Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yep, that Barney Frank. Somehow, in left-wing la la land, not having a clue what the hell is going on equates to 'the most intelligent man in Congress' and 'a whiz with both fact and concept.' Barney Frank: "I think this is a case where Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under. They're not the best investment these days from a long term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward. They're in the housing market. I do think their prospects going forward are very solid."
See the above, and note that if you'd like to refute a claim of fundamental soundness, it's advisable to point out something that corroborates a fundamental lack of soundness. For examples of a fundamental lack of soundness, see Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, or Bear Stearns. Compare and contrast to the GSE's who have been open for business every day, have billions worth of access to emergency capital, and who are tasked with cautiously expanding their portfolios in consideration of a newly uncertain world.
Did you know that about one-third of small businesses fail within two years, and more than half fail within four years? Did you know that with each failure, we take a stroll down the lane of business bankruptcy, wherein banks and other creditors are forced to eat losses that they then simply pass on to the rest of us who didn't fail at anything at all? And these tapped out tycoon-wannabes get to keep their expensive homes, their fancy cars...all of their personal assets, while we pick up the tab for the business debts they cannot or will not repay. Isn't that awful? Aren't you outraged?
sure i am outraged by anybody who takes something away from somebody else that they have rightfully worked for! my post did address obama's housing plan however which punishes the average homeowner at the expense of the irresponsible homeowners. (which isn't being addressed at all on this forum). i hope you are outraged by that!
i absolutely think that people who get to keep things while declaring themselves insolvent are criminals, pure and simple.
Congressman Frank is aware of the fine line between risky investment and high margin gambling. The market has been indulging in the latter with cheap borrowed money. We are paying the price for their losses. We should not be doing this.
Barney Frank is "Fannie Mae's Patron Saint" and has blocked reform and regulation to fix Fannie's and Freddie's problems for years.
"His record is close to perfect as a stalwart opponent of reforming the two companies, going back more than a decade. The first concerted push to rein in Fan and Fred in Congress came as far back as 1992, and Mr. Frank was right there, standing athwart. But things really picked up this decade, and Barney was there at every turn... In 2000, then-Rep. Richard Baker proposed a bill to reform Fannie and Freddie's oversight. Mr. Frank dismissed the idea, saying concerns about the two were "overblown" and that there was "no federal liability there whatsoever." Two years later, Mr. Frank was at it again. "I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems," he said in response to another reform push. And then: "I regard them as great assets." Great or not, we'll give Mr. Frank this: Their assets are now Uncle Sam's assets, even if those come along with $5.4 trillion in debt and other liabilities. Again in June 2003, the favorite of the Beltway press corps assured the public that "there is no federal guarantee" of Fan and Fred obligations. A month later, Freddie Mac's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal broke into the open. But Mr. Frank was sanguine. "I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis," he said at the time." Fannie Mae's Patron Saint - WSJ.com
But, hey, Frank is supposedly 'the most intelligent man in Congress' and 'a whiz with both fact and concept.'
An example of feeding at the trough. As has been noted on many occasions, the primary objective of so-called attempts by Republicans to "reform" or establish "oversight" of the GSE's was to find ways to rein them in from the profitable secondary markets so that Wall Street could have that much larger a sandbox to play in. And again, there is nothing offered here that would tend to undermine or contradict any of Rep. Frank's statements. Your thesis seems to be that gee, Wall Street destroyed global credit regimes by poisoning secondary mortgage markets in an unbridled push for short-term profit, and the GSE's were also players on that stage at the time, therefore they must have been the ones who were actually to blame all along, and anyone who had ever claimed along the way that such arguments were just plain silly must have been the ones who were actually wrong. This thesis does not hold very much water in the real world...
the fact that these entities needing bailing out pretty much contradicts everything barney frank had previously said on the subject. on a lighter note, here is the barney frank banking queen song:
No comment about this video and what these people did?
He is too busy typing contrived leftist jibberish and trying to spin Frank as some covert superhero who's m.o. is to only superficially appear as a crook, while donning a mask and cape at night.
Here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have helped to bring down Wall Street with the aid of Democrats.
Franklin Raines
was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, " Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years."
Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.
Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear. 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 misstated Fannie Mae profits.
Tim Howard
Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the books.
The Government Investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae." On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses.
Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!
Jim Johnson
A former executive at Lehman Brothers, who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million. Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.
Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
FRANKLIN RAINES--works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor
TIM HOWARD --is an Economic Advisor to Obama
JIM JOHNSON -- Senior Obama Finance Advisor and ran Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee
What is global? $5 trillion worth of Fannie and Freddie risk. The companies, which together own or guarantee about $5 trillion in home loans, about half the nation’s total...
Again, that famous word, Context. The roughly 50% share of total housing risk held by the GSE's was accurate at the time, with the other half being held by whom? And let's note that the number is a STOCK, not a FLOW...it is the cumulative status achieved by the GSE's from their founding to a particular point in time. As Wall Street flooded both the primary and secondary markets in its profit- and bonus-generating schemes, the FLOW defined by GSE market share fell to and below 25%. There were other factors involved in that decline, but it is still decidedly the case that excesses by the GSE's were no signficant factor at all in bringing about the scenario recently played out. That honor goes to the ravenous appetites and unbelievable excesses of Wall Street.
Quote:
Originally Posted by InformedConsent
Fannie and Freddie both purchase home loans from banks and then repackage those loans as mortgage-backed securities which they either hold on their own books or sell to investors around the globe.
Yes, that's how securitization works, and it works in just the same way in other credit markets as well (cars, credit cards, student loans, etc.). Securitization is the means by which loan originators are recapitalized in order to have funds available to lend again. Without securitization, we have what we have now. No credit. No demand. No jobs. No economic activity.
Here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have helped to bring down Wall Street with the aid of Democrats.
Franklin Raines
was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, " Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years."
Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.
Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear. 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 misstated Fannie Mae profits.
Tim Howard
Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the books.
The Government Investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae." On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses.
Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!
Jim Johnson
A former executive at Lehman Brothers, who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million. Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.
Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
FRANKLIN RAINES--works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor
TIM HOWARD --is an Economic Advisor to Obama
JIM JOHNSON -- Senior Obama Finance Advisor and ran Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Barney Frank: "I think this is a case where Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under. They're not the best investment these days from a long term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward. They're in the housing market. I do think their prospects going forward are very solid." 
