Obama's Million Dollar Men pt.1

Obama’s Million Dollar Men From Fannie Mae - Who Are Franklin Raines, Tim Howard and Jim Johnson - How Big Were The Golden Parachutes - UPDATED
Posted on September 18, 2008 by mcauleysworld

Obama talks about greed on Wall Street - making those responsible account for their activities. Is that so? How about the Wall Street Big Shots Obama hired to work on his campaign - the very same big shots who brought Fannie Mae Down.

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. He served as President Bill Clinton’s Budget Director. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregulaties 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.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/02/23/DI2006022301805.html



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1vSqF9Hm7A&NR=1


Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_PVQGGTT
Raines left with a “golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Goverment filed suit against Raines when the depth of the acounting scandel 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/business/07fannie.html?ex=1323147600&en=14bcda881f8f1805&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/business/24fannie.html?ex=1306123200&en=86652ae7c0ac1479&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&scp=1&sq=Fannie%20Mae%20Eases%20Credit&st=cse

The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the mis-stated Fannie Mae profits. WHERE IS RAINES NOW ? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYI0mHWQeD8.

The wikipedia site has be rewritten - contact wikipedia for an explanation - or search the WEB to for articles on the rewrite.

http://mcauleysworld.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/obamas-million-dollar-men-from-fannie-mae-who-are-franklyn-raines-tim-howard-and-jim-johnson-how-big-were-the-golden-parachutes

View All Recent Blog Posts:

ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities

by Sol Stern

If you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation’s inner cities, and you’re likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12-hour days to “organize the poor” and bring about “social change.” The largest radical group in the country, ACORN has 120,000 dues-paying members, chapters in 700 poor neighborhoods in 50 cities, and 30 years’ experience. It boasts two radio stations, a housing corporation, a law office, and affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. Not only big, it is effective, with some remarkable successes in getting municipalities and state legislatures to enact its radical policy goals into law.

Community organizing among the urban poor has been an honorable American tradition since Jane Addams’s famous Hull House dramatically uplifted the late-nineteenth-century Chicago slums, but ACORN and Addams are on different planets philosophically. Hull House and its many successors emphasized self-empowerment: the poor, they thought, could take control of their lives and communities through education, hard work, and personal responsibility. Not ACORN. It promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor. As a result, not only does it harm the poor it claims to serve; it is also a serious threat to the urban future.

It is no surprise that ACORN preaches a New Left–inspired gospel, since it grew out of one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization. In the mid-sixties, founder George Wiley forged an army of tens of thousands of single minority mothers, whom he sent out to disrupt welfare offices through sit-ins and demonstrations demanding an end to the “oppressive” eligibility restrictions that kept down the welfare rolls. His aim: to flood the welfare system with so many clients that it would burst, creating a crisis that, he believed, would force a radical restructuring of America’s unjust capitalist economy.

The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley’s wildest dreams. From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city’s private economy. Yet far from sparking a restructuring of American capitalism, this explosion of the welfare rolls only helped to create a culture of family disintegration and dependency in inner-city neighborhoods, with rampant illegitimacy, crime, school failure, drug abuse, non-work, and poverty among a fast-growing underclass.

Even Wiley came to see that cramming millions more single mothers and their kids onto the welfare rolls would not produce the desired socialist utopia. Seeking new worlds to conquer, he sent one of his young lieutenants, Wade Rathke, to Little Rock, Arkansas, to launch a new community-organizing group: ACORN. The new group was to build a broad constituency of low-income and working-class people to agitate for social change.

The little ACORN that Wiley planted in the Arkansas soil flourished. As Rathke expanded it into a national organization, the “A” in its name—Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now—came to stand for “Association of” instead of “Arkansas.” And as it grew, it retained the core assumptions of the old New Left but radically transformed the New Left’s methods to produce something truly original.

ACORN’s bedrock assumption remains the ultra-Left’s familiar anti-capitalist redistributionism. “We are the majority, forged from all the minorities,” reads the group’s “People’s Platform,” whose prose Orwell would have derided as pure commissar-speak. “We will continue our fight . . . until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom . . . . We have nothing to show for the work of our hand, the tax of our labor”—claptrap that not only falsifies the relative comfort of the poor in America but that also is a classic example of chutzpah, given ACORN’s origins in a movement that undermined the work ethic of the poor. But never mind—ACORN claims that it “stands virtually alone in its dedication to organizing the poor and powerless.” It organizes them to push for ever more government control of the economy, as if it had learned no lessons about the free-market magic that made American cities unexampled engines of job creation for more than a century, proliferating opportunity and catapulting millions out of misery.

Full Text:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nutty_regime.html

View All Recent Blog Posts:

McCain's Letter in 2006 Could Have Prevented the Present Financial Crisis!!!

McCain Letter Demanded 2006 Action on Fannie and Freddie
by Human Events
10/10/2008

Sen. John McCain's 2006 demand for regulatory action on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have prevented current financial crisis, as HUMAN EVENTS learned from the letter shown in full text below.

McCain's letter -- signed by nineteen other senators -- said that it was "...vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]...operate in a safe and sound manner.[and]..More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either...should fail."

Sen. Obama did not sign the letter, nor did any other Democrat.

View the Letter Here:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28973#continueA



View All Recent Blog Posts:

Bad Economy May Hurt Obama

By Dick Morris

The conventional wisdom has it down pat: A bad economy works against the candidate from the party in power as voters take out their rage and fear on the president’s party and back the challenger, just like they did in 1992. But this is not a normal economic slowdown (or recession) and Obama is not a normal challenger. I think the conventional wisdom may be dead wrong.

It is not so much that unemployment is so high (5.7 percent) or that the economy is in the tank (1 percent growth this quarter) as it is that everything seems to be falling apart. Banks are under assault; mortgages are in default; quasi-government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need bailouts; financial institutions go hat in hand to foreign sovereign wealth funds peddling shares of their equity in return for desperately needed cash; the cost of filling a gas tank has tripled. It is not the present circumstances that have voters freaked, it is the threats that seem to loom on the horizon.

And Obama is no ordinary challenger. Not like Bill Clinton, for example. In 1992, from the moment the campaign started, Clinton billed himself as the expert who could solve the economy’s problems. His promise to “focus like a laser beam” on the recession won him big points throughout the campaign. His 10-year record as a governor and his chairmanship of the National Governors Association bolstered his credentials. But we first met Barack Obama as an advocate of racial and partisan healing and then as an opponent of the war in Iraq. When he tried to morph into an economic expert in time for the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, voters didn’t buy it and voted for Hillary.

So the question that hangs over the election is: Are we prepared to trust a new candidate with almost no experience and no claim to economic expertise in the middle of one of the most threatening economic situations we have ever faced?
Add to this backdrop Obama’s pledge to raise taxes and you have a combustible situation that could frighten American voters en masse. When, amid relative prosperity, Obama said he would restore fairness by raising taxes on the rich, it was well-received, particularly in the Democratic primary.

Raising the top bracket to 40 percent seemed a no-brainer. Applying the Social Security tax to more earned income, not just to the first $100,000, seemed like elemental fairness and a good way to save the pension system. Restoring the capital gains tax to 28 percent appeared to comport with the notion that those whose income derives from investment should pay a tax closer to that paid on earned income (despite the argument that it is after-tax money that they invested in the first place).

But now, with massive capital outflows crippling the public and private sectors, doubling the tax on capital seems like a very, very bad idea. And a sharp increase in taxes on the entrepreneurial class seems like a risky proposition.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/bad_economy_may_hurt_obama.html

View All Recent Blog Posts:

ALL WE HAVE TO FEAR IS OBAMA HIMSELF

America is about to make the worst voting mistake in our lifetimes. If polls are to be believed, the junior Senator Barack Hussein Obama, who never had to meet a payroll or held any serious private sector jobs (except being a leftwing activist for ACORN in Chicago), will be our Chief Executive.

One of the reason Obama is doing well is that people are worried about the economy. While there are reasons for concern, the current crisis has been overhyped to stampede Congress into an unwise bailout and stampede the people into voting for Obama. Our current hangover from a housing bubble induced by excessive subprime lending is leading to home prices declines, higher foreclosure rates, a weak economy, and a crisis in the financial industry as bank and investment houses have lost significant capital and some have gone under. As with the bubble bursting in internet, techs and telecoms in 2001-2003, this bubble bursting may well lead to a recession, although we were not in one up until this quarter. At times of crisis like this, it makes sense to ask: How did we get here?Obama says that deregulation caused the current crisis. He is wrong.

Cont.here:

http://no-bama.blogspot.com/2008/10/all-we-have-to-fear-is-obama-himself.html


View All Recent Blog Posts:

Obama's Speech Auditory Tape Found

View All Recent Blog Posts:

Barney Frank's Bankrupt Ideas

BY INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted Monday, October 06, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Financial Rescue: Democrats created the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. Now Obama and Biden want bankruptcy judges to bail out the same deadbeat homeowners. And once again, Barney Frank is helping. It's been said that history is a lie agreed upon.

Democrats are trying to rewrite history by blaming the Bush administration for the current crisis and claiming that the rescue bill is necessary to save the economy from Republican mismanagement.

More blarney from Barney.

Last Thursday on Fox News, when Bill O'Reilly tried to suggest that both parties might share the blame, House Finance Committee Chairman Frank, in a not atypical meltdown, disowned any responsibility for his lack of oversight over the last two years and his complicity before that.

Frank also claimed: "The fact is, it was 1994 that we passed a bill to tell the Fed to stop the subprime lending. We tried to get them to do it." In other words, those rascally Republicans did it all when they took control of Congress that November.

The legislation he spoke of was the Homeowners Equity Protection Act. It was supposed to empower the Federal Reserve to set the rules on mortgages. Problem was, the Clinton administration had its own ideas of what the rules should be.

The Community Reinvestment Act, first passed in 1977 under Jimmy Carter, was intended to increase minority homeownership. It grew out of charges that banks were "redlining" entire inner-city neighborhoods as bad credit risks. Banks now were forced to perform outreach to these areas.

In the '70s and '80s, banks could show that they were trying to do that by advertising in minority newspapers and having representatives sit on the boards of local groups. In other words, they were rated on the effort made and not on the results achieved. Creditworthiness still mattered.

In 1995, as Howard Husock pointed out eight years ago in City Journal, "the Clinton Treasury Department's 1995 regulations made getting a satisfactory CRA rating much harder. The new regulations de-emphasized subjective assessment measures in favor of strictly numerical ones. Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race, to rate banks on performance."

Creditworthiness and due diligence no longer mattered. As a 1999 New York Times editorial observed: "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Bill Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low- and moderate-income people and felt pressure to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

On Frank's and Clinton's watch, the Community Reinvestment Act was changed to force the issuance of bad loans. Banks would be rated on the number of loans, not on their soundness. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were then encouraged to buy them up. It was all about affordable housing, even if the housing was unaffordable.

"From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," Peter Wallison, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said back in 1999. "If they fail, the government will have to step in and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry." That prediction came true, but it didn't have to.

On Sept. 11, 2003, the Bush administration proposed to Congress a new agency under the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie and Freddie. The new agency would have had the authority to set capital-reserve requirements, veto new lines of business and determine whether the two quasi-government lenders were adequately managing the risk of their ballooning portfolios. When former Treasury Secretary John Snow pleaded for Frank to support Fannie and Freddie reform, Frank responded: "These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Democrats believe in affordable housing even if it's at the expense of the vast majority who watch their credit, work hard and pay their mortgages on time. But for the deadbeats, particularly Democratic constituencies, they have ways to make affordable the housing you couldn't afford. So first, they forced them into housing they couldn't afford, and now they give them a financial mulligan.

In the vice presidential debate, Sen. Joe Biden said that "what we should be doing now — and Barack Obama and I support it — we should be allowing bankruptcy courts to be able to re-adjust not just the interest rate you're paying on your mortgage to be able to stay in your home, but be able to adjust the principal that you owe, the principal you owe."

To get this bill passed, Obama made a lot of phone calls — particularly to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including caucus chief Rep. James Clyburn — assuring this would happen.

Those paying their mortgages on time don't get that break.

Rep. Elijah Cummings said Obama told him that, if elected president, he would direct a Treasury Department official to work with homeowners in foreclosure to restructure their loans. Cummings said Obama also told him he'd seek changes in bankruptcy laws allowing judges to reduce what borrowers owe on their home loans.

Section 110 of the rescue legislation has the Orwellian title of "Assistance to Homeowners" — but only for the deadbeats.It describes somebody called a "Federal property manager" who "holds, owns or controls mortgages, mortgage-backed securities, and other assets secured by residential real estate."

Section 110 speaks of "modifications" that this manager can make to these mortgages including not only the reduction of interest rates but the reduction of loan principal.

Not only is Uncle Sam now the world's largest landlord. He can also arbitrarily set the value of property and the amount owed on it at will, thus distorting the free market.

The vast majority of homeowners who pay their mortgages on time get the shaft. They're the ones who'll take up the others' slack. Why? And why is the Community Reinvestment Act still law?

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308185654524278

View All Recent Blog Posts: