How Should Democrats Eat The Half-Trillion $ Monsters Fannie And Freddie? One Bite At A Time

The truth is finally starting to come out in spite of the media.  After a mountain of Democrat-media complex lies buried so many inconvenient truths.

First it was Barney Frank’s admissions on tape before the economy went to hell caused by his horrendous liberal policies.

And now this little exchange:

CNBC’s Rick Santelli Rips Key Democrat For Ignoring Fannie/Freddie Reform
Dems’ Financial “Reform” Leaves Taxpayers on the Hook for Government Mortgage Giants

Washington, May 11 – Follow @GOPLeader on Twitter for updates.

Democrats still don’t get it, and they refuse to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government mortgage companies that sparked the meltdown by giving high-risk loans to people who couldn’t afford it.   Standing up for American taxpayers, CNBC’s on-air editor, Rick Santelli teed off on Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s (D-PA) claim that Democrats’ couldn’t reform Fannie & Freddie in their financial regulation bill because it was “too complicated,” asking: “It’s too complicated?  You think taxpayers that go to work to pay the money you are subsidizing, it will end up a half a trillion, do you think they think complicated is an excuse?”

The exchange couldn’t have come at a worse time for Rep. Kanjorski and Congressional Democrats, because Fannie and Freddie simply won’t go away.  As the Financial Times reported today:

“Fannie Mae said on Monday it would need an additional $8.4bn in aid, as the US government-controlled mortgage finance company continued to suffer heavy losses on its bad loans…Fannie Mae’s appeal for help comes on the heels of a similar plea last week by smaller rival Freddie Mac, which asked for an additional $10.6bn cash infusion.  The latest requests for aid bring the total amount of taxpayer dollars drawn down by these companies to $148bn since the 2008 government-led bail-out.

“Anthony Sanders, a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, called Fannie and Freddie ‘our own Greek tragedy.’  Mr. Sanders estimated that total taxpayer liability was about $8,000bn for the combined companies, including public debt and loan guarantees.”

But the unlimited bailout that the Administration has bestowed on Fannie and Freddie doesn’t seem to bother Democrats, though the latest giveaway may come at an “inconvenient time,” as the New York Times noted today:

“Fannie Mae’s request on Monday for another $8.4 billion in federal aid comes at a politically inconvenient time for the Obama administration, which is pressing to pass sweeping financial legislation without resolving the company’s future…. Democrats want to defer an overhaul of federal housing policy until next year, after the midterm elections. But Republicans have seized on the continuing losses to argue that a plan for the two companies should be a priority of the current legislation.”

Republicans have been pressing for an end to bailouts that would get the government out of the mortgage business once and for all.  But Democrats are not only unwilling to reform Fannie and Freddie, they are doubling down on the failed government mortgage companies – burning through hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in the process.  As the Washington Post noted in a report today: “Under the terms of the government’s 2008 emergency takeover of Fannie and Freddie, the Treasury must pump money into either firm whenever its worth, as measured by assets minus liabilities, goes into the red. Late last year, the Obama administration pledged unlimited backing.”

For years, Republicans raised red flags about Fannie and Freddie’s financial condition and proposed responsible reforms only to be thwarted by Democrats who have deep political ties to the worst offenders.  These same powerful Democrats are now pushing for a financial reform bill that doesn’t even address the need to fix these government mortgage companies.  As the Wall Street Journal wrote last week, “reforming the financial system without fixing Fannie and Freddie is like declaring a war on terror and ignoring al Qaeda.”

House Republicans’ plan would phase out taxpayer subsidies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over a number of years and end the current model of privatized profits and taxpayer losses.  Find out more by clicking HERE.

For the record, “8,000 billion” is another way of saying $8 TRILLION DOLLARS.  That’s what Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Democrat Party have cost us.

The biggest problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has always been that it was a social welfare institution disingenuously masquerading as a financial institution.  The giant GSEs were packaged and sold under entirely false pretenses.

It was Democrats who established Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  It has been Democrats who have controlled the staffing of both agencies for decades.  It was Democrats – and particularly it was Barack Obama – who took more campaign money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than ANYONE.  It was Democrats who refused to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when George Bush and later John McCain repeatedly pleaded for such regulation and reform of the out-of-control agencies.  It was Democrats like Franklin Raines who were running Fannie and Freddie when all the policies that led us down the road to hell were imposed, just as it was Democrats who were running Fannie and Freddie when the fecal matter started hitting the rotary oscillator.

It was a Democrat who said that everything was fine with Fannie and Freddie less than TWO MONTHS before they completely collapsed:

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS, July 14, 2008: I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward.

And I think that anybody who respects what you think is a deluded and deranged dumbass, Mr. Frank.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now in control of 96.5% of all mortgages, for those who don’t think they’re all that important in their role of creating the mortgage meltdown.  It was Fannie and Freddie that bundled all the bad mortgages into mortgage-backed securities and then sold the mortgage-backed and debt securities to domestic and international capital investors under the illusion that they were guaranteed by the federal government.

Fannie and Freddie were a $5 trillion wasted boondoggle BEFORE things got even worse.  They exist only to help liberals and lose money.  And there’s no end in sight.

How bad is it???

Just how bad is the news at Fannie/Freddie? On Friday morning, Moody’s downgraded their outstanding preferred stock 5 notches from A1 to Baa3 (a slight gradation above junk) and their Bank Financial Strength Ratings (BSFR) to D+ from B- (one/half notch above D, which is reserved for companies in default). […]

When the Treasury peels back the onion, I believe they will find a hornet’s nest. I think we will see an initial bailout of $100 billion or so, with 2/3-3/4 going to Fannie (as it is a larger organization). The scenario I foresee however, just as happened at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, is that they came to the financing window expecting to have borrowed enough, but then find they have to keep coming back repeatedly until the buyers go away or until “We The People” have thrown at least $500 billion at Fannie/Freddie to get them back on their feet again. This will also likely take an Act of Congress to raise the Treasury’s Debt ceiling quite dramatically

The United States used to be the greatest nation in the history of the world; now we’re more like a chicken that has had its head cut off, but is too disconnected from reality to know that it’s already dead.

Our deficits are now four times as high as they were a year ago, and they are twice as high as Obama said they would be in the very worst case scenario.

We’re screwed.  Frankly, America voted to be screwed when it elected Barack Obama and Democrats.

Obama’s Growing List of Man-Caused Disasters

I hoped I would find a more or less complete assemblage of all the attempted terror attacks on U.S. soil that we’ve experienced since Obama came to office promising to end terrorism with his sheer exalted wonderfulness.

It wasn’t easy.  List like this one are far and few between.  I had to go back and stumble across a few names based on some attacks I remembered, and start entering search terms.

The media have clearly dropped the ball in keeping track of Obama’s “success” in dealing with this very real threat.

Barack Obama refused to even use the word “terrorism,” instead calling terrorist attacks “man-caused disasters.”  Whereas George Bush took terrorism seriously and went to war to take on those who would kill Americans wherever they were, Barack Obama decided that there was no war, and renamed it an “overseas contingency operation.”

I provided all the html links, and added a couple of comments in brackets.

Man-Caused Disasters Remained A Concern In 2009

Posted by: RFW @ 2:00 pm

Despite the hope and change brought along with a new administration, Americans discovered in 2009 that the threat of terrorism remained. There were several near disasters this last year along with a couple of actual man-caused disasters. While creating the following list I was surprised by the large number of arrests on American soil. I assume my surprise is due to the fact that the media generally forgets about these incidents within a very short period of time and does not make any attempt to report them as another piece of a larger puzzle.

– On May 20, 2009 three U.S. citizens (James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams) and one Haitian (Laguerre Payen) from Newburgh, New York were arrested in a plot to blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale community of the Bronx. The men allegedly placed bombs wired to cell phones in three separate cars outside the Riverdale Temple and nearby Riverdale Jewish Center. It was also alleged that they planed to shoot down military planes operating out of Stewart Air National Guard Base. Both the car bombs and the missiles were actually fakes given to the plotters with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [It is also important to note that all three were black converts to Islam radicalized while in the prison system].

– On June 1, 2009 an assailant opened fire on a United States military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, an American who had converted to Islam, was accused of killing Private William Long. According to law enforcement officials, Muhammad had conducted research on other targets, including military sites, government facilities and Jewish institutions throughout the country. [Note: a successful terror attack].

– On July 27, 2009 seven men were arrested in North Carolina and charged with plotting to wage “violent jihad” outside the United States. Daniel Patrick Boyd, who authorities allege was the ringleader of a group of men that trained in North Carolina, was later also charged with planning to attack the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Virginia. Boyd and another man, Hysen Sherifi, were charged with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel.

– On September 14, 2009 Law enforcement agents raided residences in New York City and later that day briefed members of Congress about their terrorism investigation. Authorities found 14 new black backpacks during the raids fueling concern the plan may have been to use them with suicide bombs. Najibullah Zazi and his father Mohammed Zazi were arrested five days later at Najibullah’s home in Denver, Colorado. FBI agents also arrested Ahmad Wais Afzali in New York. Najibullah Zazi, linked by authorities to al Qaeda, was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

– On September 23, 2009 Michael Finton, a 29-year-old convert to Islam who went by the name Talib Islam, was arrested in an alleged plot to blow up a federal building in Illinois. Finton drove a van containing what he thought was explosive material and parked it directly in front of the northwest corner of the Paul Findley Federal Building, a courthouse in Illinois. He attempted to detonate it remotely but the explosive was actually harmless, supplied to Islam by the FBI.

– On September 24, 2009 Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested after he placed and attempted to detonate what he believed to be a car bomb in the garage of the 60-story Fountain Place office tower in Dallas. The fake explosive was given to him by an undercover FBI agent.

– On October 21, 2009 Tarek Mehanna, a Boston area man who lived with his parents and wrote a blog about Islam, was arrested for conspiring to become a jihadist and kill Americans. His alleged plots – all failed – included the assassination of prominent politicians, attacking US troops in Iraq and shooting randomly in a unidentified shopping mall.

– On November 5, 2009 a gunman killed 14 people (including one unborn baby) and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood military base located near Killeen, Texas. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the only suspect in the crime, was radicalized by Muslim ideology. A muslim cleric said Hasan asked him in a December 2008 e-mail “whether killing American soldiers and officers is lawful or not” under Islamic law. [There’s your second successful terrorist attack].

– On December 25, 2009 a Nigerian man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to detonate the explosive PETN on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. An apparent malfunction in the device and the quick reaction of passengers saved the airplane and 278 lives on board. After being taken into custody, Abdulmutallab told authorities he had been directed by al-Qaeda.

If the media were looking for a theme, as they always do this time of year, 2009 could be called the “Year of the Home Grown Terrorist” as six of those arrested (James Cromitie, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, Daniel Patrick Boyd, Michael Finton, Tarek Mehanna, and Nidal Malik Hasan) were born right here in the United States.

When George Bush took office, there was absolutely no program in place to keep America safe.  There were dozens of al Qaeda terrorist attacks against US targets, and Clinton did nothing nothing.  The USS Cole was attacked by al Qaeda in Yemen in October 2000 during the waning days of the Clinton administration, with 17 American sailors killed, and Clinton swept it under the rug to create the illusion of a “clean slate.”

And George Bush, naively “looking forward, not backward,” attitude, failed to do anything to change our lack of protection under that terrible day seven months into his presidency.

Bush woke up fast.  And with fury and determination unlike anything this country has seen since the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the Bush administration devised a successful system to keep this country safe.

Barack Obama, taking incredibly foolish attitude that terrorism was merely a crime that he could stop with what amounted to a personality cult based on his own wonderfulness, systematically dismantled many of the Bush protections even as he apologized for America’s efforts to keep its citizens safe.

One of the most important things Bush did was to dismantle the wall that the Clinton administration erected preventing the CIA and the FBI from communicating with one another.  Liberals want to maintain that the Clinton policy did not change the law, but merely clarified it.  But the fact remains that the Clinton administration strengthened the communications barrier when he should have been encouraging intelligence-sharing between our security agencies.

We had a wall separating intelligence agencies into separate and disconnected fiefdoms prior to 9/11.

From the LA Times, April 14, 2004:

WASHINGTON — The scapegoat emerging from the Sept. 11 commission inquiry isn’t an elected official or agency but an obscure government policy that came to be known as “the wall.”

On Tuesday, as FBI, CIA and Justice Department officials continued to point the finger of blame at one another, they all seemed to agree that the wall was the overarching villain. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, for one, described it as “the single greatest structural cause for Sept. 11.”

Bush took great measures to tear down that wall.

To Obama’s great discredit, he picked Clinton Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder to become his Attorney General, after almost selecting Jamie Gorelick – Clinton’s General Counsel – for the post.  And both men were at the very top of the food chain in strengthening the wall between the FBI and the CIA.

In other words, Obama decided to surround himself with the men who – out of liberal notions antagonistic to a strong intelligence community – built/strengthened the wall.

Obama selected Leon Panetta, another Clinton political hack, and a man who had absolutely no intelligence experience to qualify for leadership, to run the CIA.  And then he selected Janet Napolitano, again an unqualified selection with absolutely no intelligence experience whatsoever, to run Homeland Security.

Obama made political loyalty, rather than experience or ability, his criteria for choosing the officials most responsible for keeping this country safe.  And from the very start of his administration, he has politicized intelligence.  They have taken nothing but a demagogic politicized (and incompetent) approach since.  And we are beginning to see the risks with national security these people are willing to take to demagogically blame everyone but themselves for their failures:

The White House, according to the source, is in full defensive spin mode. Other administration sources also say a flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th, which developed talking points about how Obama’s decision to effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council (it was merged earlier this year into the National Security Council, run by National Security Adviser James Jones) had nothing to do with what Obama called a “catastrophic” failure on Christmas Day.

“This White House doesn’t view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it’s a political issue,” says the White House source. “That’s why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue.”

After Obama appointed Eric Holder to be Attorney General, the man who pardoned terrorists for Bill Clinton went right to work attacking the CIA who had helped catch those terrorists in the first place.  Democrats and the Obama administration repeatedly demonized the CIA and just as repeatedly threatened to criminalize their efforts to keep us safe.

Thanks to Obama’s demagoguery, the morale of the agency that is essential to our protection is depressed, sullen, and enraged:

[T]he CIA better change their mission to “CYA,” because our government is not going to stand behind you.”

Those concerns were echoed by a retired undercover operative who still works under contract for the agency (and asked to remain anonymous when discussing internal agency politics). Clandestine Service officers are both demoralized and angry at Obama’s decisions to release the memos and ban future agency use of aggressive interrogation tactics, the former operative said. “It embarrasses our families. You just can’t keep hitting us. Sooner or later we’re going to stop going out and working.” The official added that “a lot of offense was taken” among some Clandestine Service veterans when Obama declared that the interrogation practices the agency employed under Bush were wrong, even though the new Administration would not prosecute operatives for carrying them out.

Did you hear that?  “Sooner or later we’re going to stop going out and working.”  That’s Obama’s “change” for you: demonizing and even criminalizing the people who kept us safe.  Forcing them to protect themselves rather than take risks protecting the country.

And you wonder why Obama’s national security is falling apart now.

Obama made waterboarding the hallmark of his campaing to demonize Bush.  Now “58% of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day,” and just 30% take Obama’s side and oppose the use of such techniques.

Americans were stupid to join with Obama and oppose waterboarding a year ago.  But Obama is far more stupid in his ideological commitment to prevent America from protecting itself.

The use of waterboarding led to the breakthroughs in intelligence that allowed us to dismantle al Qaeda.

Four former CIA directors loudly objected to Obama’s release of CIA memos.  Among other things, the release of those memos – again, for purely partisan political reasons – enabled al Qaeda to know exactly what US interrogators would and would not do and prepare for our new limited and hamstrung techniques.

Now we’re left with, “Tell us what you know, or we’re give you a polite but firmly-worded scolding.”

And we wonder why our national security is breaking down.

We can see Obama’s weakness and incompetence everywhere we turn.  Obama has officially lost TWICE AS MANY American soldiers in Afghanistan as Bush did in 2008.  And this after months of useless dithering that ultimately assured our enemies that we weren’t going to have the fortitude to fight the good fight over the long haul.

Just the other day, eight CIA officers were killed by a suicide bomber inside the safety of a US military base in Afghanistan in yet another example of Obama’s naive “terrorists can be our friends” policy.  They were so busy trying to get the terrorist to change sides and love Big Brother Obama and so afraid of being “politically correct” or “profiling” that they didn’t dare search him.

You might not see this pathetic episode as a microcosm for Obama’s entire failed foreign policy and national security strategy, but you certainly can’t maintain the assertion that what he’s doing is working.

I started out providing a list of terrorists and attempted and successful terrorist attacks.

We could add Iran to that list.  Because we’re certainly going to see Iran and Iranian-trained terrorists rearing their ugly heads due to Obama’s weakness soon.  Every single day, with every new in-your-face step forward in their nuclear weapons program, amounts to a new terrorist attack upon the United States and Israel.  For what it’s worth, I have been predicting that Iran would obtain nuclear weapons under a Democrat presidency since May of 2008.

When Iran gets its nukes and the ballistic missiles to deliver them (and they are very close to both goals), the world will become a different place.  They don’t have to launch atomic Armageddon to use their nuclear weapons; all they have to do is block the Strait of Hormuz and drive up oil prices tenfold, or send out a wave of international terror attacks.  Will we go to war with them, knowing that if we do they will destroy several of our cities and kill millions of our people?

In other words, we haven’t even BEGUN to see the fruit of Obama’s failures in his “man-caused disasters.”

Is This Economic Recovery? ‘1,000 Banks To Fail In Next Two Years’

Studies galore have demonstrated the bias of the media.  They have documented that more than 80% of supposedly objective journalists are Democrats.  And they have documented that their personal bias shaped their professional bias, with the media overwhelmingly favoring their “first love,” Barack Obama in the presidential campaign.

Their bias runs to even the smallest and most seemingly trivial matters, on the apparent theory that there is nothing to small to use to attack and undermine a Republican: journalists who stumbled all over themselves to praise Obama’s strenuous exercise rituals and his “chiseled pectorals” found Bush’s exercise “obsessive” and “creepy.” The media wouldn’t even allow President Bush to golf without attacking him for abandoning his duties, whereas they don’t attack Obama – even though he’s playing gold far more often than Bush did – and even golfing with a CEO of a firm in the midst of a tax corruption investigation.

So it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the media would show its bias in big matters such as the economy.

University of Maryland senior research scientist John Lott Jr. says news coverage of the economy is slanted. Lott writes, “Over 78 percent more negative news stories discussed a recession when the economy — under a Republican president was soaring than occurred under a Democrat when the economy was shrinking.”

Lott — who researched 12,500 newspaper and wire service articles from 1985 through 2004 — also found that Democratic presidents got positive headlines 15 percent more of the time than Republican presidents for the same economic news.

Of his findings Lott writes, “The media’s focus on the negative side of everything surely helps explain people’s pessimism… Indeed, research has indicated that media bias is real.”

The media helped Obama fearmonger the economy when he wanted them to fearmonger the economy to push through his stimulus; but now they’re are trying to talk up the economy when Obama wants them to talk up the economy.  They are dutifully reporting that the recession seems to be over.

But it isn’t.  And it won’t be.

1,000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years: Bank CEO
Published: Thursday, 27 Aug 2009
By: Natalie Erlich

The US banking system will lose some 1,000 institutions over the next two years, said John Kanas, whose private equity firm bought BankUnited of Florida in May.

“We’ve already lost 81 this year,” Kanas told CNBC. “The numbers are climbing every day. Many of these institutions nobody’s ever heard of. They’re smaller companies.” (See the accompanying video for the complete interview.)

Failed banks tend to be smaller and private, which exacerbates the problem for small business borrowers, said Kanas, who became CEO of BankUnited when his firm bought the bank and is the former chairman and CEO of North Fork bank.

“Government money has propped up the very large institutions as a result of the stimulus package,” he said. “There’s really very little lifeline available for the small institutions that are suffering.”

This comes at a time when the FDIC has established new rules on bank sales. Private equity, for instance, would have to hold double the capital of their competitors in order to buy such an institution, said Kanas.

“This will have somewhat of a chilling effect on our participation,” he said. “As a result of having to keep higher capital levels, we’ll see lower prices coming from that sector.”

Of the 81 failed banks this year, two have been successfully acquired by private equity, he said. Kanas’ private equity firm bought UnitedBank, the failed Florida-based bank, from the FDIC in May. Regulators also allowed the sale of IndyMac Bank of California earlier this year.

“We are seeing more people step up and lobby bids in this situation,” he said. “We’re seeing more players mostly as a result of being attracted to the sector. I’m not so sure that will continue now that the rules have been ratchet it up.”

Meanwhile, much of the commercial realty problem resides in the regional and small community banks, said Kanas, because larger banks haven’t fueled that sector in the past.

“The market is expecting about the way we were expecting,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re not seeing any evidence of a recovery in the real estate market in the southern Florida market,” he said.

It’s rather interesting that there’s a strong argument that Obama’s regulations are actually hurting our recovery, but Obama doesn’t have to worry about that message getting out to the public.  His secret, clearly,  is completely safe with the mainstream media.

The FDIC – the government entity which is supposed to step in if a bank goes bankrupt – is itself on the verge of going bankrupt:

March 4 (Bloomberg) — Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry outcry against new fees approved by the agency.

And think about it: one thousand banks failing over the next two years is to the notion of “economic recovery” what a giant asteroid hurtling toward us from space is to the statement “things are looking up for us.”  But again, the mainstream media is so focused on talking up the economy that they don’t have much time for such distractions.

What’s going to happen to unemployment?  The media made such a big deal about a temporary 1/10th of one percent drop in the unemployment rate.  But the longer term trend isn’t good.  It isn’t good at ALL:

Banks Stronger But Outlook Clouded by Job Loss: Whitney

Unemployment is likely to rise to 13 percent or higher and will weigh on the economy for several years, countering government efforts to stabilize the banking industry, analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.

While Whitney raised her short-term outlook for banks, causing stocks to open in positive territory after pointing lower earlier, she said the long-term outlook for the economy remains murky.

Consumers will not be able to spend as they continue to lose jobs and credit conditions stay tight, she said in a live interview. The result will provide a vivid display of how critical housing and lending are to economic growth. Unemployment is currently at 9.5 percent but is expected to keep rising.

“We underestimate how much the whole economy is dependent on the mortgage industry, and that has to change,” Whitney said. “This is what happens when you delay the inevitable. We’re buying time here, but we’re not restructuring the economy.”

We’re looking a situation in which nearly half of American homes will be “underwater” – with the mortgages being higher than then homes are worth – by 2011.

And Obama’s policies are not helping to actually deal with the core problem facing the mortgage industry.

The dire assessment comes amid a slight stabilization in the U.S. housing market after three years of price drops, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The report states that the drop in home prices is fueling a vicious cycle of foreclosures as it eliminates homeowner equity and gives borrowers an incentive to walk away from their mortgage.

But, the foreclosed homes are not coming onto the market because people are finding out they can stay living in them and not pay their mortgage, according to Kudrle.

“The Obama administration is putting so much pressure on the banks and lenders to slow down the foreclosure process to try and keep people in their homes,” Kudrle said. “We have people who have not made a payment for 12 to 18 months and the bank still hasn’t come in to foreclose.”

That’s not a policy that is going to correct our financial woes; it’s just a delaying tactic that will ultimately make a bad problem far, far worse by postponing and in fact stockpiling the coming misery.

Government Supported Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – created by a Democrat-congrolled Congress and long run by connected Democrats – have been at the epicenter of the mortgage meltdown fiasco.

Peter Wallison predicted a future Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failure in 1999 in a New York Times article, saying of Fannie Mae’s enormous financial exposure and risky policies:

”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.” . . .

Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, Jim Johnson, Daniel Mudd.  That’s just part of your list of Democrats who ran Fannie Mae into the ground and profited wildly in doing so.  The Wall Street Journal cites the first three names for disgrace in the Fannie Mae Enron-scheme they produced.  The fourth figure, Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd, showed just how far to the left Fannie Mae was politically when he said to THE most radically liberal wing of the Democrat Party – the Congressional Black Caucus – the following:

So many of you have been good friends to Fannie Mae and our mission. You’ve been friends through thick and thin. We have indeed come upon a difficult time for Fannie Mae…  In many ways I want to tell you today you are also the conscience of Fannie Mae.

President Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to create tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Bush’s efforts led to two major Republican efforts to push through regulations that would have limited the mess that Fannie and Freddie could create, but their every move was fiercely resisted by Democrats.  The first time, Barney Frank – leading the Democratic effort to shield Fannie and Freddie from necessary regulatory reform in 2003, said:

”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.”

Again, in 2005, Republicans tried and failed to establish necessary regulatory reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a time when reforms could have averted the 2008 disaster.  Again Democrats unanimously rose up to block any such effort.  John McCain warned:

If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

But Democrats refused to heed the warnings.  And when the economy DID collapse BECAUSE of their refusal to deal with the GSEs that they had politically-benefited from, the very people who created the disaster in the first place poised themselves to benefit from it by demagoguing Republicans whose greatest sin was not being strong enough in their efforts to stand up and stop Democrats from advancing a ruinous agenda.

Think about it: seventeen calls for regulatory reform of the housing mortgage industry, all resisted by Democrats.  Two major efforts at regulatory reform, both blocked by fierce and united Democrat opposition.  And then Democrats demonized Republicans for refusing to enact regulations.  That’s called ‘chutzpah.’  And when the mainline media reported it as if it were somehow true, it was called ‘propaganda.’

In only a couple short years in the Senate, Barack Obama racked up the 2nd highest total in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (2nd only to fellow Democrat and Senate Finance Chairman Chris Dodd).  Barack Obama was second in receipts of campaign contributions from corrupt Wall Street leveraging companies such as Lehman Brothers behind only Hillary Clinton.  Lehman Brothers profited and profited by playing the insane Wall Street insiders game until it went belly up from its own bloated practices.  And somehow that parasitic leech of a company was under the impression that financing one Barack Hussein Obama’s political career would be good for it’s greedy special interests.

And now we’re in such good hands to fix the mess that Democrats almost exclusively created.

And hey, don’t worry.  If anything bad happens, you can count on the mainstream media to honestly and objectively keep you informed — NOT.

Obama’s “New New Deal” Will Redistribute Wealth Of Shrinking Economy

The last couple weeks may well be a harbinger of things to come, as the people Obama promised to tax heavily continue to pull out of the market.  On November 4, the Dow closed at 9,625; today, it was at 8,497.  That means that the market has lost nearly 12% of its value since Obama became President-elect.  Hardly a measure of confidence.

The market spoke rather clearly on November 5:

NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Wall Street hardly delivered a
rousing welcome to President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday,
dropping by the largest margin on record for a day following a U.S.
presidential contest.

 The slide more than wiped out the previous day's advance, the
largest Election Day rally ever for U.S. stocks.

Now, this wasn’t at all unexpected.  On October 24, I wrote an article titled, “Investors Ready For Dramatic Sell-Off If Democrats Win.”  A few days before that, I wrote an article pointing out that “Actual Job Creators Favor McCain 4-1 Over Obama,” which – among other things – points out that “74 percent of the executives say they fear that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.”

The people who invest, and create job opportunities, and build the economy, don’t want to have their wealth redistributed.  Would you want your wealth redistributed?

Democratic apologists point out that Obama promises on a meager jump in the top federal tax rates from 36% to 39%.  But that “insignificant” 3% comes right out of peoples’ profits.  It sounds a lot worse when the reality is understood: when businesses that had been making an 11% profit are now reduced to an 8% profit.  Or an 8% profit reduced to a 5% profit.  And Obama promises to increase capital gains taxes and several other taxes that will impact upon businesses and the investment climate that supports business.  How hard are job creators willing to work to experience a diminishing return on their time, labor, and risk?

Time Magazine – a publication that has gushed over Obama for months – has a new gushing cover:

It should frighten you.  FDR was no “moderate.”  He presided over a terrible time for the country, and – while he was a popular figure because of what he tried to do – his actual economic administration has been widely recognized by economists to have been a failure.  Studies have demonstrated that the average depression lasted only four years; but for some reason the Great Depression dragged on and on and on under FDR’s governance.  By 1938, after more than four years of FDR, the effects of the Depression were actually much worse than they had been when he first took office.

As an example of the new realizations regarding the 1930s, UCLA economists argue:

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

Even the common man’s sense has largely been that World War II had more to do with getting us out of the Depression than FDR’s New Deal.  It certainly did get men who had been standing in bread lines put to “work.”  And as the nation coalesced together and began to pour resources into building weapons, factories that had been idled came back on line, and innovation increased to match the technological development of our enemies.  And certainly, the fact that, when hostilities ended, the United States alone was not reduced to rubble had a great deal to do with helping our economy surge forward.

But by that thinking, anyone who criticized President Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is correct only insofar as we need an even BIGGER war.  For Obama to truly be like FDR, we need to have a devastating Depression that drags on for 12 years while incompetent liberals continue to tinker, and then we need slug it out in World War III against Russia and China.

So pardon me for looking at the “New New Deal” FDR-lookalike Barack Obama and shuddering down to the marrow of my bones.

We’re watching the market beginning to go down the slide.  It’s going to go down a lot more.  And fear over Barack Obama’s policies is going to have a lot to do with the lack of confidence that keeps investment from pouring back into the economy.

The picture is far more frightening than the story the media is telling: there are more than $700 trillion in derivatives in the global economy.  That’s far more than the total currencies of all the governments in the entire world.  As one writer puts it, “In other words, every dollar of insurance on bonds issued by some deadbeat governments and corporations is leveraged 200 times!”  We’ve got a time bomb waiting to explode.  And we put a lot of the people who created that time bomb in the first place in charge of fixing the mess they themselves created.  People like Obama’s National Finance Chair, Penny Pritzker, who was at the epicenter of the subprime loan scandal and once paid $460 million to stay out of jail.  People like Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick, who pocketed over $300 million from Fannie and Freddie while juggling the books so they could get their bonuses.  People like Barney Frank, who claimed that nothing was wrong with Fannie and Freddie and the housing market they supervised, and repeatedly fought off President Bush’s efforts to regulate them at time when the crisis we are currently experiencing could have been averted.  People like Charles Schumer, who exemplified the sheer hypocrisy of the Democratic Party with his blaming others for what he himself did.  People like Joe Biden, whom two major studies said shared direct blame for the foreclosure disaster because of legislation he championed as the Senator from banking-capital Delaware.  And people like Barack Obama, who embraced more contributions from Fannie and Freddie – and from scandal-plagued finance institutions such as Lehman Brothers than anyone during his short time in the Senate.  Now all these people have been entrusted with fixing a mess of literally global proportions; a mess that they in large part created in the first place.

And Barack Obama wearing the “New New Deal” mantle of FDR’s Panama hat, glasses, and fancy cigarette is not going to make that time bomb go away.  In fact, it may be the very thing that brings the whole house of cards come crashing down.

Some Points On McCain vs. Obama Debate 3

On taxes and the economy:

The Joe the Plumber issue began with Barack Obama having a conversation with a plumber who planned to buy his employers’ business, but realized with concern that he would be paying much higher taxes under Obama’s plan.  Obama responded:

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded. “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Please realize: we’re talking about a PLUMBER and a SMALL BUSINESS – not a Wall Street tycoon or a big corproation.  He would pay more in taxes under Obama’s plan.  It turns out that half of the over 8 million taxpayers in the top 5% of income earners are small business owners.  And it is small business owners who are and have been the engine of the economy and who are hiring the most workers.  All the small businesses that are driving that engine – the businesses that employ at least 20 workers – would pay more taxes under Obama’s plan.

Obama keeps claiming that he’ll cut taxes for 95% of Americans.  but about 40% of Americans don’t pay federal taxes.  Obama will give these free riders an IRS welfare check paid for by taxpayers, amounting to nearly $400 billion dollars a year.  Obama’s tax credit goodies will be “fully refundable,” which is taxspeak for government payments that do not require a tax liability on the part of recipients in order to be paid out.  This is a transfer payment, a transfer of wealth, and socialism.

Corporations don’t pay taxes; they pass them on to you through higher prices.  Obama’s tax increase on corporations will amount to a de facto higher cost of living for you.  To the extent that it cuts into their profits, corproations will increasingly outsource jobs to save on labor costs, or they will simply relocate their operations to countries with lower corporate tax structures (that currently means anywhere on the planet except Japan unless taxes are lowered here).

If you want corporations and businesses to hire more workers and provide goods and services at low prices, you have to lower their tax burdens.  You don’t create an incentive to hire more workers when you increase their costs of doing business.

“Spread the wealth around,” Obama says.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  Bottom line, if you design a system which does not sufficiently reward people based on allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their hard work, than no one will have incentive to work hard.  The hard worker will eventually get tired of working for the lazy person unless he can keep what he produces for the benefit of himself and his family.

In Europe, the steep rates create a disincentive to continue working.  If you have to pay skyhigh taxes after $200,000 (as a single filer in Obama’s plan), why keep working hard after you’ve made your $200,000?  Obama will confiscate most of your profits (for New Yorkers, as an example, it would be 65 cents of every dollar!).  If you’re a small business owner, you have good reason to simply shut down and take a long vacation until next April.  We don’t want that here.

Investors’ Business Daily describes Obama as “the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party.”  And for good reason.  Sadly, the media has largely given inspection of Obama’s economic and tax plans a pass.  The specifics are largely unknown to the American people.  Barack Obama will regard the recent socializing of much of our financial system as a leaping-off point.

On health care:

One thing is extremely important to understand: Obama’s health care plan is modeled on the Massachusetts plan.  How are things going there?  Well, in couple of years of the program’s existence, the tiny state is now already facing cost overruns of over $400 million.  Does that sound like a rousing success?  Massachusetts is facing a projected 85% increase in its costs by 2009 – which should set up a serious red flag that such programs are MASSIVELY underfunded.

Obama is claiming that his plan will save money.  It won’t.  It has been tried, and it has failed.  He is overestimating the “savings” of his plan, and massively underestimating the costs.

Barack Obama’s health care plan is estimated to cost $1.6 trillion in 10 years.  And that’s if everything goes wll.  But it won’t go well.  The numbers don’t take into account the very sort of cost overruns and cost increases that are even now plaguing the very state that Obama is basing his own plan upon.  What is going to happen to our economy given the extremely real likelihood that Obama’s massive national plan runs into similar issues?  Do you believe our economy is strong enough to bear the brunt of these massive cost increases?

You need to understand something else that emerged from the second debate: is health care a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?  Obama answered “It should be a right.” What does that mean?  It means that a government has a fundamental duty to guarantee me my health care the same way it has a duty to guarantee me right to free speech or my right to assembly.  You have a constitutional, government-imposed duty to give me health care – no matter what – regardless of how much it costs you and your family to do so.  Am I an alcoholic who needs a liver transplant?  You owe me a new liver.  As an American citizen (or an illegal immigrant, under Obama’s plan) I have a right to that liver.   Did I sustain a brain injury riding my motorcycle without a helmet because I like to feel the wind in my hair?  Doesn’t matter.  Do I want a sex change?  Give it to me!  I have a fundamental constitutional right to that liver, or to that brain surgery and all the long months of incredibly expensive therapy, or to my sex change operation.  I also have a right to years of incredibly expensive psychological counseling with highly paid professionals.  And if I have any pre-existing conditions, you still have to cover me (and illegal immigrants because we don’t deny fundamental rights to anyone in the United States, even if they are here illegally), no matter what.

Do you understand how expensive this can all get?

Do you understand that Barack Obama is essentially talking about socializing a quarter of our economy?  Do you trust your government’s track record to do that?

On the mortgage industry collapse:

Neither candidate brought up the fact that there was a gigantic elephant in the room.  And it was ridiculous.  A lot of people are livid over this collapse and the subsequent $850 billion bailout package Congress approved.  But Democrats are all over this.  From their passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, to Bill Clinton’s radical expansion of the program (particularly in the last two years of his 2nd administration); to the almost exclusively Democratic leadership of Government Supported Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (e.g. Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick who collectively took over $300 million from the GSEs even as they played around with the books); to the repreated stubborn refusal of congressional Democrats to regulate Fannie and Freddie during the first six years of President Bush’s presidency.

Barney Frank repeatedly said that Fannie and Freddie were fine, and that regulation was unnecessary.  The last time was on July 14, 2008 – only a couple months before they went belly up.  He assured the American people – and American investors – that Fannie and Freddie stock were strong going forward.  The stock of Fannie and Freddie and declined 90% during the Democrats’ watch.  And oversight of Fannie and Freddie was Congress’ job, NOT President Bush’s.

This was a Democrat-created disaster.

And the level of propagandizing and demagoguery blaming Republicans for “the failed policies of the last 8 years” has reached a level of deceit not seen since Hitler blamed the Jews for all of Germany’s problems.

On abortion:

Abortion is an issue that not only displays how radical Barack Obama is, but how deceptive and disingenuous he is.  Factcheck.org has a thoroughly researched article titled, “Obama and ‘Infanticide’: The facts about Obama’s votes against ‘Born Alive’ bills in Illinois” which will shock you.  Obama DOES support infanticide in the name of abortion rights.

Barack Obama is deliberately misrepresenting his position on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.  He has given fallacious reason after reason for wanting babies who have been born and are surviving outside of their mothers’ bodies to be killed.  Obama supports late term and partial birth abortion, too; but this evil transcends even that abomination against the sanctity of human life.

It is for this reason that I will refuse to support a President Obama or any country that elects him to lead it.  If the American people vote for Barack Obama, I will agree with Jeremiah Wright to this extent: “No, no, no.  Not God bless America.  God damn America!”  God damn an America that would vote for a certified baby killer.

Conclusion:

Our already-most-expensive education system in the world (around $65 billion a year) that isn’t producing education for our kids is going to get another nearly $20 billion a year from Barack Obama.  But the government throwing money at schools is clearly not the answer: Washington D.C. spends more money per student than any public school system in the world, but provides the worst education in the country.  As John McCain pointed out several times last night, again and again, Barack Obama sees big government spending other peoples’ money as the solution to every problem.

The obvious question to ask should be, where’s all this money going to come from?  From “the rich”?  Fat chance.  Half of the rich are no longer “rich” after all their investments went south; they invested themselves out of Obama’s 5% group.  The other half are going to shelter their money from Obama so they won’t have to pay Obama’s new taxes.  Where’s Obama going to get his money?  He’s going to come after you, and – given the polling figures – chances are you are too damn stupid to know it.

Economists by the truckload have come out against Obama’s plan, because when it fails – and it will fail – the costs will be catastrophic.

I liken this society to a culture that has been transformed into a lemming colony by a biased liberal media voting to jump off a cliff.

What McCain-Palin Need To Do From Tonight’s Debate Till Election Day

John McCain is being saddled with the anger and fear of voters over the financial collapse, according to most polls.  Up until this week, neither President Bush, Senator McCain, Governor Sarah Palin, or most Republicans bothered to respond to the repeated Democrat charges that this fiasco was the result of the “failed policies of the last eight years.”

That perception needs to be changed by through a deliberate and sustained effort.  It needs to begin tonight.  And it needs to continue until November 4.

Barack Obama has been arguing that “guilt by association” is invalid.  But Obama’s central charge against John McCain amounts to pure guilt by association: John McCain is NOT George Bush, and he has never BEEN George Bush.  His entire career stands as a screaming testimony to the fact that he is very much his own man.

John McCain needs to find a few popular measures that President Bush supported and ask Barack Obama, “Do you oppose this because President Bush was for it?  How about this?  And this?”

When Barack Obama again and again says that John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time, McCain needs to remind voters that Barack Obama has voted with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid fully 97% of the time.  He needs to remind voters that Barack Obama is the personification of a Democrat-controlled Congress that has a 9% approval rating – the worst in American history; worse than the 12% rating Congress had in 1979.  Meanwhile, even Barack Obama has voted with Bush 40% of the time, and more conservative Democrats like Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu have voted with Bush over 70% of the time.

Given the fact that Democrats are likely to not only continue to hold power – and even expand their power to a filibuster-proof majority -this economy cannot afford the domination of tax-and-spend socialist liberals in total control of our government.

John McCain and Sarah Palin need to examine Barack Obama’s tax plan.  Obama claims that 95% of Americans would get a tax cut; the Republicans need to ask Obama if he actually believes that every single American pays taxes, such that 95% of Americans would receive a cut, and 5% would face a steep increase.  Do Barack Obama’s two little girls pay taxes?  How can he possibly give a “cut” to 95% of Americans?  In reality, Barack Obama is using the IRS tax code to give at least 30% and as many as 40% of American tax filers who DON’T pay federal income taxes what amounts to a welfare check.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.  Republicans need to point out that Barack Obama will heavily increase the taxes of small business owners and people who invest in jobs and supply the money this country needs in order to grow and expand.

When you tax small business owners, they lay off employees; when you tax investors, they shelter their money.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.

Barack Obama wants to give away another $845 billion dollars of American taxpayer money to the poor of the world in his Global Poverty Act.  It would cost each citizen at least $2500.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.

Barack Obama wants to massively socialize the American health care system – which represents about a quarter of the American economy.  He makes a lot of promises, but the costs would be staggering.  Massachusetts passed a law mandating universal coverage that promised to lower costs in utopian fashion; it is now facing $400 million in cost overruns in small state population in a short period of time.  Barack Obama’s plan would be the same sort of disaster on a far more massive scale.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.

Barack Obama is trying to blame President Bush and Republicans for the financial disaster when Democrats are all over it.  John McCain needs to point out that past Obama advisor Franklin Raines was involved in massive fraud and chicanery of Fannie Mae just a couple years ago.  He needs to point out that Obama advisers – and lifelong Democrats – Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick raided well over $300 million in bonus money from Fannie Mae even as the agency was crumbling.  McCain needs to point out that Republicans DID try to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which held over $5 trillion in mortgage assets – but that Democrats repeatedly blocked those attempts at regulation in the name of keeping the flow of mortgage loans available to poor and minority home buyers who couldn’t repay their obligations.  John McCain needs to point out that he himself prophetically warned the American people of this crisis two years ago when something could have been done to prevent this fiasco.  McCain needs to point out that Barack Obama himself has personally been deeply in the pockets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – as well as corrupt and negligent Lehman Bros – at a rate that goes far beyond anyone else in Congress.  And that his relationship as an instrumental part in securing these terrible subprime loans with Fannie Mae go back to his days as a radical ACORN organizer.

John McCain needs to use Barney Frank as the poster child of Democratic negligence over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Barney Frank – who had an inappropriate (homo)sexual relationship with a key Fannie Mae official even when his Congressional committee had direct oversight in regulating the agency.  Barney Frank – who said for five years that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were healthy, and who led the Democratic fight against the very sort of regulation Democrats now claim the Republicans are guilty of having been opposed to.  Barney Frank – the leading overseer of GSEs for the last two years – was continuing to claim that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fine as recently as July 14 of this year.  And John McCain needs to point out to the world that Fannie Mae’s and Freddy Mac’s stock crashed 90% while Democrats had direct control and direct oversight of these massive GSEs.

And that sort of corruption and incompetence is not what this economy needs right now.

Further, John McCain needs to point out that Barack Obama hasn’t merely had radical associations, but radical alliances.  Barack Obama spent 23 years steeped in the worldview of a radical, racist, anti-American pastor and church.  Barack Obama is the first “God damn America!” candidate for President.  And Barack Obama was more than just “palling around” with terrorist bomber William Ayers – in his capacity as a member of the Chicago Annenburg Challenge board, Barack Obama was directly in charge of administering funding in support of William Ayers radical Marxist educational initiatives.  Barack Obama didn’t merely “associate” with a terrorist who did something bad when Barack was merely 8 years old; Barack Obama officially partnered with William Ayers as a grown man as recently as 2001 to put “more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.”

And that sort of radical activity is not something that either this country or this economy needs right now.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “I believe that this war is lost.”  And Barack Obama would have ensured that the war would have in fact been lost had he been President.  Obama talks about the loss of American prestige; does he genuinely believe that American troops slinking home in defeat with an emboldened terrorist enemy following us home would improve our international prestige?  John McCain needs to link Harry Reid’s proclamation of defeat with Barack Obama’s determination to snatch defeat from the jaws of success.

That defeatist mentality is not something that this country can afford right now.  As costly as a war is, the United States cannot afford to lose – and we would have lost had Barack Obama recalled the troops in defeat as he wanted to do three years ago.

Finally, John McCain needs to lead this nation to the conclusion that Barack Obama – the most radical, the most inexperienced, the most untested – candidate for President in this nation’s history, is not what either this country or this economy need right now.

Dems Blame Bush For Deregulation: Just Another Day Of Astounding Liberal Hypocrisy

So Sen. Charles Schumer is the latest partisan Democrat ideologue to take yet another wild roundhouse swing at the Bush Administration and Republicans over the housing finance market meltdown.  But in this case, it would have served Schumer to recognize that when you point a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you.

Fox News briefly tells the story as follows:

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York says a lack of regulation by the Bush administration is responsible for the current economic troubles. The New York Sun reports Schumer says, “Eight years of deregulatory zeal by the Bush administration, an attitude of ‘the market can do no wrong,’ have led us down a short path to economic recession.”

But Schumer fails to mention he has been a leading voice of deregulation. The Sun reports he championed the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, the law which separated commercial and investment banking.

He also wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in 2006 which warned about what he called “overzealous regulators” and opposed a bill in 2005 that would have transformed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae from large investment funds into “conduits” that only bought mortgages, packaged them into securities and sold them on the market.

And whatever one wants to say about the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, it must be mentioned first that it was President William Jefferson Clinton who signed the 1999 law that repealed it.

The New York Sun goes into the real nitty-gritty detail over just what astounding hypocrites Democrats like Charles Schumer really are.

The article begins as follows (the whole thing is ever SO worth reading):

Pro-Deregulation Schumer Scores Bush for Lack of Regulation
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 22, 2008

As Senator Schumer attempts to blame Wall Street‘s recent economic upheavals on a lack of regulation by the Bush administration, he may have some inconvenient facts to confront.

Until the current credit crisis, Mr. Schumer had been a leading voice for deregulation: He has championed the repeal of a Great Depression-era law that prohibited commercial banks from underwriting securities; he has written an opinion piece calling for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to be “re-examined,” and he has opposed a bill that sought to reduce taxpayer risk in the event of a housing market slowdown by requiring Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to sell their entire investment portfolios of about $1.5 trillion worth of mortgage assets.

The New York Sun article continues:

A spokesman for Mr. Schumer did not respond yesterday to a request for comment.

Mr. Schumer’s opposition to regulation is also beginning to come under scrutiny for the first time.

“He is responsible as one of the leading senators in the banking committee for much of the problems that we’re facing today,” a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Peter Wallison, a former general counsel to the Treasury Department under President Reagan, said of Mr. Schumer. “He failed to regulate where there was an opportunity to reduce the taxpayers’ liability.”

Too many people naively and frankly stupidly believe that the housing finance market meltdown is the Republicans’ fault because President Bush is in the White House and Republicans used to be in charge of Congress two years ago.  And this “They wanted to deregulate” lie is at the heart of that blame game. Republicans clearly do bear a share of the blame.  But this mess has Democrat written all over it, too.  Look at Joe Biden, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank – and yes, Barack Obama – along with a whole legion of Obama Democrats like Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, and Jamie Gorelick who collectively took well over $300 million from Fannie Mae while cooking the books to do it.  And let us not forget Barack Obama’s National Finance Chair, Penny Pritzker, who was at the epicenter of the subprime scandal, and who paid $460 million dollars of her personal fortune to literally stay out of jail.

Barack Obama is second on the list of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign money recipients only after fellow Democrat Chris Dodd (who has also been identified taking a sweetheart deal from scandelized Countrywide); and he is second on the list of Lehman Bros’ campaign money recipients only after fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton.  And Obama, of course, got a sweetheart housing deal of his own, from convicted sleazeball Tony Rezko.

It needs to be realized that the Bush administration twice tried to regulate the housing finance industry in 2003 and 2005 – and both times were stymied by determined Democratic opposition.  John McCain joined President Bush in both efforts that would have saved our financial market, and was one of the four Republican sponsors of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.  In his statement supporting the 2005 bill, John McCain presciently foresaw the very disaster that has since overtaken the finance industry.   Democrats’ entrenched opposition to any reform that would have prevented people who could not qualify for a home loan from getting one anyway prevented both measures from succeeding.

Looking at Barack Obama’s personal exposure and the direct culpability of his closest advisers in the housing finance scandal, one thing is sure: voting for an Obama administration would be tantamount to giving the robbers the keys to the bank.

Obama Economic Plan 4.0 – Like Monkeys Randomly Typing

Obama’s “economic plan” (if you can call a pandering ad hoc system based on demagoguery and half-truths a “plan”) has now just entered its fourth version.  At some point, you have to wonder if all the monkeys Obama has randomly pounding away on their keyboards really know what they are doing.

It was only a couple weeks ago that I wrote an article titled, “WSJ Obama Tax 3.0: When even 3 times is NOT a charm” from a Wall Street Journal story.  I wrote:

The Wall Street Journal offered a publication-wide editorial that pointed out the fact that Barack Obama’s economic plan is now undergoing its third incarnation.

The Obama campaign has been attacking the Bush economic plan, and trying to label McCain’s economic plan for being a “third Bush term.”  But at least they have a plan; Obama now has three.

A pandering-based economic plan that shifts as the winds blow is not one that is worthy of trust.

And now, great googly-moogly, there’s already an AP story about “Obama to meet economic advisers to offer new plans.”

The answer to your question is, “Yes, it DOES hurt being right all the time.”  Tell you what; elect me President, and I promise to keep randomly throwing darts at the economic system until some of them actually stick.

The Associated Press article says:

Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, was to meet with advisers in Coral Gables, Fla., on the campus of the University of Miami and then announce his new proposals. Buffett and O’Neill and perhaps others were to participate by way of a telephone conference call.

Less than seven weeks before Election Day, the high-profile consultations appeared designed to portray Obama in a presidential-like setting, grappling with the nation’s gravest problems and making decisions with the help of a big-name team of experts.

This actually would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so enormous.  Our economy is a point of genuine crisis, and we’re actually considering electing a candidate for President who has now thrown together four different economic plans – and still counting.

The same guy who has now needed four economic plans mocked John McCain for calling for a commission to study what went wrong in the financial meltdown, saying, “We know how we got into this mess.”

Barack, if you’ve got such a great handle on the economy, then why have you now needed four different economic plans, with two of those plans coming in less than a fortnight?  Tell us exactly what DID go wrong – considering this situation has a lot of experts scratching their heads.  And make sure not to overlook anything, because we don’t want to go through this again.

Obama also just said, “This is not a time for fear, it’s not a time for panic,” Obama said Thursday in New Mexico. “This is a time for resolve and it is a time for leadership.”

No, Obama, apparently it’s a time for naked fear, given the fact that you personally and deliberately contributed to fears in an already unstable speculative market just a couple of days earlier, when you said: the upheaval on Wall Street was “the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.”  It was panic from just such fears that actually caused the Great Depression in the first place.  RUN TO THE BANK, EVERYONE; GET YOUR MONEY NOW!!! John McCain, for his part, has presidential helped try to reassure nervous investors that the fundamentals of the economy are still sound.  Obama’s response was to mock him further for that attempt at reassurance. 

A vote for Barack Obama is a vote to put the most inexperienced, the most liberal, the most radical, the most “loyalty-to-party-first” candidate – who has voted with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over 95% of the time – we’ve ever seen run for President.  And he is hip deep in the pockets of the people who caused this mess.  Obama is second on the list of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign money recipients only after fellow Democrat Chris Dodd; and he is second on the list of Lehman Bros’ campaign money recipients only after fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton.   And Obama has key campaign advisors – such as Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick- who personally made tens of millions of dollars from these very institutions.

We can not afford a Barack Obama presidency.  Aside from the fact that he is massively part of the problem he is now trying to hang on others, he simply doesn’t have a clue how to navigate the nation out of a crisis such that few have seen in their lifetimes.