Whether he knew it or not, Clinton was going against virtually all press outlets that have been pointing fingers at Republicans since this crisis began, and likely much to the dismay of such folk actually agreed with a Fox News segment aired on Tuesday's "Special Report"
BRIT HUME, HOST: In the recent spate of government bailouts, buyouts and rescues, the federal takeovers of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are arguably the biggest of them all. And those two firms are also arguably the biggest reason for the credit crisis in the first place. So the question arises -- how did this come to be? Chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM ANGLE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is one nagging question behind all the debate over how to get out of this mess.
CHRIS DODD (D-CT), SENATE BANKING COMMITTEE CHMN: American taxpayers are angry and they demand to know how we arrived at this moment.
ELIZABETH DOLE (R), NORTH CAROLINA SENATOR: My constituents, and indeed taxpayers across the nation are asking how we arrived at this crisis. It is infuriating.
ANGLE: But Senator Dole and others think they know the answer, and it's something the Senate tried to fix three years ago but was thwarted.
DOLE: To the mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was made possible by weak oversight and little accountability.
MEL MARTINEZ (R), FLORIDA SENATOR: A lot of what we're dealing with today has its origins in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
ANGLE: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, backed by the federal government, buy mortgage loans from the lenders who make them. But four years ago, both were in trouble over shoddy accounting. Fannie Mae Chief Franklin Raines, President Clinton's former budget director, was fired. To placate those in Congress who watched over them, Fannie and Freddie promised to do more to help poor people get mortgages. That led them to buy riskier and riskier home loans from private lenders creating incentives for everyone to make shakier loans.
PETER WALLISON, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: The problem is that they encouraged very bad mortgages to be made by banks and other institutions, because Fannie and Freddie would buy them.
ANGLE: Eventually, they bought trillions of dollars worth of mortgages, a substantial portion of them based on poor credit, then resold many of them to financial institutions who thought they were safe because the federal government was behind them.
WALLISON: As a result of this appearance that they were backed by the government, people never paid very much attention to the assets they were acquiring or the risks they were taking.
ANGLE: And so shaky mortgages spread throughout the system. But in 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then chaired by Republican Richard Shelby, tried to rein in the two organizations bypassing some strong new regulations.
WALLISON: Which would have prevented Fannie and Freddie from acquiring this bad -- these bad mortgages. It actually gave a new regulator for Fannie and Freddie the kinds of powers that a bank regulator had.
ANGLE: All the Republicans voted for it. All the Democrats, including the current chairman, Senator Chris Dodd, voted against it, and that was after Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had issued a stark warning to senators that Fannie and Freddie were playing with fire. Greenspan said without stronger regulations, "We increase the possibility of insolvency and crisis. Without restrictions on the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we put at risk our ability to preserve safe and sound financial markets in the United States."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANGLE: Which turned out to be exactly right, but because Democrats blocked it, those new regulations never got consideration by the full Senate and died. So that's how we got into this mess, and how we missed a chance to avoid it. Getting out of it now, of course, will be a lot more difficult -- Brit.
Two days later, former President Clinton agreed:
CHRIS CUOMO, ABC NEWS: A little surprising for you to hear the Democrats saying, "This came out of nowhere, this is all about the Republicans. We had nothing to do with this." Nancy Pelosi saying it. She signed the '99 Gramm Bill. She knew what was going on with the SEC. They're all sophisticated people. Is that playing politics in this situation?
BILL CLINTON: Well, maybe everybody does that a little bit. I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Imagine that!
Kudos to Cuomo for asking the question, and kudos to Clinton for being so honest, especially in an election year.
The only question remains whether other news outlets will follow suit and begin telling the American people just how many proposals Republicans have made in the past decade to impose tighter regulations and oversight on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and how such efforts were routinely thwarted by Democrats.
By Noel Sheppard September 25, 2008 - 10:25 ET—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
_______________________________________________________
posted August 28, 2008
President Clinton gave a fantastic speech in which he spoke about his prosperous presidency which created an economic boom in the 1990s. What he intentionally left out is that in the six years of his eight-year reign, President Clinton had a conservative Republican Congress who kept him accountable regarding America's fiscal situation at the time.
The Republican Congress made the effort which allowed for a balanced budget and a surplus thereby triggering economic prosperity.
That, ladies and gentleman, is the truth and reality he chose not to mention.
~Carl Miller
President Clinton left office with what appeared to be a budget surplus, at least on paper, but still had significant national debt. He also left office with a nation headed into recession with the actual figures having been hidden for almost a year and the so-called "day traders" a'fixin' ta lose their collective tushis. We had a "dot-com" industry that had been built upon the premise that a business could be started, run, and then sold at a profit without ever earning a profit ... without even the intent of earning a profit ... which sounds suspiciously like government. I'll never forget the day I called a friend during the year double naught:
Moi - "How's things Ern?"
Ern - "Let me call you back in a couple of days. Already today I've lost 11 grand, every stock I own is headed south on a bullet train, and it's only 9:30 in the morning."
Then, just after President Bush took office and it was becoming painfully evident that the country was in dire financial trouble we got hit with the most serious attack on American soil ever. Almost 3,000 people were killed for no more serious crime than to be going to work in the morning. This included men, women, and children ... most of them civilians.
To be sure, our Republican controlled congress at the time did my children and grandchildren no favors as they spent like drunken government functionaries who've never had a real job in their lives. Neither did President Bush do them any favors as he refused to break out that VETO pen, but what has the Democratically controlled congress done in the last two years? They not only continued the trend, but accelerated it. Their policies have almost doubled the price of gas and they've required that we burn what had been food in our gas tanks. Now there's real wisdom, eh? And then we have those who want to run down the road at 25 miles an hour, wearing their skinny nuthin's on two whimpy little wheels, with 18 wheelers and cars that weigh 3,000 pounds, expecting to be treated equally on the roads when, at the same time, they don't see any reason to obey the same rules of the road. Corn squeezins are for drinking, not pouring into a gas tank.
A jar of my Folger's instant has increased by 50% ... in the last year and a half.
Shredded cheese for The Girls' breakfast has almost doubled. A bell pepper was a buck and a half at Wally's joint last week. We're being invaded by illegals daily. A loaf of bread, the cheap stuff that's not fit for much more than feeding the ducks at Soddy Lake, is almost 2 bucks.
And we're supposed to trust any of them? Phooey!
I need chocolate, while I'm contemplating global warming and watching the outside thermometer dip below 70 degrees after a high today that didn't even reach 90 ... in August.
~Royce E. Burrage Jr.
Financial Crisis Explained Part 4 - Must See Video
Here is another video that shows how democrat policies, including the actions of Barack Obama, led us to the current financial crisis. Ed Morrissey breaks it down here. Previous videos are here, here, and here.
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