<div dir="ltr"><div>Can anyone confirm, is Obama's 3 financial advisors the 3 Corporate Officers from Fannie Mae?</div>
<div>I've seen a few e-mails and many sources sited... but can has anyone seen the true confirmation of it?<br>~Lance<br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net">gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br> an eye-opening email I received.<br><br>greenBubble<br><br>-----Original Message-----<br>From: <a href="mailto:naomiragen@mail-list.com">naomiragen@mail-list.com</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:naomiragen@mail-list.com">naomiragen@mail-list.com</a>] On<br>
Behalf Of <a href="mailto:nragen@netvision.net.il">nragen@netvision.net.il</a><br>Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 1:30 AM<br>Subject: Whose Financial Mess is it, Anyway?<br><br><br>Friends,<br><br><br><br>So, what really happened to the U.S. economy, and where should the buck<br>
really land?<br><br>Jeff Jacoby, one of the few U.S. journalists that you could read during<br>the<br>Intifada because he always got things right,<br>gets it right again. Beyond the hysteria to the facts.<br><br><br><br>
Naomi<br><br>------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>----<br>------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>----<br>--<br><br>September 28, 2008<br><br><br>
<br>WHOSE MESS, CONGRESSMAN FRANK?<br><br>By Jeff Jacoby<br><br>The Boston Globe<br><br><br><br>Sunday, September 28, 2008<br><br><br><br> "The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to<br>get us<br>
out of it."<br><br><br><br> That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the<br>Massachusetts Democrat has explained it<br><<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1fM28w34uQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1fM28w34uQ</a>> in recent days, , the<br>
current<br>financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the<br>political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The<br>Wall<br>Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in<br>
the<br>private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today<br>"thanks to<br>a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that<br>philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he<br>
said,<br>'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the<br>problem.' "<br><br><br><br> In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In<br>this<br>present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;<br>
government is<br>the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same<br>thing.<br><br><br><br> Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its<br>share<br>of private-sector culprits -- many of whom have been learning lately<br>
just<br>how pitiless<br><<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/09/15/lehman.merrill.stocks.turmoil/index.html" target="_blank">http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/09/15/lehman.merrill.stocks.turmoi<br>l/in<br>
dex.html</a>> the private sector's discipline can be -- they weren't the<br>ones<br>who "got us into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points<br>notwithstanding,<br>mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held<br>
standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to<br>unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke<br>up<br>to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so<br>
--<br>or else.<br><br><br><br> The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That<br>was<br>when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began<br>accusing<br>mortgage lenders of racism<br>
<<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DF1E39F932A3575AC0A96F" target="_blank">http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DF1E39F932A3575AC0<br>A96F</a><br>948260<br><<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DF1E39F932A3575AC0A96F" target="_blank">http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DF1E39F932A3575AC0<br>
A96F</a><br>948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all> &sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all> and<br>"redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher<br>rate than suburban whites.<br>
<br><br><br> The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers<br>with<br>weak credit histories) became relentless. In 1977 Congress passed the<br>Community Reinvestment Act <<a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/dcca/cra" target="_blank">http://www.federalreserve.gov/dcca/cra</a>> ,<br>
empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit<br>needs"<br>of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." In 1995, under<br>President Clinton, the law was made even more stringent. Lenders<br>
responded<br>by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy<br>loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae<br>and<br>Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more<br>
"flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for<br>home<br>loans, and then buying up hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of the<br>questionable mortgages that ensued. Some state and local governments<br>
added<br>pressure of their own<br><<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE4D8153AF937A2575AC0A96F" target="_blank">http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE4D8153AF937A2575AC0<br>A96F</a><br>
948260> .<br><br><br><br> All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among<br>minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound<br>business<br>practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised<br>
mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit<br>history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines<br><<a href="http://www.bos.frb.org/commdev/commaff/closingt.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.bos.frb.org/commdev/commaff/closingt.pdf</a>> instructed.<br>
Applicants lacking sufficient savings to cover a down payment and<br>closing<br>costs should be allowed to rely instead on "gifts, grants, or loans from<br>relatives, nonprofit organizations, or municipal agencies." Lenders were<br>
even directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as<br>"valid<br>income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean<br>a<br>lawsuit.<br><br><br><br> As long as housing prices kept rising -- and with millions of<br>
otherwise<br>unqualified borrowers adding to demand, they did -- the illusion that<br>all<br>this was good public policy<br><<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807" target="_blank">http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807</a>> could be<br>
sustained.<br>But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning<br>would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more<br>loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that<br>
they<br>are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the<br>activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures<br>rolls<br>through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers,<br>
politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"<br><br><br><br> Not Barney Frank. And yet his fingerprints are all over this<br>fiasco.<br>Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were<br>
in<br>good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration<br>proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant<br>that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any<br>
kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic<br>risk<br>for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank<br>complained that the administration was more concerned about financial<br>
safety<br>than about housing.<br><br><br><br> Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent<br>to<br>all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this<br>mess."<br>
Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private<br>lenders<br>have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class<br>that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he<br>
can<br>find one likely suspect in the nearest mirror.</blockquote></div></div>