Free Republic

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....

Franklin D. Raines, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae, used a special program at mortgage lender Countrywide Financial to receive a below-market rate on a home loan, contrary to sworn testimony he made to Congress in December, according to the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government. Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) released documents yesterday that he said show Raines received discounts and waivers of fees on a June 2003 home loan through the "Friends of Angelo" program, named after Countrywide's then-chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo.

It seems making big bucks at the expense of failing lenders was perfectly OK for FOB (friends of Barry) but it is not OK for current bankers to make anything over $500,000. Obama insists limits to bankers should be $500,000.KGorelick earned an estimated $26,000,000 serving as vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003The Clinton administration's White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50,000,000. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26,000,000. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama's VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie...

Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs): An Institutional Overview is one of thousands of documents recently made available on WikiLeaks. A veritable myriad of Congressional Research Service documents offer startling glimpses into the scale and scope of government intrusion in the free markets. Why Did Congress Create GSEs? GSEs were not created for the purpose of expanding home ownership by lower- and middle-income members of the public. Rather, Congress established GSEs "to improve the efficiency of capital markets" and to overcome "statutory and other market imperfections which otherwise prevent funds from moving easily from suppliers of funds to areas of high loan...

Freddie and Fannie still brokeAn Editorial February 03, 2009 Freddie Mac, the quasi-federal outfit that Cong. Barney Frank guaranteed us was solvent, needs $35 billion more in taxpayer aid, according to Bloomberg News. The company got $13.8 billion from taxpayers in November. So far Treasury officials have pledged as much as $100 billion each to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae since Frank's indignant guarantee that both were financially healthy. Frank's emotional endorsement of the two mortgage giants came after officials of the George W. Bush Administration questioned their viability two years ago. The companies have posted five consecutive quarters of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Four men who led mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and (FNM.P) Freddie Mac (FRE.P) were called before a U.S. House of Representatives panel on Tuesday and chided for making irresponsible loans that fueled a housing crisis and helped push the economy into recession. "The CEOs of Fannie and Freddie made reckless bets that led to the downfall of their companies. Their actions could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman said. The committee reviewed over 400,000 documents, many that passed through the hands of Daniel Mudd, the...

I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS FROSTY THE SNOWMAN LET IT SNOW I SAW MAXINE KISSING FRANKLIN RAINES (I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus)

18-Nov-2008 Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Cont Item 3.01 Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Continued Listing Rule or Standard; Transfer of Listing. (a) On November 12, 2008, Fannie Mae (formally, the Federal National Mortgage Association) received a notice from the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") that we had failed to satisfy one of the NYSE's standards for continued listing of our common stock. Specifically, the NYSE advised us that we were "below criteria" for the Exchange's price criteria for common stock because the average closing price of our common stock during the 30...

The wide-ranging criminal investigation into wrongdoing at Countrywide - once the nation's largest mortgage originator - now includes serious scrutiny of a loan program that provided special mortgage deals to the well-connected and powerful, including two U.S. senators. NBC News has learned that Robert Feinberg - a former Countrywide loan officer who handled what were known as the "VIP" mortgages - spent six hours last Thursday with a six-person team from the Justice Department. The team included prosecutors from the Public Integrity section, which handles investigations of possible public corruption. "The Justice Department is making very serious inquiry into any...

So far we know that the meltdown of Frannie and Freddie, abetted by Wall Street greed, caused the larger financial panic. Yet, there is little outrage that a Franklin Raines or Jim Johnson gave money to oversight members of Congress, hid behind a mantle of political-correctness in boasting about home ownership for everyone, and then cooked the books and borrowed to the hilt to justify mega-bonuses for themselves and their friends. I don’t think a special prosecutor will ever look into the maze of conflict of interest problems of a Barney Frank, or the political associations of a Franklin Raines,...

Worse than the AIG Spa Vacation (updated)Thomas Lifson October 09, 2008 The last few days we have been treated to hyperventilation over the outrage of AIG executives attending a lavish sales incentive meeting at a ritzy California spa. I hope that Henry Waxman and his committee will be evenhanded in exposing this outrage. But I bet they will ignore Raines. Franklin Raines, the Democrat who inflated Fannie Mae earnings in order to pay himself fabulous bonuses, earning $90 million dollars, is feeling none of the real estate market pain he helped to create for so many others. The Washingtonian reports:...

Breibart has the Audio HERE! http://www.breitbart.tv/html/192383.html Not sure who this host is, but ti just got put at the top of the center column on DRUDGE. "[Franklin] Raines, who you're talking about, worked for Fannie Mae, was there for a while. The only connection that people could bring up about Raines and Barack Obama is that they both are African-American, other than that there is nothing."

During the, "Turmoil in the Financial Markets, Panel 1, hearings on AIG," Rep Chris Shays followed up his comments yesterday about Democrats refusal to investigate Fannie and Freddie, calling them the, "Toxic Twins," which should be the center of the investigation, not an afterthought. "We can't wait until Halloween to investigate these two failed monsters," he said. He also goes into detail on the accounting fraud and money Raines made while CEO. Link is C-SPAN video of Shays' remarks.

I cannot source this, but I heard the other day that Ms. Gorelick had worked for Fannie may at a salary of a little over $500,000 and left with $26,000,000 in bonuses. The bio on her website says she was Vice Chair of Fannie Mae from 1997 to 2003. She is a Harvard elitist (see link below). Jamie GorelickApparently she did a horrible job and left with a 26 million dollar bonus. To me, something just doesn't look right here. I think there should be a thorough investigation to see if any laws were broken and if she (and Franklin...

...Ten years ago, for example, the typical conforming mortgage required a down payment of 10 to 20 percent, and low-down payment mortgages were considered too risky. But then we helped to standardize the 3 to 5 percent down payment loan, brought it to global capital markets, and made it available to lenders and communities nationwide. Now low-down payment loans are commonplace. And we just adopted a new variance in our underwriting standards that will make the $500 down payment loan widely available as well... In 1994, we pledged to provide $1 trillion in capital to ten million underserved families by...

MIDI - NEVER RAINS IN CALIFORNIA

The government probe into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac widened as the mortgage giants disclosed yesterday they are under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies, which were seized by the government three weeks ago, said that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the SEC have opened investigations over accounting, disclosure and corporate governance matters relating to events dating to Jan. 1, 2007.

The financial crisis has boiled over. The Democrats who tried to hid it took a beating in yesterday’s vote on the 700 billion dollar bailout of the mortgage industry. They have no one but other Democrats to blame. This whole crisis was created, lock stock and barrel by greedy arrogant Democrats in and around the Clinton administration. They created Fannie Mae, the quasi public corporation, to deliver mortgage money to many poor White and minority voters. They gave our money away to insure mortgages for far too many clients who could not pay for their new homes. Nevertheless, this meant...

The Truth Does Not Lie - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Democrats The VIDEO Originally Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on July 16, 2008 5:27 PM The federal government recently announced that it will come to the rescue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two embattled mortgage buyers that for years have pursued a lobbying strategy to get lawmakers on their side. Both companies have poured money into lobbying and campaign contributions to federal candidates, parties and committees as a general tactic, but they've also directed those contributions strategically. In the 2006 election cycle, Fannie Mae was giving...

New Media pundits have been forthright when presenting well-investigated stories concerning Barack Obama and John McCain. While the alphabet biased media fawned over Obama, who marketed himself as a candidate who transcends race and represented a new brand of politics, others looked for the truth. As it turns out, the New Media found that Obama is just another disingenuous politician. He is a packaged and pretentiously scripted candidate created by the DNC. Obama’s promises are nothing but the oily words of a swindler.