cordray is that the President could use this same maneuver to put a housing advocate in charge of FHFA. And why is that important? The Federal Housing Finance Agency is the regulator and conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the FHFA currently has an acting director,...

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa — No more Mr. Nice Guy. Newt Gingrich will “draw a very clear contrast” with Romney “every day” immediately after the Iowa caucuses Tuesday, the former House speaker told ABC News. “Everything we say will have Romney’s quote, Romney’s videotape, Romney’s record; it’ll all be based explicitly on Romney,” Gingrich said in an interview in Independence, Iowa. Gingrich has said repeatedly that Republicans should aim their attacks at President Obama, not fellow Republicans. But after getting hammered by millions of dollars in negative ads, Gingrich says he will now return fire, targeting Romney over and over again.

[edit}.... The Gingrich team on Sunday started to hit Romney for voting for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary when the former U.S. Senator for Massachusetts was in a primary with Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown. That plays into the most central rap against Romney — that he is not a real conservative, that he converted for the campaign and in essence he is a “Massachusetts moderate.” In the context of the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, that is not a compliment. The Tsongas vote has been raised before — when Romney ran the first time...

Newt Gingrich, plunging in the polls, dropped this bomb Wednesday: he would consider asking Sarah Palin to serve as his number two or in his Cabinet if he became president. "She is certainly one of the people you would look at," Gingrich said Wednesday, according to Right Wing Watch, when asked if he would consider tapping the 2008 vice presidential nominee for a second try. "I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she's somebody who I think brings a great deal to the possibility of helping in government and that would...

Deace Show Podcast 12-30-11

It’s an article of faith among many Republicans that Mitt Romney is the most electable candidate in the GOP field. But it’s not clear that this assertion is actually true. In fact, if one were going to design a Republican opponent tailor-made to President Obama’s liking, that opponent would be uniquely vulnerable to Obama’s main rhetorical thrust (making class-warfare arguments), uniquely unsuited to take clear aim at Obama’s least popular action as president (spearheading the passage of Obamacare), and uniquely strong in states that are unlikely to matter in the general election race. In all three of these ways, Romney...

DES MOINES — His financially strapped campaign unable to buy much advertising of their own, Newt Gingrich‘s well-funded allies are coming to his rescue in Iowa, securing large chunks of airtime across the state. Newsmax, the conservative magazine and Web site, will show a 30-minute special on Mr. Gingrich throughout the weekend in all of Iowa’s major television markets. The program is hosted by Michael Reagan, son of the former president, and makes the case that Mr. Gingrich is the strongest candidate to carry forward Ronald Reagan‘s legacy. “We are featuring a person that we believe will help continue my...

CNN touted a study from the liberal Tax Policy Center claiming that Newt Gingrich's tax plan would increase the deficit. On Tuesday afternoon's The Situation Room, business correspondent Poppy Harlow simply labeled the Tax Policy Center "non-partisan" even though it is a joint venture of two liberal think tanks, the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institute. CNN even reported the Gingrich campaign's claim that the study did not include "many details" of the plan because the campaign "does not recognize them as an independent arbiter of tax policy information." That bit of information was buried at the end of CNN's...

In an interview with ABC News, Newt Gingrich accused his Republican opponents of lying in their negative ads and offering “no hope they will be any good as president.” “Politics has become a really nasty, vicious, negative business and I think it’s disgusting and I think it’s dishonest,” Gingrich told ABC News aboard his campaign bus in Iowa. “And I think the people who are running the ads know they are dishonest and I think a person who will do that to try to get to be president offers you no hope that they will be any good as president,”...

Newt Gingrich tells a tele-townhall that Sarah Palin is someone to be considered for the Vice Presidency or Energy Secretary. Caller: If you’re fortunate enough to be nominated, would you consider having Sarah Palin as your running mate? Gingrich: She is certainly one of the people you would look at. I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she’s somebody who I think brings a great deal to the possibility of helping in government and that would be one of the possibilities.

His cash-short campaign unable to buy much advertising of its own, Newt Gingrich’s well-financed allies are coming to his rescue in Iowa, securing large chunks of airtime across the state. Newsmax, the conservative magazine and Web site, will show a 30-minute special on Mr. Gingrich throughout the weekend in all of Iowa’s major television markets. The program is hosted by Michael Reagan, son of the former president, and makes the case that Mr. Gingrich is the strongest candidate to carry forward Ronald Reagan’s legacy. “We are featuring a person that we believe will help continue my father’s vision,” Mr. Reagan...

'Black Hawk Down' commander stumps for Gingrich

Considering its finances, the Newt Gingrich campaign would normally like free press and an endorsement. However, this is one billboard the Former Speaker of the House probably doesn’t want his face on: an advertisement promoting infidelity. Route 1 in Pennsylvania showcases a billboard with Gingrich’s face and the words “Faithful Republican, Unfaithful Husband.” The ad is in reference to Ashleymadison.com, an online cheat dating site for married people. Their motto, featured on their website, is “Life is short. Have an affair.” Why would a hook up website want to feature a GOP candidate? “Now that Newt is the leading contender...

Newt Gingrich says he has killed a chapter on climate change in a post-election book of essays about the environment. But the intended author of the chapter, who supports the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change, says that's news to her. Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech, confirmed in an email interview that she had been asked to write a chapter on climate change for the speaker's book. She said was approached by former Palm Beach Zoo CEO Terry Maple, Gingrich's co-editor, at an annual meeting of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Asked to confirm her chapter...

This country is in trouble and bold leadership is needed. As someone that has had the privilege to vet these candidates as closely as just about anybody else has, I’ve come to the conclusion there are several good, Christian people running that most years I would vote for. However, this isn’t most years. Sadly, there are only two candidates offering a real means by which to actually undo that which the Left has done to this country for the past 50 years, and not just conservative platitudes. One of those candidates is Ron Paul, but his foreign policy is naive...

Journalism: Bloomberg News has published a piece designed to shame GOP White House hopefuls for fingering government housing policy in the crisis. But it's Bloomberg that needs schooling. Its lengthy article scoffs at top Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for laying much of the blame on federal regulations. It argues their view "has been rejected" by the Washington punditry, as well as the Democrat-appointed "commission that investigated the meltdown." While true, the prevailing wisdom is dead wrong. And the business wire not only parroted this false Democrat narrative, but conveniently omitted key facts. Take Bloomberg's analysis of the...

Newt Gingrich routinely fields questions during his campaign stops and during the event showcasing Art Laffer's endorsement, a woman who had been sititing on stage behind him asked Gingrich for clarification about President Obama's country of birth. SNIP "All I can report is the state of Hawaii has certified that he was born there," Gingrich continued. Gesturing to his wife beside him, he said, "We both were with a taxi driver one day who showed us the hospital. There is every reason to believe he is a citizen of the United States. The fact that he's already a terrible president,...

DECEMBER 27, 2011 Gingrich Applauded Romney's Health Plan BY BRODY MULLINS AND JANET ADAMY Newt Gingrich voiced enthusiasm for Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health-care law when it was passed five years ago, the same plan he has been denouncing over the past few months as he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination. "The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system," said an April 2006 newsletter published by Mr. Gingrich's former consulting company, the Center for Health Transformation.

House speaker John Boehner is set to sign an offer from Obama to accelerate negotiations. Republicans in the House of Representatives have capitulated in the showdown over the payroll tax, handing Barack Obama an important victory going into election year. Under pressure from other senior Republicans for blocking a bill that would extend tax cuts to millions of Americans, the House speaker, John Boehner, is backing away from his insistence that any deal must cover a full year. A deal agreed by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on Saturday covers two months, to allow further negotiations in January. It...

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly. Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.”

Sen. John McCain, D-Ariz., lit into President Barack Obama today for failing to produce an agreement on extending the payroll tax cut, The Hill reports. The Senate passed a compromise two-month extension Saturday, but the House rejected it Tuesday amid objections from conservatives who want a one-year extension. Obama needs to exhibit leadership to break the stalemate, McCain told CNN. The president has merely told the House to pass the Senate bill. "Previous presidents I've served under ... would be calling them [members of Congress] over to the White House, looking them in the eye and telling them, 'We need...

RICHMOND, Va. -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday he would tell his caucus to get "noisy" if he were trying to game out the dispute on a payroll tax cut with President Obama. Asked about the standoff by a voter, the Republican presidential candidate also called the senators "arrogant" over their refusal to negotiate. “I would have all of my members on talk radio back home demanding the senators come back. And I could say 'How can the senators arrogantly go home." Gingrich, who has previously said he doesn't know what John Boehner is going through because President...

Just across from National Journal. Our dumb national nightmare is over. House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal…The House will pass the two-month extension with a technical correction to the language designed to minimize difficulties businesses might experience implementing the short-term, two-month tax cut extension. In exchange, Reid agreed to appoint several Senate Democrats to start negotiating with the House on a full-year payroll-tax holiday extension, which is right in line with...

I have been listening to a lot of debate on the radio about the payroll deduction cut. I just recently heard the Won on the radio going on about how some guy will miss his pizza night. Why can't Boehner and McConnel, instead, come out and say, "We'll cut the income tax rates by 2 percent and reinstate the payroll tax rate so Social Security can remain funded and K.Z. can still have his pizza night with his daughters. Better yet, we'll cut the income tax rate 4% and they can have pizza night twice a week." Why do they...

“It’s not helping,” a veteran Senate Republican strategist said of the House GOP fight against the Senate package. “Senate Republicans are tired of paying the price for the lack of legislative thoughtfulness in the House.” The political operative said incumbents such as Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) could pay the price.

Congressional aides say House GOP to accept short-term payroll tax cut extension Just Headlines

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- House Republicans have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the 2% payroll-tax cut, National Journal reported Thursday, citing Republican and Democratic sources. House Republican leaders insisted earlier Thursday on passing a one-year extension, while President Barack Obama urged them to agree to a two-month deal. Without action by Congress, the payroll tax reverts to 6.2% on Jan. 1 from its current 4.2% rate

Most homebuyers will pay an increased fee to finance their mortgage as part of a U.S. Senate compromise approved today to continue a 2 percentage point cut in payroll taxes and extend unemployment benefits until February. In a last-minute compromise reached Friday night, the Senate agreed to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits but only for two months and to pay the estimated $30 billion to $40 billion cost by increasing the fees on new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The increase is expected to cost a new homebuyer about $17 a month for a...

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris is suing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to force the mortgage giants to answer questions about their role in California's housing meltdown. In two suits filed Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, Harris seeks to compel the companies to respond to subpoenas from her office that have been ignored so far. Harris is seeking information about the practices by Fannie and Freddie in California as part of her ongoing investigation into the mortgage industry. The suits ask a judge to order the two companies to answer a set of 51 questions served in...

The Club for Growth wrote a white paper on Governor Romney back in 2007. Most of the information below is from that repory, but since Romney has been outspoken on several issues then, weve updated his record to reflect those positions. ...During his initial 2002 campaign Romney refused to sign an anti-tax pledge, but he pledged to balance the budget without raising taxes and touted his fulfillment of that pledge throughout his term. But the details suggest that he broke his verbal committment. Romney did not impose any broad-based tax hikes he imposed a slew of fee hikes. He opposed...

There is so much about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that we should be angry about. In their heyday, these strange hybrids — part corporation, part government agency — were the biggest bullies in Washington, quick to bludgeon critics who dared suggest that their dual missions of maximizing profits while making homeownership affordable for low- and moderate-income Americans were incompatible. They steamrolled their regulator and pushed back at any suggestion that their capital was inadequate. For years, they essentially wrote most of the legislation that affected them, which they larded with loopholes. In the mid-2000s, they had giant accounting scandals....

One of the more interesting examples of the Washington establishment’s hypocrisy in today’s Republican presidential campaign is the bashing of Newt Gingrich over his consulting work for Freddie Mac. The other campaigns all know Gingrich opposed the Bush-supported bailout of Freddie Mac, and its evil twin Fannie Mae, and that Gingrich even went before a meeting of House Republicans to rally opposition to the bailout saying, “…it's an absurd bill. If a Republican administration wasn't supporting it, it wouldn't get five Republican votes.” In particular, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (who should have been at that 2008 meeting and has received political...

Whenever I write that Newt was, in fact, a lobbyist, I get lots of responses reading "who cares!?" or something to the same effect. The reason it matters, though, is not because being a lobbyist is inherently bad. The problem is twofold: 1) Newt says he didn't lobby. He did. That means Newt is not telling the truth. A candidate serially telling untruths is a reason to not like that candidate. 2) Newt didn't simply lobby for businesses. He lobbied for businesses that were trying to profit at the expense of everyone else by increasing the size of government. This...

<p>In his first response after news broke that he'd made $300,000 working for Freddie, Mr. Gingrich claimed he had "offered them advice on precisely what they didn't do." As a "historian," he said during a November 9 debate, he had concluded last decade that "this is a bubble," and that Freddie and its sister Fannie Mae should stop making loans to people who have no credit history. He added that now they should be broken up.</p>

The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing six top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for lying to the public about their subprime mortgage exposure and misleading investors. Among those named in the suit are former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron. The Wall Street Journal has details of the SEC announcement: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions'...

Mitt Romney has finally begun to engage Newt Gingrich. Yesterday, he went after Gingrich, if not by name, by attacking him as a creature of Washington. ... Federal law defines lobbying activity as “Lobbying contacts and any efforts in support of such contacts, including preparation or planning activities, research and other background work that is intended, at the time of its preparation, for use in contacts and coordination with the lobbying activities of others.” And a lobbying contact is “Any oral, written or electronic communication to a covered official that is made on behalf of a client with regard to”...

At least CBS's 60 Minutes is on to the national fury at the fact that the criminals who brought down the American economy have not been identified personally and brought before the bar of justice. But a week after a broadcast that bored in on the issue, interviewer Steve Croft let Barack Obama off the hook when the president disingenuously stated that the financial shenanigans by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and banking firms were legal -- that his administration was instrumental in passing new regulations encompassed in the Dodd-Frank legislation to prevent it happening again. Wait a minute. It is...