Blinding yourself by means of partisan bias is not a pretty sight in the face of someone trusted with the public eye and ear, such as a columnist like you.

Government promises of guarantees, a history of bailouts, federal insurance, agenscies such as FannieMae and FreddieMac and the urgent encouragement to get renters and illegal aliens into home ownership simply follow the pro-socialist philosophy of the Party that was seduced by the alleged wave of the future of collectivist social caretaking for the whole population which is the philosophy of socialism. That is the Democrat Party (as George Bush so amusingly termed it).

The fact that the Republicans have lost any identity by being the "me too" Party, following the lead of the Democrats doesn't mean that only the Republicans deserve the blame.

Equally to blame are the Wall Street idiots who, instead of being sound businessmen, actually believed the promises of government and sank their and their clients' fortunes into fraudulent mortgage loans. We saw the exact same pattern of appraisers giving inflated real estate values, loan officers faking income sources on behalf of incapable borrowers...all this in Orance County California in the 1980s. But, it didn't have the government programs to fuel it up to a national scale then. The lesson to be learned is that government promises that the discipline of the market, which is Loss, will not be allowed to affect those who help achieve political purposes (like spreading home ownership regardless of the ability to pay) will encourage the worst in people, just as Medicare fraud by doctors exists only because Medicare exists.

As for bailing out the Wall Street elite: let them enjoy profits, as long as they also have to lose their reputations and their shirts when they are wrong. Capitalism is about profit and LOSS.

So, reading this columnist belittling her reputation and judgment by campaigning for the Democrats whose political philosophy (which says that government is the answer, which makes you wonder what they think the question is) caused today's large problem is so small minded it has NO place here.

The American voters are the jury in this case. I believe they will see (no thanks to the MSM) all the culprits in this mess and convict those that deserve it. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, ACORN, and other democrats and republicans.

Not only can't Obama supporters stand the fact that everything they're hearing about ACORN is true, they are having a difficult time facing the fact that the biggest "piggy heads in the trough" with Freddie/Fannie have been factualized and published to be their beloved Obama, Kerry and Dodd.

Sen. McCain did not even make the list.

McCAIN '08...........................NEVER, EVER, EVER OBAMA.

why dont you do some reasearch before you write an article? I guess real journalism has gone the way of the buffalo. this is incorrect, over inflated horse crap.

[www.bloomberg.com]

This is just imcompetent reporting! It was John McCain who stood up in Congress and told everyone that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed REGULATION...it was the Democrats, led by Barney Frank and Christoher Dodd (who, along with Barack Obama, received the most campaign money from Fannie and Freddie) who said that these lending institutions were stable and "not in crisis."
Now, outrageously, Barney Frank is working on the bailout deal!!! And it is Pelosi, Reid, Obama and the Democrats who are agreeing with Bush on this bailout. McCain has faught the first bailout rendition just like he faught Bush on a lot of issues. When it comes to Bush's growing of the government and spending us into debt, it was Pelosi and the Dems who have given him the money every time. Look at the record. Since being in power, the Dems have caved to Bush EVERY time he's wanted money.
While McCain came to Washington to work on this bailout (he hated the original because of it's "arbitrary" $700 billion set price and that the Dems had loaded it up with pork...such as millions going to ACORN, Obama's former employer) Obama was content to sit it out at "debate camp" telling the adults in Washington to "call me if you need me." How can anyone see that behavior as presidential? This was quintessential Obama: I'm voting "present" on the bailout bill!!
To think that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid might be running Congress with a Barack Obama in the White House signing all their nationalistic, big-spending, tax-raising bills into law is just sickening.
I pray that the American voter will see where this will take our country and opt to have a Republican providing needed checks and balances on our economy and society.

COCCO,

what are you talking about!! Get real... please

Who is the dummy who wrote this article? The Clinton Administration required banks to issue loans to sub-prime borrowers, saying that FannieMae and FreddyMac would assume the problem. The borrowers were allowed to use WELFARE INCOME, UNEMPLOYMENT CHECKS and FOOD STAMPS to qualify for loans. In 2001 the treasury (under Bush) alerted that there was a huge problem. Barney Frank personally guaranteed that there was no problem. What was Bush going to do? Foreclose on all the subprime borrowers?
The real problem is that the Democrats wanted to establish a machine for buy votes using houses. They have succeeded.
There is a real conspiracy to buy elections using the Black block vote and student voter fraud, organized by ACORN, the community action group for whom OBAMA worked.
If enough people wake up and go to the polls, this process can be quelled. Otherwise, look forward to reparations for slavery and rampant socialism.

The facts just don't support this rant. You are part of the problem - you too ignorant to be in possession of a voter registration card. Unfortunately you are joined by so many other sheep. God help us.

Whatever happened to accountability from the CEOs? Do we all really make the assumption that the President of the United States is responsible for every little failure that happens in America. This sounds more like a parent who chooses to accept responsibility for every time their child falls and gets a scrape on their arm or leg.

When we ever get around to taking personal responsibility for ourselves, our government, and our economy, we might see changes that will make this world a better place. Of course, we all have different agendas, different world views, etc., but there is no way our economy will recover until we as a nation choose a vision that we can believe in strongly. That vision is not going to come from a political leader. That vision will come from those of us who can change our attitude and give us confidence in buying again. Does this mean there won't be any more crooks out there. Of course not! It only means that we must be patient in searching for a new innovation from private enterprise that will solve the crisis. We just need to understand that everything is an investment whether or not we get the anticipated value returned from the value we give for it. We are all taking risks that we will get value for value in everything we buy.

No mention of the Community Re-Investment Act, and it's effect on the very financial institutions that are failing today, Ms Cocco?

No mention of the CRA's review process that included policies intended to punish lending institutions unwilling to suspend sound lending practices and unwilling to loan money to those unlikely to be able to repay?

No mention of the Democratic members of Congress that refused to see any problems in Fannie and Freddie in 2004, and instead attacked regulators at the hearings intended to address the issue?

Wouldn't it be convenient to lay all of this at the feet of an administration which will be gone in January...and not address the culpability of Democratic members of Congress who will, regrettably, astonishingly, continue to hold their jobs despite their miserable performance.

Who let's these people write columns? Sorry for the cut and paste but here's the root of the problem. Clinton chickens coming home to roost.

NY times Article from 9 years ago....

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities
and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the
credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other
lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15
markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage
those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is
generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae
officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been
under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand
mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure
from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been
pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime
borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are
not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans
from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates --
anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional
loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the
1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines,
Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain
too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our
underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying
significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one
study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went
to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional
loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae
is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any
difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized
corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a
government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in
the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another
thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the
government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up
and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a
mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a
conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a
rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes
his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage
point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not
lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks
make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of
loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more
loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to
all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add
that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and
low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than
non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the
economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to
Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according
to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that
same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a
home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by
46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for
homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag
behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in
particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that
by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio
be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44
percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is
investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated
underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the
credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Democrats control Congress, and they make the laws. So, they are to blame for failing to prevent this financial mess. Get your facts straight before your write such a partisan, stupid article.

That Obama Kool-Aid must be some good stuff! Here, this crisis was caused by the Democrats forcing banks to write bad loans in the name of 'social justice', then packaging the bad loans with quality loans in an effort to hide their tracks (spread the risk), and its the Republicans fault? I'll fault the Republicans for what they are truly guilty of: not being aggressive enough in stopping the Dems' socialist schemes.

A fascinating editorial. We get the accusation, but none of the prosecution's arguments. If the case were really that easy to make, Ms Cocco would have no trouble advancing the @#$%& evidence and reasoning for it. In the end, this is nothing more than partisan fingerpointing. There is plenty of blame to share here. Did the Democrat-controlled Congress have its head up its own rectum for the past two years? Surely some sort of "reform" could have been addressed earlier if they indeed had the brilliance with which they claim to now be gifted in indicting the Bush administration's regulatory environment.

"Stoopid Republicans! NA-na-na-NA BOO-boo!" is indeed effective on the grade-school playground, but doesn't quite cut it in adult life. Facts and reasoning are required.

While I stongly disbelieve in the premise of this article because it suggests that the answer is in government. For the last 200+ years, our government has been a significant part of the problem among Republicans and Democrats. We, as a people, have given far to much power to our government out of fear or desparation for our own political agenda. The only thing that gives us value in the United States is the vision we choose for ourselves of what can be! If we as a people believe the economy will turn around, that we can feel safe in risks of making investments, spending money for things of value, disciplining ourselves through savings, and other time honored concepts; then maybe our economy will turn around.

If there is one thing I have learned about government, it is consistently greedy. The people in government are generally there for one reason only and that is self gratification. It does not matter whether you are Republican or Democrat. They may say it is their ideology that is the differentiation between them and the other. But, when it really comes down to it, it is what will pay them the most for being at the right place at the right time with the right group of friends that makes the difference in politics. At least, trends would support this philosophy!

The only way our economy will improve is when there are enough of us that produce more than we consume, live within our means, purchase value, and save for expansion. It is not our governments fault that many throughout the world have not chosen to practice these disciplines. It is our fault as a society that these have not been preserved as time honored traditions. We cannot afford to have everything now. We must practive provident living in order to manage our risks tollerances for the future.

Everyone really ought to read this article from the NY Times, written 10 years ago:

[query.nytimes.com]

''Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

"If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

What is wrong with these media hacks like Cocco? The Democrats could have easily passed a bailout for their buddies, since they are the majority party afterall. They did not. Obama helped train ACORN operatives, and the original bill attempted to funnel taxpayer money to ACORN. This meltdown involves a lot of democrat corruption, and to deny the cause of this problem with an opinion piece is pathetic. Obama is cut from the same cloth of those who created this mess. Just read the article I linked.

What a totally non-informative piece of fluf this article is.

McCain is a hero. He tried pass legislation to reign in mortgage lenders years ago.

Obama is a zero. He supports ACORN, an organization that has pushed banks to make risky mortgages to those who really can't afford them. That is the work of a community organizer.

Cocco the clown (writer of this trashy article) needs to get a new job. What a looser!

Maybe its my imagination but it seems like there are two basic responses to this article from the bush defenders:

1. its all the democrats fault (carter or clinton) and the last 8 years just didn't happen, six of them when republicans controlled all the levers of power.
2. you must be biased against republicans.

Well guess what guys this idiot and his buddies have driven a bunch of folks out of the republican party by disgracing this country. Why do we have such a mess let me count the reasons.

1. Absolutely hands off government despite the warnings from 2001 when Enron went down that more accountability was critical.
2. A credit card war that has bankrupted us so that whatever is done to stabilize markets just increases debt.
3.Gross incompetence by the appointed executive leadership that politicized basic functional government at least as badly as any Chicago machine and has led to complete distrust in the federal government to do anything useful

This republican is completely fed up with this stuff and wishes that the rest of the party would stop drinking the kool aid talking points they get from the RNC

write in Mickey Mouse in November, a far better choice then either parties candidate

I was going to post on the utter lack of factual support in Ms. Coco's article, but I see my fellow posters have that covered. Kudos to you all! This illustrates twos points to me:

1. Those responding to this article have done their homework (kudos again)

2. They had to work hard to get that homework done. Despite the fact the failings of the Democrats on this subject should be BIG NEWS, for the most part I have found most of what I have read has been in business journal postings, not in the MSM.

And now the Democrats want us to bail out the mess they started and blame the Republicans for it. Vanity, thy name is Nancy.

LOL... Thanks, I needed to read yet another waste of pixels.

I'm very disappointed in McCain's "greedy Wall Street" comments as it misses the key driver of this crisis -- "Corrupt Congress".

Wall Street just did what Wall Street does... moves money around while taking a piece for the transaction. Has anybody criticized Joe American for accepting a bid for his house that's 20% over "normal" market value. No, Joe just did what house sellers do in the market... take the highest bid. Unfortunately, Congress did what Congress does... takes "contributions" in exchange for favorable legislation and protection from regulation. On Main Street, we call that bribery.

As a country, we have to get back to "don't buy what you can't afford". That means repealing the CRA, slashing the government budget to get in-line with historical 18% of GDP rates, and eliminating Fannie and Freddie so the government gets out of the mortgage business. At the personal level, we can be a bit more cautious with our use of credit and NOT get ourselves to the point where we're so leveraged that we have no margin for error if the economy cycles down (which it always does).

Does the GOP have clean hands in this mess? No. It's easy enough to review the votes on HR 1461 (the 2003 GSE reform bill) to see that both parties had members bought and paid for by the GSE's. But, laying this at the feet of President Bush is simplistic and shows a complete lack of critical thinking skills.

THIS IS A FINE example is the hypocrisy of liberals, and Obama spewing outrage about this fin. crisis, when Bill Clinton deregulated the mortgage lending rules in 1999 with the Financial Services Modernization Act free houses for the poor. how do you "deregulate" the system when the federal government assumes the financial risk for a trillion dollars of mortgage loans for people the democrats knew could not -- would not -- ever pay back the loans? That's right. The Wall Street Journal 5 years ago predicted we would have to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae because they knew it was a scam operation designed to give free houses away to the "poor" in exchange for votes for liberals!!! Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank blocked any reforms to Fannie And Freddie Mac. Are U aware of the deals Dodd got with Country Wide?????? This is a great video that reveals what really caused this crisis, and how John McCain tried to warn, and regulate in 2005, 2006. Watch if u dare want the truth. [www.youtube.com] The yr. of real Journalism died with this election. Liberal news, has proved how liberal and biased they really are. I look forward to seeing them fold. There is a reason Fox News Cable has been # 1 for the last 5 yrs. People are sick of liberals bias and want to see both sides of the issues. SUSY

Marie,
I'm not sure if you have a degree in economics...I know I don't, but everything I have been reading has dated this problem's roots back many years...not just the Bush years. I have never in my life commended him for anything, but I have read more than one article where it stated he approached Congress 17 times for some kind of reform and regulation on this very situation...specificially Fannie and Freddie. McCain, himself, supposedly spoke on the floor in 2005 about this very situation.

I am not a Republican...just an incredibly disgusted Democrat who has come to the realization that almost all of the parties in question are guilty...that includes you, me, Congress and all those mortgage brokers who have made a small fortune.

You know, if having insight like yours is all that is required to be a paid columnist, perhaps I should change my career, 'cause I can certainly BS with the best of them...just like you.

Anyone who takes this one sided garbage barfed up by Coccopuff seriously needs to be, um, well.......put away.

Wow... an article written by an idiot.
The title could also be called "Convict Janet Reno, Braney Frank and the Democratic Party for the Economy." Tssk tssk. It was Frank who said there was nothing wrong with Fannie Mae.
Ms. Cocco is obviously a huge supporter of Nacny Pelosi's poison and must listen to her partisan stump speeches to toot her own horn.
Fact of the matter is everyone had a hand in this. Funny thing though, out of everyone, Bush is the one who should get the least amount of the blame.
I can't believe the Conservatives are just bending over and taking all this. They are made out to seem like it's their fault when it's not all entirely. Where are the Barney Frank attack ads? Let's make the jump from youtube to mainstream media.

Marie,

I enjoyed all you primary articles that raised the question of sexism in Presidential politics., but you are dead @#$%& wrong on this one! Firstly, Reagan and yes his hero Barry Goldwater are anti-regulationists and by extension any conservative "Goldwater Republican." However, you may not know this, but there are many high profile Democrats that promoted Deregulation, namely, Bill Clinton. What Reagan began, Bill Clinton completed with sweeping legislation. He had the veto pen and did not use it! It was Bill Clinton that signed into legislation the final and complete repeal of the Glass-Stegal Act which allowed Banks to engage in cross-over business with other financial institutions such as the mortgage industry and securities.

It was the *ucking Democrats that pushed their fatal socialists welfare agenda of "home ownership for all! through the ill-fated Freddie and Fannie GSE's." They pushed the executives that were Democatic appointed to buy the worthless paper. Need I name names? Jim Johnson, Obama's man is just one. You may think as some of you liberal morons do that I am using the minorities as a scapegoat because you always need to make excuses for you ill-behavior, but I am speaking from experience. (Is it any wonder that the Dems, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama received the most political contributions from Freddie and Fannie?

Why because the Dem's were pushing Freddie and Fannie to buy up the sub-prime paper so all could live the American Dream of home ownership! Freddie and Fannie and the Democratic leader are one big happy family.

Your party is so stupid it is staggering! You and your liberal buddies probably think that I am beating up on the minority population but the truth is I am speaking from direct experience.

I sold $35MM dollar of entry level homes in '04 to a demographic that was comprised of 98% hispanics. Despite, my attempt to educated them on ARM's and encouragment to take the low but a little bit higher conventional 30 year fixed they opted for the no money down, interest only ARM's!

Why, because in the great words of Adam Smith, "people are natural profit maximizers." No skin in the game, nothing to lose! They figured and rightly so that home values were going up and they could later take out a home equity line or sell before the price of their home fell and make a little equity on the deal. Heck, if things went really sour and they price of their home plummeted, cest la vie! They would walk away and let the bank deal with it! And that is exactly what they did.

And you and your moron liberal friends at WSJ/NY Times are blaming Bush, the Republicans and Wall Street for this fiasco! I order you to sit down in that corner and wear that dunce cap until I tell you that you are free to get up!

How dare you insult the intelligence of the American public with you socialist liberal propaganda.

In the great words of George Bernard Shaw, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Marie,

You have absolutely no understanding of economics. Don't write about issues you don't understand.

We caused our own economic downfall because we failed to produce more than we consume. We have no excess. We stopped saving up for things we buy. Instead, we decided to go into debt to buy on speculation when we could not affort to do so. Now, we are all paying for our bad choices. It is a tradition created by our government and its leaders to buy on credit then insert taxes to pay for it later. We, as the people of the United States seems to have adopted this tradition for our personal lives thinking...we have a whole year to start paying for it and a year is such a long time from now! Well, time is up and now we all get to pay for it one way or another. Perhaps, we should learn from this lesson and start buying things when we have the cash to buy with instead of having someone else bankroll it for us. According to Reuters our economic growth for the last two decades are based on people who borrowed against their mortgage to buy more things. These are the people who are responsible for destroying our economy. I suppose those who took the risk in allowing them to are also to blame. I am sorry, but nobody in the White House or Congress is to blame. The blame is on those who want things now without saving for it and on those who allowed them to get away with it.

It is my experience that government is rarely responsible for anything important. The responsibility for failure will always rest on those who fail to take responsibility and accountability for themselves and their actions. Those who take action will always produce more than they consume and try to build value for everyone else.

1. The Democrats produced this problem by issuing edicts from Washington requiring banks to provide sub-prime "affirmative action" loans to unqualified debtors. They also make it possible for groups like ACORN and environmental groups to shake down American businesses.

2. The Democrats that produce the mess subsequently try to place the blame at the feet of either the bankers or the conservatives in Congress. Presumably because Wall Street could not make liberal Democratic hair brained and insane socialistic ideas work in the real world.

3. Nancy Pelosi gives an incoherent speech with an extremely partisan tone from the pulpit of the House on the day of the vote. One would presume to ensure that the bill does not pass.

4. At the same time the MSM and bloggers call for those not responsible for the problem to be held accountable.

So amazingly typical of what comes out of Washington and the MSM. The one thing that IS true is that Nancy Pelosi is the worst speaker of the house ever- leading the worst Congress ever.

What is also a 'crime' is that those supposedly responsible for "news reporting" do everything but report the news. The news industry proclaims that the decreasing circulation of newspapers and loss of viewership of broadcast journalism is caused by the internet, ADHD, etc. Take your heads out of the sand! The reason for the loss of circulation and viewership is that the propaganda that you are peddling is simply an affront to the dignity and intelligence of the American people. We have tuned you out and turned you off. The main stream media has become little more than thieves who steal not from the coffers of money but from the vault of credibility, honesty and truth.

No

We need to convict, Obama, Frank, and Dodd.

The Republicans saw this coming FOUR years ago and the Democratic MAJORITY didn't care.

[www.youtube.com]

Sheesh Ms. Cocco, just save us the time of reading your silliness next time. Just post "Bush is Evil! Yaaaaagggggghhhhhhh!!!"

Democrats didn't have a majority four years ago and only have a slim one now. It's a bi-partisan mess.

Russell Kirk Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Republicans saw this coming FOUR years ago and
> the Democratic MAJORITY didn't care.
>
> [www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

What planet is this loon from? I think her last name is misspelled; surely it must be COOCOO! It's blatantly obvious to anyone with any sense that the dens are up to their necks in this mess! Take a look at some of the footage of dems just 3 years ago defending Freddie and Fanie. Look at the footage of Republics, to include John McCain, expressing real concern over unbriddled lending practices, forcd by liberal demands to put people in homes who didn't have the means. Then take a look at the money trail. Where did the big contributuions from Freddie and Fannie go? Can you say Chris Dodds, Barack Obama, John Kerry? This is a dem crisis, fueled by the dems lust for money and power and their social experiment in providing housing to those without the means or maturity to take on the responsibility.

THIS is who supports Muslim, Anti-Christ, Mulatto, Barack Hussein Obama:

www.aboutus.org/Cpusa.org
"Website of the Communist Party, USA. We fight for labor unity, peace, equality, democracy and socialism. The CPUSA is part of the growing anti-war movement, fighting for peace locally and nationally. We love Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton and will do everything we can to get our comrades elected to the White House. Then we will be able to complete our takeover by shutting down talk radio and free speech via the internet."

Here's the parent site: www.cpusa.org

And THIS is one of their ring leaders:
Matt Parker, Communist (google him)
mattp@cpusa.org

And THIS is where they're headquartered:
235 W 23RD ST
NEW YORK, NY 10011-2302
Phone: 646-437-5301
Fax: 212-229-1713

Nice, huh? And to think that HALF of America is ready to vote for THEIR guy for President, Barack Hussein Obama!

NOT ANOTHER HUSSEIN!!!
McCain 2008

Keith Hoylman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What planet is this loon from? I think her last
> name is misspelled; surely it must be COOCOO!
> It's blatantly obvious to anyone with any sense
> that the dens are up to their necks in this mess!
> Take a look at some of the footage of dems just 3
> years ago defending Freddie and Fanie. Look at
> the footage of Republics, to include John McCain,
> expressing real concern over unbriddled lending
> practices, forcd by liberal demands to put people
> in homes who didn't have the means. Then take a
> look at the money trail. Where did the big
> contributuions from Freddie and Fannie go? Can
> you say Chris Dodds, Barack Obama, John Kerry?
> This is a dem crisis, fueled by the dems lust for
> money and power and their social experiment in
> providing housing to those without the means or
> maturity to take on the responsibility.
???? R U serious!!??

Marie Cocco, you are another one of the 'Party 1st', Bush-hating, radical. liberal Socialists who unfortunately have a media channel through which to voice your ignorant rhetoric! Senator Obama spoke to the nation yesterday morning about what WE have to do as a nation to recover from this crisis that HE and his fellow Congressmen helped create, and I could not help getting angry. Senator Obama did NOT tell the American people Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government-sponsored enterprises. Senator Obama did NOT tell the American people how there are Congressional Committees that have been responsible for overseeing and regulating these companies like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac prior to this crisis. Obama did NOT tell the American people how he and his brethren have unethically/criminally taken money from these corporations to ensure the ‘good times’ kept rolling and government regulation did not get in the way of their unsound and extremely risky monetary lending practices.

For example, 15 of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president. Dem Sen. Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate banking committee, received the most ($133,900 since 1989) from Fannie and Freddie's PACs and employees. Dem Rep. Paul Kanjorski, House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, has received $65,500, and Presidential candidate Dem Sen. Barak Obama has received the 3rd most money ($105,859), second only to Dodd and Kanjorski. Also on the list of top 15 are Dem Party Representatives Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, & Barney Frank.

What Senator Obama also did NOT tell Americans are the demands the Democrats (Socialists) are making, as being reported by numerous sources, in the authorship of the bailout legislation before they agree to sign it. These demands include: 1) Contingent stock in every, single company that sells its toxic assets to the resolution corporation, giving the federal government a degree of ownership of virtually every bank, savings and loan, or other financial institution in the entire country (This is LIBERAL FASCISM at its purest and would lead directly to much greater government control of private capital), 2) "Limits on the pay of top executives whose firms seek help" - Congress wants to have the UN-Constitutional authority to set the salaries and bonuses of workers in the private sector, not just the salaries of the CEOs of these failed companies, and 3) that bankruptcy judges be allowed to rewrite the terms of the underlying mortgages, in order to "provide direct assistance to homeowners caught in the foreclosure crisis", allowing people who took out loans much too big for houses they could not afford to keep those houses, even though they cannot make the payments.

Someone obviously hasn't done her homework...or perhaps taken her psychiatric medications lately.

What's interesting to me is that Real Clear Poltics posts the usual excuses, the usual absence of any accountability from the dergulation crowd that failed us in the S&L crisis, that failed us in the telecom industry (WorldCom) that failed us in energy deregulation (Enron) and still, still refuses to allow a moment's common sense to creep in. You are 0 for 5. Football coaches get fired with better records.

What a moronic article. Of course leave out any details about what caused the mess. Just say Bush Policies. And give some irrelevant data on housing and inflation.

The problem, sweetie, as Obama would refer to you, is the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Democrats refused to pass legislation to reign them in and encouraged them to take on subprime loans. This began under Carter in 77 in the Community investment act, then increased under Clinton in 1997 and then again a few years ago when a Democratic Congress rejected a bill from McCain that wanted to increase scrutiny.

Liberals; so open minded their brains fell out.

She's regurgitating Democratic party talking points. They all make the assertion that "the Bush economy caused this," mumble something about deregulation, then provide not one fact to back their assertion.

Meanwhile, the big government-sponsored liberal social experiment that created all this bad debt is completely ignored.

Want to talk deregulation? Liberals forced lending institution to throw away time-tested standards and loan to people who couldn't pay it back. That's the deregulation that caused this calamity.

President Bush and Senator McCain are on the record trying to reform Freddie and Fannie (regulate) but Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, swimming in Wall Street millions, blocked them.

This is a failed socialist experiment. Liberals pass feel-good laws funded by the taxpayer. Wall Street gets the profits and shovels campaign contributions back to politicians.

Well, the GOP had the courage to throw a monkey wrench in the political money wheel. I hope they don't lose their courage.

Government intervention in markets caused this, more of the same won't solve it. First rule of holes: stop digging.

[warskill.blogspot.com]
-- Nietzsche is Dead

Glad to read so many posts rebuking what appears to be a typical third grade understanding of the financial crisis. Lofty goals by presidents and congress of both parties have contributed to this mess. Some should go to prison but let's be honest, none will.

We live in a society where personal responsibility has disappeared. People that have invested in these companies blame others for losing their money after years of excessive profits. Did they not bother to research the companies they were investing in, just look at the returns of the past 5 years? Who held a gun to anyones head to sign a mortgage to buy a home that they couldn't afford, invest in these failing companies, spend themselves into bankruptcy with credit card debt so they could or should no longer get credit? What board member in their right mind would vote to hire a CEO with a compensation package in the millions and then give them the millions when the company was failing and who would be so ignorant to invest in these companies?

I believe we are at a point where we should allow the markets to perform, uninterupted by political intervention. If you've made bad choices, you will have bad consequences. It's called responsibility.

While Democrats point fingers at Democrats, Democrats point fingers at Republicans, Democrats point fingers at Bush, Republicans point fingers at Democrats, and the news media blaming the Republicans and Bush for the financial crisis, they are all ignoring that the Bailout Plan was not defeated yesterday but rather the will of the American people succeeded in stopping the Socialist 'Bum Rush' of this fiscally irresponsible Bill that has no guarantee of working! Democrats Dodd, Pelosi, Reed, Obama, Kanjorski, and others are among the top 15 recipients of cash from Fannie Mae ,Freddie Mac, and AIG, paid to lessen the restrictions and for irresposibly lax oversite which helped contribut to this financial problem. They can not say that, though. Instead they blame the Executive Branch that does not have the power to do what the Legislative Branch had the power yet failed to do. Anyone who lies to me while asking for $700 Billion dollars does not get my money. Obama and the democrats promise to pay the money back....just like they have paid us back for all the money they stole from Social Security! If they can pay us back for money losy/taken, let them start by returning all the money taken from Social Security 1st, and then we will talk about the money they want to take from us to bail out Wall Street! Many politicians and economic experts told us bitterly after the defeat of the bill yesterday that today would be 'Black Tuesday' with more losses in the stock market than the 700+ point drop yesterday, that our only choice was the Socialistis nationalization of all the financial institutions in this country or face 'financial Armageddon'! Instead, the market steadied out and has risen 360+ points! The truth is that we can hold these crminal and/or fiscally irresponsible politicians and institutions accountable and let the market fix itself, which will take considerable time and a little more pain before growing stronger, OR we can give the politicians and Wall Street the quick and easy Socialist fix of throwing Billions of our money to solve their problem! I agree with Congress - this is an extremely critical point in our nation's history/future: We can agree to turn to Socialism in an attempt to avoid holding both politiicans and these irresponsible institutions accoutable for their actions or we can choose to make a stand, to hold those responsible accountable for their actions! This financial crisis WAS caused by CONGRESS'' failure to provide meaningful oversight and provide and enforce fiscally responsible legislation! They allowed the heinous financial practices and were hansomely paid for the promise to bail them out with out money should the bottom fall out, a verbal 'check' they found out their bodies could not 'cash' yesterday thanks to the American people! This is one huge shi'ite sandwich Congress and these instituions have created - instead of asking the American people to eat it, THEY need to hold their nose and take a BIG BITE!

Oh, by the way, I think the American people would find it incredibly interesting that the architecs for the demise of Fannie Mae, freddie Mac, and AIG, the CEOs who walked away with millions of dollars in severance packages, now work as Obama's Economic Advidors! Hahaha! IT'S TRUE: Former Fannie Mae Chairman and CEO Franklin Raines was the White House budget director under Bill Clinton. He was also cited by the Washington Post as an economic advisor to...Barack Obama. Obama, in his very short time in the U.S. Senate also quickly became the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae, ahead of even John Kerry. Jamie Gorelick served as Bill Clinton's Deputy Attorney General. She installed the Intelligence "Wall of Separation" that helped lead to the disaster we suffered on 9/11. Then she served as Vice Chairman at Fannie Mae. In 2002, she told "Business Week" that Fannie Mae was "very, very strong" and was "managed safely". For her efforts, driving the company to the brink, she received $26 million plus bonuses.
Fannie Mae is heavily involved with the Congressional Black Caucus. Interim CEO Daniel Mudd described the relationship Fannie Mae and the Congressional Black Caucus shared as a "family" relationship. The Caucus pressured Fannie Mae to get mortgage loans for millions of Americans who couldn't afford them. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the worst offenders in this housing loan crisis, which in turn caused so many banking institutions to go down with it. The crisis has had a domino effect throughout our financial institutions. In fact, AIG was in part brought down because it held $600 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Meanwhile, President Bush has called for reforming Fannie and Freddie 17 TIMES this year alone! The democrats' fingerprints are all over this crisis. The biggest recipients of Fannie Mae cash are DEMOCRATS...Chris Dodd tops the list, BARACK OBAMA is second, and John Kerry third. Jim Johnson is a former Vice-Chairman at Fannie Mae, AND Former managing director of Lehman Bros. It seems BOTH those companies have come into question recently. Barack Obama appointed him to his 3 member Vice Presidential search committee. Unfortunately, Jim had to leave abruptly when it was reported that he had receive sweetheart loans directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide...ANOTHER failed mortgage giant, implicated in the subprime mortgage crisis. Franklin Raines is a recent CEO at Fannie Mae, who left the company $90 million richer. According to the Washington Post in April, he was an ECONOMIC advisor to...Barack Obama.

Ms Cocco this is kaka.

Higher taxes, more spending, and less trade, as proposed by you and Sen. Obama would make a bad situation worse.

The only way out of this crisis is economic growth, and Obama's proposals will do just the opposite.

Ms Cocco,

It really a shame that journalists can't be sued for malpractice. But then again, I imagine your insurance premiums would force you to find a real job. You know, that kind of job that requires real accountability?

Before I sign off for the day, I would simply like to say thank most of you for restoring my faith in the fact that some voters actually read and research. Spread the word to your friends that these practices make for more effective, accountable government. God Bless

One last thing: obama just spoke a little while ago and urged Americans to agree to the Socialist Bail Out. He said the way Americans would get their $700 Billion back is through A NEW TAX he would create and impose on Wall Street. 1) Presidents DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO CREATE AND ENFORCE TAXES. That is a legislative power. He has had an opportunity and the power to affect the change he promises through his position as Senator but has instead chosen to exercise that power by voting 'Present' a majority of the time. 2) Experts extimate companies loss an estimated $1.3 TRILLION in the stock market dip yesterday. Does Obama REALLY intend to impose a nes Tax on a company that just lost its share of that $1.3 trillion yesterday? If the loss of all that cash yesterday did not drastically impact layoffs & salaries (it was reported some companies/businesses have gone under after yesterday's loss), taxing the 'survivors' should definitely be painful! Obama is already taxing the top tier of tax payers more than their fair share. Now after a huge loss in the stock market, he wants to tax them further with this NEW stck market tax! I bet he's getting all this advice from his new economic advisors - Former Fannie Mae Chairman and CEO Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, and Jim Johnson, former Vice-Chairman at Fannie Mae, AND Former managing director of Lehman Brothers!

The writer's email address is bogus.

I sent an email to her and received an "undelieverable" notice from the server.

Here is what I sent her:

Hi,

I don't know how old you are, but I am 61 years old and formerly voted the straight Democratic ticket.

Having grown up during the moratorium on building new nuclear/electric plants in the late 1960's
and later, the ban on OCS drilling, I can only say that the Democrats were WRONG on continuing banning these energy sources.

I do not trust Obama and the Democrats to do what is necessary to free our country from foreign oil dependence.
Just a few days ago Senator Reid chose to inject a BAN ON SHALE OIL production and slip it into the Continuing Resolution to fund the government.

There is no telling what will happen if this "me first" attitude continues, but I doubt the Democrats intelligence on this issue.
This is the most important issue of our time. Do we (as a country) choose to continue to rely on foreign countries for our energy needs
or do we do what we HAVE to do to free ourselves and our children from being under other countries thumbs?

Obama is charismatic, no doubt, but it is obvious he doesn't believe or understand the necessity of being self-reliant NOW on this issue.
Senator Reid is beyond redemption on this issue. Of course we need new clean energy sources! But, in the meantime, we need to speed
up the availability of our own resources. When alternative sources are available they can be implemented and oil production can drop as it is no longer needed.

The Democrats deserve blame to sir. The MSM really needs to get off it.

How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable
By TERRY JONES
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 4:30 PM PT

One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?

The answer is: President Clinton wanted it that way.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be.

While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.

In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.

Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.

Addressing the National Association of Realtors that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that "more Americans should own their own homes." He meant it.

Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.

Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.

The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder." Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of "diversity" in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.

Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

"Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance," wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.

But those rules weren't enough.

Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban Development to double-team the issue. That would later prove disastrous.

Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, "made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis," the liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.

Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.

Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsored enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions of dollars of loans into poor communities, often "no doc" and "no income" loans that required no money down and no verification of income.

By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market — a staggering exposure.

Worse still was the cronyism.

Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal survey of their top officials shows a roughly 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.

Then there were the campaign donations. From 1989 to 2008, some 384 politicians got their tip jars filled by Fannie and Freddie.

Over that time, the two GSEs spent $200 million on lobbying and political activities. Their charitable foundations dropped millions more on think tanks and radical community groups.

Did it work? Well, if measured by the goal of putting more poor people into homes, the answer would have to be yes.

From 1995 to 2005, a Harvard study shows, minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners.

The problem is that many of those loans have now gone bad, and minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

Fannie and Freddie, with their massive loan portfolios stuffed with securitized mortgage-backed paper created from subprime loans, are a failed legacy of the Clinton era.

Once again, the liberal, left wing media just doesn't get it. If President Bush is to be put on trail, and I don't believe he should be, then high level Democrats like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Nancy Pelosi, who actually bear much more responsibility for this current mess, need to be on trial as well. In 2001 and 2003 the Bush administration tried in vain to warn Congress, and the rest of the country for that matter, that Fannie and Freddie were heading for disaster. Barney Frank's response was that Fannie and Freddie were doing just fine. The result: No action taken. In 2005, then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, warned that Fannie and Freddie needed to be reigned in, but nothing was done. Then in late 2005, McCain co-sponsored a bill that, had it passed, would have forced more regulations on Fannie and Freddie causing them to get their financial house in order. That bill was blocked by Chris Dodd and other Democrats. In the midst of all of this, Fannie and Freddie were found to be "cooking the books" which resulted in high level executives making tens of millions of dollars. The left wing media is all to quick to point out the so called "failed policies of the last eight years" which is nothing more than a Democratic talking point that doesn't hold water. What they need to do is be honest about the situation and call high ranking Democrats on the carpet for doing nothing in the way of reforming Fannie and Freddie.

Hey FxChip, the Democrats had the numbers to pass the bill on their own; however, 95/96 Democrats voted against this socialist legislation. One joined w/a GOP to inform the public there are 2 alternatives that do not require the excessive $700 Billion bailout and has as much of a chance as working as does the bailout but that Pelosi will not allow them to be brought up for discussion on the floor. So the argument that America's options are the Socialist bailout or 'Financial Arnageddon' is a lie! As I pointed out: Neither the Democrats or Republicans get the 'BLAME' for the bailout being 'defeated' yesterday - the American people are responsible for successfully defeating this Socialist anti-accountability nationalizig of US financial institutions and the rewarding or criminal and fiscally irresponsible business practives!

Glad you've seen the light, Marie. The Reaganomics-Clintonomics (rubber-stamping the former) era from 1980 to now makes Hoover and Co. look like nothing. Obama has already blown away the Clintons, now it's McCain, Bush, and the Republican Right's turn. Yes, indeed, CHANGE is coming.

Interesting how she leaves out Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
No surprise she works for the Wash Post. They are a nest of pathetic partisans masking as journalists. Her lack of professional journalistic principles is astounding

SergeantJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Listen to all the republicans trying to blame this
> mess on the democrats! Do they not remember who
> has controlled Congress for 14 of the last 16
> years? One of them even tried to blame Clinton,
> and said Bush was blameless! They scream ACORN!
> ACORN!, even though it's only the latest fake
> scandal easily disproven and completely
> ridiculous. They scream about contributions from
> Freddie and Fannie, despite contributions going to
> both parties, and particularly during a time when
> republicans controlled both houses of Congress!
> Logic and reason and reality have gone completely
> out the window, it's last-ditch blame time!
>
> It's not surprising though. This crisis is the
> final nail in the coffin for trickle-down
> economics and the idea that "government is the
> problem", as Reagan said. We know now that Reagan
> was wrong. Government isn't the problem, BAD
> government is the problem. And no one runs
> government worse than the republicans. The poor
> partisans who have supported Bush and Cheney and
> Gingrich and Dole and Bush Sr and Reagan for all
> these years, it's hard for them to accept that
> their entire government philosophy has gone up in
> flames. They are backed into a corner and lashing
> out. Give them time to cool off, they will be
> fine.


Yeah, right! You read the bs from the Democrat Party enough and reason goes out the window.
Democrats controlled this country in Congressional majorites since the 1950's until 1996.
DEMOCRATS banned nuclear/electic plant construction and drilling OCS. THEY created a dependence on foreign oil that YOU (and everybody else) PAYS for every time we put gas in our cars. You DO have a car, right?
Senator Reid injected a ban on SHALE OIL into the C.R. bill to fund the country during this crisis.
Democrats can not be trusted with our country's future they have PROVED that to be true with there BANS making use dependent of foreign oil. We need to be as self-sufficent as possible and Democrats are against that.

As to this financial crisis...it started with Bill Clinton wanting every minority to have a chance to own their own home. A noble endevor, but the WRONG way to do it.

READ THIS:

How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime
> Crisis Inevitable
> By TERRY JONES
> INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday,
> September 24, 2008 4:30 PM PT
>
> One of the most frequently asked questions about
> the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis
> is: How did the government get so deeply involved
> in the housing market?
>
> The answer is: President Clinton wanted it that
> way.
>
> Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early
> 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be.
>
> While President Carter in 1977 signed the
> Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie
> and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority
> communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the
> process. After entering office in 1993, he
> extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.
>
> In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private,
> mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized
> monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made
> loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed
> favors, jobs and money to political allies. This
> potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the
> Fannie-Freddie collapse.
>
> Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie,
> in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National
> Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in
> ways Congress never intended.
>
> Addressing the National Association of Realtors
> that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that
> "more Americans should own their own homes." He
> meant it.
>
> Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the
> door for blacks and other minorities to enter the
> middle class.
>
> Though well-intended, the problem was that
> Congress was about to change hands, from the
> Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit
> legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost
> sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's
> Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.
>
> The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000,
> "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder."
> Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and
> measures for the level of "diversity" in their
> loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key
> for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with
> another.
>
> Loans started being made on the basis of race, and
> often little else.
>
> "Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data,
> broken down by neighborhood, income group and
> race, to rate banks on performance," wrote Howard
> Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.
>
> But those rules weren't enough.
>
> Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban
> Development to double-team the issue. That would
> later prove disastrous.
>
> Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, "made a
> series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that
> gave birth to the country's current crisis," the
> liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions
> were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into
> subprime loan markets in a big way.
>
> Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie
> extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just
> 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10%
> for banks.
>
> Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks
> due to implicit government guarantees for their
> debt, the government-sponsored enterprises
> boomed.
>
> With incentives in place, banks poured billions of
> dollars of loans into poor communities, often "no
> doc" and "no income" loans that required no money
> down and no verification of income.
>
> By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed
> nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage
> market — a staggering exposure.
>
> Worse still was the cronyism.
>
> Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work
> politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal
> survey of their top officials shows a roughly
> 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.
>
> Then there were the campaign donations. From 1989
> to 2008, some 384 politicians got their tip jars
> filled by Fannie and Freddie.
>
> Over that time, the two GSEs spent $200 million on
> lobbying and political activities. Their
> charitable foundations dropped millions more on
> think tanks and radical community groups.
>
> Did it work? Well, if measured by the goal of
> putting more poor people into homes, the answer
> would have to be yes.
>
> From 1995 to 2005, a Harvard study shows,
> minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new
> homeowners.
>
> The problem is that many of those loans have now
> gone bad, and minority homeownership rates are
> shrinking fast.
>
> Fannie and Freddie, with their massive loan
> portfolios stuffed with securitized
> mortgage-backed paper created from subprime loans,
> are a failed legacy of the Clinton era.

Five years ago the NYTimes reported the Bush administration proposed increased oversight and regulation of Fannie and Freddie, but Dems pushed back.

"These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

The blame rests ENTIRELY on BARNEY FRANK, CHRIS DODD, CHUCK SCHUMER, NANCY PELOSI and HARRY REID. They are the ones who blocked Bush's proposal for more oversight and regulation on the Mortgage companies. Frank said F&F was just fine and needed no regulations! Frank is the one who wrote the bill forcing banks to give out all those loans to bums! Barney Frank should be the first to HANG

"I think the responsibility the democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by republicans in the congress to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie May & Freddie Mac." –– Bill Clinton

Democrats need to be prosecuted for misconduct, criminal negligence, treason!

McCain said Fannie and Freddie were "deeply in need of reform" in 2005, and co-sponsored the Fed Housing Enterprises Regulatory Reform Act.

Obama should look at his Democratic party which compelled financial institutions to give loans to people who could not afford them. His party prevented the tighter reigning in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that the financial fires could be stoked. Nor should we be unmindful of the Democratic operatives who headed the giant financial institutions who failed to do accounting for their trusteeship for several years. One of them picked up a measly 90 million dollars for less than six years of work. The Democratic house leadership is a bad joke.

This is just one more demonstration of why Democrats think Republicans are evil, and Republicans are convinced that Democrats are stupid. Fanny and Freddie were wrecking this economy long before Bush came to office. Look up who was in charge in the 90's when this disaster was establishing its choke hold. The problem was not 8 years in the making. Anyone who thinks Barny Frank was not in the tank for F & F reads nothing, or reads know-nothings like Marie Cocco.

WMc, first they need a stern application of a prudent bill, then T,T,T!


Whit McNeill Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Transparency! Transparency! Transparency!
>
> Without it, these big cats will take us ALL to the
> cleaners again. Same thing happened in the S&L
> scandals. And whoever is ultimately responsible,
> or has any stake in it whatsoever, will sit there
> and sing how strong and stable our economy is
> right up until the time they drive it off the
> cliff.
>
> Fix it right this time, America! After all, we
> are the government, regardless of what these Big
> corps and lobbyists say....Read the Preamble to
> the Constitution again.

I'm sick of providing irrefutible evidence that the very democrats who are publically blaming this administration for this so-called "crisis", are, in fact, the ones who are actually responsible.
(for the crisis, itself, and for fighting against proposed reforms...this is a fact)

I don't even care about that, anymore.
The truth is, about 1/2 of the population of this country are so detached from reality...and have been for so long, they CAN''T understand what has happened, and why.
Are they stupid?..normally I'd say yes. But it this case, it's more due to ignorance.

Americans have been so unaffected by any hardships that most of the rest of the world occasionally experience, we have become lazy, uniformed, and unconcerned.
Now that there's reason for some to be concerned, these same blissfully ignorant people aren't capable of analyzing the facts, researching past policy decisions, and understanding how those changes in policy led to yet another failure of a big-govt. program that never should have existed in the first place.

You are never going to get the people who don't know anything, other than the fact that they hate all things republicans to understand any of this.
(I'm sure some do...those are the ones who are waiting with their fingers crossed, in gleeful anticipation of the complete collapse of what little capitalism this country still employs.)
Liberals like the writer of this column, hate this country, and everything that it stands for.
That's the bottom line.

An infantile essay by Ms. Cocco. Merely asserting a position as fact and listing various spurious unrelated statements as supporting evidence does not make a convincing argument - rather it undoes the very proposition you advance. One has to overlook the obvious political persuasion of Ms. Cocco and her willful ignorance of long-standing Democrat housing and banking policies that created this mess to buy into any of it.

Reading her piece is 3 minutes I'll never get back.

If, like this writer, the members of the jury selected for this mock court have an utter lack of economic understanding, then, yeah, Bush would be found guilty.

It just goes to prove that no matter which side you are on, it's much easier to interpret the facts to fit your own preconceived notions of what's happened than to actually try to connect the dots and figure things out for yourself.

First, to those of you who constantly refer to the Sept 1999 NYT article about the Clinton administration pushing loans to people who normally wouldn't qualify: it might help if you read the full text of that article. You see, what Clinton proposed and Fannie implemented was a plan to INSURE (not make, but INSURE) loans made to people who were JUST UNDER the normal line of acceptability, in exchange for a one-percent increase in the FIXED INTEREST RATE on the loan for TWO YEARS. These are not the loans that are failing. The loans that are failing are the creation of banks: three, five, and seven-year balloons, two-year ARMs, no-doc loans that you don't even have to prove your employment to get, zero-interest loans. A whole raft of loans being made BY BANKS, not by Federal requirement. The definition of a sub-prime loan is one that Fannie and Freddie won't buy.

Why did banks create these risky loan types? Because changes slipped into a 1999 budget bill at the last second by Phil Gramm overturned Glass-Stegall and allowed investment houses to buy, sell, and trade mortgages like securities. This new market was totally unregulated. This led to the rise of Mortgage-backed Securities. Wall Street investment houses made tons of money buying and selling these. The would take out loans (sell commercial paper) to get the money they needed to buy them. Executives made huge bonuses on them. As a result, they were hungry to get more of them, and put pressure on banks to sell them more mortgages. This allowed banks to make riskier and riskier mortgages, since the bank never had anything at risk - they would just sell the mortgage to the investment houses. After 9/11, Allan Greenspan lowered interest rates, which made mortgages even cheaper to get into. With all these mortgages being made, the housing market got tight and prices began to rise quickly. That allowed individuals to buy homes as an investment, taking out a loan with a low introductory rate in the hopes of selling the property before the piper came to be paid.

Eventually, home prices rose to the point that no one else could get into this Ponzi scheme. And then the thing that everyone feared happened. Home prices started to re-adjust downward at the same time that ARM levels started to re-adjust upward. Suddenly, people could no longer afford their payments, couldn't unload the property for what they owed on it, and couldn't re-finance. So what did they do? They defaulted and gave the property to the banks.

Investment banks started to see a growing number of defaults. So they began to buy investment insurance from AIG and other lenders. AIG insured these Mortgage-backed securities fairly inexpensively, since mortgages had always been one of the safest investments in history. So rating agencies like Fair Isaac continued to give these investments Triple-A ratings, and AIG insured them accordingly.

And that's where we were six months ago. House prices started to fall. Home buyers started to default. Investment houses stopped buying mortgages. Investors stopped buying mortgage-backed securities. AIG stopped insuring the investments.

And then people looked around and noticed...

No one had any clear idea what these Mortgage-backed securities were worth.

AIG had insured 35 times more bad mortgages than their entire company was worth, and a large number of them were in default.

Investment banks had borrowed 50-70 times more money than they had assets to cover in order to by mortgages, and a large number of them were in default.

Banks were still holding many mortgages that the investment banks would not buy, and many of them were in default.

Freddie and Fannie had backed trillions of dollars of Triple-A rated loans, only to find they were nowhere near as solid as they had been led to believe.

All our nation's credit capital was tied up in mortgages that might not pay off.

So, everyone please note that NOWHERE IN THIS ENTIRE LITANY DID I MENTION GEORGE BUSH, BILL CLINTON, CHRIS DODD, BARNEY FRANK, JOHN McCAIN, or BARAK OBAMA.

Government did NOT cause this crisis. Reagan, Clinton, Phil Gramm, Allan Greenspan, and many, many others set up a climate wherein this crisis could happen. But it happened because investment bankers found a way to make huge sums of money buying and selling mortgages. And while many people, including both John McCain and Barak Obama, have spoken out in warning of this impending disaster, no one has done anything to avert it.

Who could have done something? It's a long list...

Ben Bernake could have raised interest rates and make mortgages less inviting as an investment.

Henry Paulson could have instituted or enforced checks and balances already on the books.

Congress could have changed the laws to regulate this behavior.

President Bush could have appointed regulators who believed in regulations, not hands-off free-market types, or taken a lot of other steps to head it off.

So while Wall Street created this mess, there were any number of government agents who could have stopped it, but did not. Some refused for ideological reasons. Some didn't have the power. Some didn't see the need. But they all failed in their duty to put the nation's best interests above their own or those of a narrow group of people.

And so here we are. And all the pointed fingers in the world won't plug the hole in this dike before it collapses and floods us. So could be concentrate on the SOLUTION please, and leave the BLAME to the historians?

Marie,
You present no facts and neither does Mr. Obama that Bush and his administration are responsible for the crisis. There are loads of facts supporting the contention that this is a democrat caused crisis (in more ways than one).
Cheers.

Marie-
Check your facts. Democrats have more to do with this crisis than Bush and the Republican administration. Maybe a little more thorough research before such an ill-informed editorial next time.

Cocco-nut, go back to school for basic journalism and learn to be fair and balance. If not then STFU!!!!

1. Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending. That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn't qualify for a loan.
2. The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the "Community Reinvestment Act." This law was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans ... millions of them.
3. Now we see what happens when political "wisdom" supplants good loan underwriting. When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history .. this is what you get. Enjoy it.

Check the early warnings from Bush, Republicans, and McCain, vs the resistance from the corrupt democrats. The warnings are on the record & are facts. Check the 2004 Youtube video out there. Hard to deny. If Republicans were truly responsible, you can bet the Media & dems would be stringing them up alive.

People wake up. The dems are destroying this country for power. Their impact on education is a crime. The war on poverty hasn't worked. If you were to take the trillions pumped into social programs since the 60's to fight poverty, you could make every man, woman, and child in America a millionaire. Now they're impacting our ecomomy.

Having been born and raised in Indiana where, according to the link in RealClearPolitics.com, this was published in the Indianapolis Star, I was rather surprised to see the title of your article and was hoping that the title didn't really reflect your opinion. I always thought that my fellow Hoosiers had considerably more intelligence and common sense than was reflected in the title so I read it to see if perhaps you absolved yourself. You didn't. I then thought that you must be an import to Indiana (perhaps from Illinois).

Thoughout the Bush Presidency the economy has been quite good with the exception of a few pockets such as the one-state recession in Michigan caused by a Democrat governor who acted in accordance with Democrat principles to raise taxes. This had the predictable result of an economic decline.

The current national situation does not reflect a poor economy since there is only one area which is impacted, viz. the mortgage industry, which in turn has had a negative impact upon the financial markets. This cannot be laid at the door of the Bush administration. It is clearly the result of the decision of the Democrat Presidents Carter and Clinton to change the tried and true lending criteria to make it incumbent upon lenders to make loans which they would not previously have made since the applicants did not meet the criteria which had been used to that point to determine who would be approved. This resulted in lenders being forced to lend to applicants which were not credit-worthy. It is hardly surprising that this would result in defaults. As animals who are higher on the food chain tend to accumulate toxins to a much higher level than their prey which originally consumed them, so also these bad loans became concentrated in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who were the first to be impacted by the results of mortgage defaults. It did not help that certain persons at these corporations cooked the books to ensure that they would obtain very substantial bonuses. It just so happens that these persons had been highly placed officials in the Clinton administration and were Democrats, one and all. It also turns out that Democrats such as Chris Dodd, Barak Obama, Barney Frank, Hillary Clinton etc were the beneficiaries of the largesse of Fannie and Freddie. When Republicans such as President Bush himself and John McCain warned years ago that there was a danger in the policies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they were virtually shouted down by the likes of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and others -- again, Democrats one and all. Since Democrats were in control of Fannie and Freddie and also the beneficiaries of its largesse, is it really surprising that they would oppose killing "the goose that laid the golden egg"? Now "the chickens have come home to roost" (haven't I heard that somewhere before recently?). The Democrats are in a tizzy to attempt to shift the blame to greedy bankers on Wall Street so as to divert attention from their own culpability. It won't work. We know who is to blame. Hopefully when they come up for election the voters in their districts will "throw the bums out."

I was somewhat relieved when I came to the end of your article and noted that it was published in the Washington Post. I would hate to think that this article actually had anything to do with Indiana. I am used to seeing the opinions of idiots published in the Washington Post.

Where do we get people like Marie Cocco?

Why are they so poorly informed and desperately partisan, they make utter fools of themselves?

How on Earth could they possibly be so misguided, and utterly lost?

"It started with the Freddie – Fannie collapse. They wrote loans to individuals who they shouldn’t have. Government policies encouraged loans to minorities and the underwriting function of banks was no longer approving loans upon an individual’s creditworthiness but their race was now a factor in the loan decision. In 1997 President Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, claimed Fannie Mae had exhibited "racial discrimination" and proposed that 50 percent of the GSEs' (Fannie and Freddie) loan portfolio be made up of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers by 2001. When individuals are given loans based on race and not their ability to pay, it is inevitable that bad loans would be written and foreclosures would come. That’s what happened and in a big way."

Dear Ms. Coco:
Your ignorance of the topic on which you opine is staggering! If you had an editor, they also should be fired forthwith for gross incompetence in permitting this dross to be printed beyond the outhouse wall.
With any interest in honest journalism, and 10 minutes on the Internet, it is a mindless search to get real facts:
1. The 95th Congress (66% Democrat), during Jimmy Carter’s (Democrat) presidency enacted the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) eliminated fiscal regulations to encourage mortgages to people who would not normally qualify for them. This was in response to what was called ‘Redlining’ referring to the practice of mapping areas where mortgages were not considered a good investment. This obviously impacted inner-city poor more than others. This bill was widely (some would say universally), condemned by the mainstream banking community.
2. The CRA also encouraged Freddie Mac to buy mortgages on the secondary market and to sell them as mortgage-backed securities on the open market.
3. The 104th Congress (53% Republican), under Bill Clinton (Democrat), in 1995 revised the CRA to substantially increase both the number, and amount of loans to small business and low- and moderate-income borrowers.
4. These increases were accelerated by mortgage companies such as Countrywide that bundled risky mortgages with traditional mortgages using the sub-prime authorization of the 1995 revision of the CRA.
5. The first public securitization of CRA loans started in 1997 by Bear Stearns.
6. During the period 1993~1998 (Clinton presidency) CRA mortgage loans increased by 39% while traditional mortgages increased only 17%. During the same period, Fannie and Freddie retained mortgages increased from 5% to 22%. As they retained the mortgages, they retained the risk. For example, an interest rate change of only 2% can have a dramatic impact on risk: if rates increase 2%, the value of fix-rate mortgage portfolio can lose as much as 18% of it’s value: while a drop of 2% that same portfolio can lose up to 25% of it’s value.
7. Fannie and Freddie are capitalized at 2.5% of their investments, giving them no security against market fluctuations.
8. In 1999, Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines (Obama economic advisor) announced a program to encourage banks to extend mortgages to those “whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.” “…In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.”

9. By the 110th Congress in 2007 (54% Democrat) under George Bush presidency Fannie and Freddie either owned or guaranteed half the $12 Trillion US mortgage market.
10. Chris Dodd (D-Cn since 1981) and Barney Frank (D-Ma since 1981) have driven the expansion of credit to low income borrowers through Fannie and Freddie as long as they have been in Congress (27 years).
11. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson was employed by Goldman Sachs since 1974, rising to CEO 1994~1998; and leaving in 2006 to become Secretary of the Treasury. Paulson built a net worth exceeding $700 Million during his years at Goldman Sachs
12. According to Tom Eley in a piece for the World Socialist Web Site (9/23/08): “..Paulson then handsomely benefited from the speculative boom. This wealth was based on financial manipulation and did nothing to create real value in the economy. On the contrary, the extraordinary enrichment of individuals like Paulson was the corollary to the dismantling of the real economy, the bankrupting of the government, and the impoverishment of masses the world over…”
There is more than enough blame to go around, but to suggest that this is solely the result of failures of the Bush presidency is silly. Democrats have been driving us into the morass for over 30 years.
The Federal government created this problem, and for reasons that are not yet obvious, they are attempting to socialize the financial industry in America. The taxpayers should not be called upon to foot the bill of this until every single trader, who drove this process, and profited from this process sacrifices their ill-gotten gains against the losses they have created through their malfeasance.
As it now stands, we have precisely the people that have created, and empowered this fiasco in charge of correcting it. Paulson demonstrated his contempt for all Americans with his absurd plan to crown himself the Grand Un-Accountable czar with control of $700 Billion at his sole personal non-reviewable discretion. Now I know how the hens felt when the fox was given control over the hen house.
As for you Ms. Coco if you had any character, you would be ashamed of yourself.

Always interesting to read another of Obama's media harem helping him and his Party cover their tracks. These people are shameless in their partisanship,their disrespect for the intelligence of the American people, and their lack of basic integrity in reporting.

Perhaps Cocco thinks we missed reports that showed Obama number two in taking money from the Fannie Mae crowd. Or that Obama's advisor(Raines) jumped off the ship he helped to sink with 90 million in his pocket. Or that Bush tried twelve times to get Congress to provide oversight. Or that Barney Franke and Maxine Waters thwarted and suppressed attempts by government regulators to police Fannie Mae.

And then we saw Pelosi, in typical Elvira Gulch mode, wipe out the stock market by calling a vote on the bailout that she knew would end in defeat. Anything to elect Obama, even if it meant wiping out billions of other people's investments. Yeah, this witch will get your retirement, and your little dog too.

The ongoing financial crisis is largely a result of democrat politicians pressuring banks to loan money to people that had no business getting loans. All part of their tradition of buying votes with other people's tax money. Started with Carter(shocking) and his CRA, then came to full fruition with Dodd, Schumer, and Frank providing mafia-like protection for their Fannie Mae friends to loot the system. Check out how much these corrupt politicians got from the Fannie Mae crowd. Follow the money.

They get away with it thanks to a media that is not a watchdog, but a lapdog of a party they will do anything to promote. Talk about the culture of corruption. Ms. Cocco is the very personification of it. Maybe one day the media will regain some semblance of integrity and kick ideological tramps like her to the curb.

Ms Cocco,
Convict Barney Frank, Democrat and Obama?
Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis

[www.youtube.com]

Watch CSPAN video on Barney Frank in 2004 denying there were problems with Fannie and Freddy when republican tried to regulate their illegal practices
Barney Frank and Maxine Walters--Nothing wrong with Fanny and Freddy and Thomas Raines did a great job by paying himself millions of dollars. Obama got the third largest donation from Fanny and Freddy. Mainstream media--quiet and blaming McCain and republican. Where is the fairness here and why do the taxpayers have to bail Fannie and Freddy?

Ms Cocco is locco....She obviously has no real understanding of how this whole financial mess came about. If she was serious she would follow the trail all the way back. This problem was in the making more than 8 years ago. How about looking into Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd, Fannie and Freddie May/Mack. They are in the business of re writing history soley for their own political gain.

Marie, your ignorance is overwhelming. You should really try doing something called research. Even a fifth grader could figure out the series of events that got us into this mess with less background information than your little mind could comprehend.

Please do us all a big favor silly girl, find another career outside of "journalism."

Note to Editor: To allow such nonsense to be posted on your site, you're clearly an idiot too.