Stimulus 'an absolute success,' says Biden

A link, no commentary.

Kevin Hassett works for American Enterprise Institute now, a conservative think tank. In 2004, he was an economic advisor to Bush. A biased source if there ever was one. Do you think he'd blame Bush or the repubs? No way.

http://www.aei.org/scholar/26

Heck, he was part of the problem at the federal reserve board of governors, you think he's coming clean?

But, what did you like about what he said, given that he's biased.

 

Now I'm going to show you how the republicans fixed it so Fannie and Freddie could not be regulated, when regulation was needed.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6067545.html

Bill Frist (R-Tenn) did not bring the bill up for a vote because there was not adequate repub support to regulate Fannie, and since they were in the majority in the senate, that ended the effort. It turns out you don't have to buy the whole senate, you just have to get enough votes on the margin to deny the majority their majority, and DCI did that. But you will notice this did not come to light until 2008. For the republicans, you can be for regulation and against regulation at the same time.

Heck, by my count, that's 25 repubs in the senate in favor of reform, and 29 against, out of a total of 54 repub senators. The repubs couldn't even get a majority in their own caucus. This was not on Barney Frank, this could never have passed the senate because the republicans would have killed it if it came to a vote. Frist was just too smart to show the public the real story. Then you can talk about reform and blame its failure on someone else, since the hypocrits weren't on the record.

 

Where's Sabanfan on this post? I've seen him blast Dems over and over about Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae.

 

4/2001: The Bush administration warned Congress of problems with Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), principally Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

7/2001: The Senate Banking Committee, headed by Senator Richard Shelby (R,AL) passed a bill which would more closely regulate GSEs. Chris Dodd (D, CT) threatened a filibuster if Shelby tried to bring the bill to the floor. No Democrats supported Shelby and Dodd won out.

1/2003: Freddie Mac had to restate it’s earnings because of accounting problems. One of Freddie’s board members was Rahm Emanuel.

9/2003: Freddie announced its accounting practices were under investigation by the SEC and that federal regulators had uncovered billions in earnings manipulations. (14 months later, the SEC found that Fannie Mae had overstated it’s earnings by $9 Billion.

For 4 years, the Bush administration tried to pass legislation to tighten regulation of Freddie and Fannie. During these 4 years, F & F doubled in size purchasing an additional $2 Trillion in mortgages.

Here are some comments (from the Congressional Record) directed at Bush officials who testified to the need for reform:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – Thomas Carper (D, DE) and Stephanie Tubbs Jones D, OH).

“I am just pissed off” – Gregory Meeks (D, NY) that the Administration had the temerity to raise the issue of regulating Freddie and Fannie.

“We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and in particular Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.” – Maxine Waters (D, CA).

“I’ll lay my marker down right now, Mr. Chairman…I think Freddie and Fannie need some changes but I don’t think they need dramatic restructuring.” Charles Schumer (D, NY).

“(You’re) throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” Jack Reed (D, RI)

“(This) is an artificial issue created by the administration...I don’t think we are in any remote danger here.” – Barney Frank (D, MA)

The biggest hypocrite of all was Chris Dodd, who just happened to have a sweetheart mortgage deal with one of the biggest bad actors in the lending business, Countrywide.
In 2004, in opposition to Bush reform efforts Dodd said (Freddie and Fannie were) “one of the great success stories of all time”. And that Bush should “immediately re-consider his ill-advised call for reform”. After F&F were bailed out Dodd said “Why weren’t we doing more…I have a lot of questions about where the administration was over the last 8 years.”

Frank and Dodd both voted for Bush’s 2008 reform bill.

Among those Democrats who backed Dodd’s filibuster and opposed GSE reform was a freshman senator form Illinois, Barack Obama. He was the 3rd largest recipient of campaign gifts from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae employees in 2004.
Yet, he consistently points to the economic problems he “inherited” but has never owned up to his role in creating them.

 

It's no secret that some Republicans were in bed with Fannie and Freddie. Combined, they had spent over $170 Million on lobbyists, both Dem and GOP.

 

I think that has been addressed adequately already, but I have another question for you.


Would you dispute that regulation is needed today? Would you dispute that anyone in congress does not understand Fannie and Freddie need regulation today? Anyone in America? Then why did the recent Finance Regulation Bill ignore them? Are dems in charge? Have they been in charge for a few yrs? Are they unaware that the problem is bigger now than at any other time? Are they in denial that Americans are actually aware of the problems at Fannie and Freddie?

Then answer me this, and without looking backwards at repubs to point fingers about activities you cannot change. Why won't the the dems do anything to reign in the retards, aka Fannie & Freddie?

FACTBOX-Some financial reforms missing from US legislation | Reuters

 

Regulation was needed and it is needed.

No disputing that.

The housing bubble is still being dealt with. If we go from way too loose on lending standards, back to normal, too few people will qualify for loans, foreclosures will rise again, home values will plummet, people will get scared and quit spending, city property tax rolls will fall reducing the tax base, cities will have to lay off more people, people will get scared, well, you see .... The problems started with blowing up the housing bubble, and the housing market is in too much flux right now. It needs to be dealt with, the question is when.

The obvious answer is the housing market is still too unstable to take a shock of withdrawing credit from the few buyers out there. Are there political reasons also, sure, that's Washington.

I can believe the time is not right today. The question will be for the dems, will the time ever be right? We'll see.

 

That is just too broad of a hall pass for me.

 

What are you going to do, withdraw the govt. credit from the housing market real quick? What are the predictable consequences, what might be some unanticipated consequences? Ask Bush about those unintended consequences.

We have gotten into a real pickle, and at this point, there are no good options I see, only bad options and worse options.