Who Killed The Wyden-Snowe? UN Poised To Prosecute Bush Administration! Centrist Ready To Screw Things Up.
We’ve Not Heard The End Of This Mess, And We Have Not Heard The Whole Truth And Nothing But the Truth.
The UN is already poised to prosecute the Bush Administration. Scroll down for the link to sign.
On March 8, 2007 the Petition to the UN General Assembly was submitted to the former President of the UN General Assembly. The current president of the UN General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann has indicated that Bush should be put on trial:
“If the real justice is in order, people like George Bush who are committing crimes throughout the world should be put on trial. (March 8, 2009).”
It would be far better if we prosecuted Bush & co. in the United States before the International community steps in. The Obama Administration needs to be savvy to this. If Attorney General Holden fails to assign a Special Prosecutor to proceed with indictment for the crimes of the Bush Administration, it will look very bad for the Obama Administration once the UN begins its trial.
http://www.petitiononline.com/5t4r3e2w/petition.html
As with the evidence that Bush, Cheney, and gang intentionally lied us into a war, or the evidence of illegal and unconstitutional spying, each time a major new piece of evidence of torture emerges, it is impossible not to hope that this is the one that will compel the Justice Department or Congress or the courts or the American people to act decisively. Certainly I hope that, right now, the day after Mark Danner reported on a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
But let's not kid ourselves. Everyone has known that the United States was torturing for years. Congress has known it so well that it has both attempted to legislate immunity for the torturers (through the McCain Amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act and through the Military Commissions Act) and put on a show of attempting to "ban" torture, despite its having already been illegal under U.S. law and treaties to which the United States is a party. We've witnessed high profile lobbying competitions over whether or not Congress should "ban" torture again. We've seen President Bush declare his right to torture in signing statements. And we've seen Congress respond to those with renewed proposals to yet again "ban" torture. President Obama was elected promising to stop the torturing, and has announced that he is doing so, as well as that he will someday close one of the many places we illegally detain people without charge. But torture in that place (Guantanamo) has reportedly worsened, and Obama is not letting independent groups in to observe.
There are publicly available videotapes of Bush (April 11, 2008; Jan. 11, 2009) and Cheney (Dec. 15, 2008) confessing to authorizing torture. There are reports and photographs and videotapes from Abu Ghraib, some of which certain members of Congress have seen but the public has not. There are reports from dozens and dozens of victims, and from torturers and jailers. There are dozens of dead bodies, victims of torture, identified, and the torture techniques used to kill them identified. (This is separate from Cheney's assassination squad recently reported on by Seymour Hersh, which may not have used torture as its murder technique.) There are full-blown public scandals in nearby and allied nations like Canada, Britain, and Germany, over our torture of their citizens. Italy is trying members of our secret government in absentia for kidnapping a man in their country and having him tortured. Victims from around the world are suing former members of our government and corporations involved in the crimes, and Eric Holder's Justice Department is opposing those efforts, seeking to keep information secret and prevent accountability for crimes. Obama's administration is threatening the British government in order to do the same.
Here's what you can do about it:
Events are planned around the country marking the sixth anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, for which there has been no accountability. From April 4 to 19, your representatives and senators will be home in their districts and states. Here are tools you can use in organizing and lobbying:
1. Print, copy, and distribute this flyer (PDF).
2. Ask your Congress member to impeach former torture memo author, now appeals court judge Jay Bybee; click here.
3. Ask your Congress member and senators to cosponsor the State Secrets Protection Act, to require court review when presidents deny access to information by claiming "state secrets;” click here.
4. Over 175 groups, including several chapters of PDA, are asking the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for Bush and Cheney. Add your group here:
http://prosecutebushcheney.org
Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum944.php
Is there no level of treason outrageous enough to get one of the other two branches of government to confront these crimes against the Constitution? The justice department must immediately appoint a special prosecutor. Failing that, Congress must launch its own investigation, as called for by the always heroic Dennis Kucinich, to get to the bottom of this. Please submit this action page to speak out to them all.
Cheney assassination unit claim boost Truth Commission prospects
Examiner.com - USA
Leahy heads the Senate Judiciary Committee which makes it more likely that his Truth Commission proposal will gather support as indicated in the March 3 ...
See all stories on this topic
Richard Dreyfuss: Cheney Belongs In Jail
By The Huffington Post News Editors
I'm sure once President Obama has the economy under control and back on track, we will FINALLY see the trial of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only then will we finally prove that 9/11 was ...
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/
Rachel Maddow: Mark Danner: Red Cross Report Confirms Torture at ...
By Heather
I dare Bush, Cheney, and the rest of those criminals to go to Europe. Perhaps some time spent in Spain or France might be the trick. I would of course like to see Americans bring them to face charges of crimes against humanity, torture, ... Why did the International Red Cross keep this secret for at least two years? It tells me that we had a chance to impeach Bush two years ago, and this story may have made the difference. I hope the right people ask more questions ...Crooks and Liars - http://crooksandliars.com/
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Wyden-Snowe Proposal Could Have Saved Govt. $3 Billion-Plus
Had Congress ultimately passed Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Olympia Snowe's proposal to tax a portion of bonuses issued by bailout recipients, the government could...
Wyden: My Bill Could Have Prevented AIG Mess
Senator Ron Wyden said on Tuesday that the furor surrounding AIG's bonus payments could have been avoided had the Obama White House and members of Congress simply backed legislation that he and Sen. Olympia Snowe introduced more than a month ago.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, the Oregon Democrat noted that during the crafting of the stimulus package, he and his Republican colleague from Maine introduced a provision that would have forced bailout recipients to cap their bonuses at $100,000. Any amount paid above that would have been taxed at 35 percent. The language made it through the Senate, but during conference committee with the House, it was inexplicably removed.
"The reality is, had that legislation been passed it would have been a very strong disincentive to anybody paying out bonuses in the future," said Wyden. "Earlier, the President had denounced those bonuses that came at the end of the year. And when Senator Snowe and I said it is not enough for those in elected office to say it was wrong, that they have got to have a plan to have them pay it back, we were able to get legislation through the United States Senate. Not a single United States Senator was willing in broad daylight to stand up and oppose our bipartisan amendment... but it died in conference."
Looking back, Wyden laments the missed opportunity, saying that it remains unclear who got the language stripped -- "it didn't die by osmosis." (Feel free to send along tips on who killed the provision.)
Moreover, Wyden says frankly, the Obama administration should have been better prepared to handle what was an inevitable political train wreck.
"I will say that I talked to most of the key members of the Obama team and I was not able to convince them of the value of the amendment that I authored with Senator Snowe," he recalled. "I think it is unfortunate. I think it was an opportunity to send a careful, well-targeted message, which would have communicated how strongly the administration felt about blocking these excessive bonuses. I wasn't able to convince them."
That being said, he and Snowe have a remedy: they are reintroducing their stimulus provision as a stand-alone bill, only they are getting even stricter with bailed-out institutions. Instead of capping bonuses at $100,000, they are lowering the level to $25,000. The law would cover all recipients of taxpayer TARP money, as well as those firms -- like AIG -- which have received money outside of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. And it would deal with bonuses issued in 2008. If a company refuses to give up the bonuses, the amount that exceeded $25,000 would be taxed at 35 percent.
"They are either going to have to pay it back or they are going to be taxed," said the Senator. "And I think that is going to be pretty hard when they are already getting taxpayer money."
The legislation, as Wyden notes, effectively accomplishes several tasks -- punishing and dissuading firms for issuing bonuses, while not invalidating labor contracts. "Some of the best lawyers around have looked at it and their judgment is that this would be a legal approach," said Wyden. In a statement from her office, Snowe estimated that had their provision remained in the stimulus, AIG would have either been forced to "return the TARP money or pay out the bonuses and incur a 35 percent tax - equating to roughly $58 million."
Today, the political landscape is quite different from the one during the stimulus debate, with an even greater wave of populist outrage directed at AIG. In that vein, it would be hard to imagine -- should Wyden and Snowe's legislation actually make it to a vote -- Senators publicly opposing it. The Obama administration, too, seems likely to back some sort of measure, having declared that it would do everything in its power to recoup the bonuses paid out by AIG and curb similar practices from happening in the future. On Tuesday, Snowe and Wyden sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, asking him to endorse their approach.
And yet, Wyden still laments the missed opportunity to have put a policy in place from the beginning. Saying that his opposition to the bailouts were based on grounds that there was not "adequate oversight and accountability with respect to preventing these kinds of abuses," he concluded that his initial fears have been confirmed.
"When folks say that money from the TARP went out the door for these kinds of bonuses, what I have been saying is, I'm not exactly surprised," he said. "It was one of the fundamental reasons why I voted against both of those major bailouts."
Arianna Huffington: A Disturbing D.C. Whodunit [Update II]
Tim Geithner has now confirmed Chris Dodd's contention that the Treasury Department had insisted he include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed AIG to pay out bonuses, despite receiving bailout money. Still no word, however, from Geithner -- or anyone else in the administration -- about the killing of Sen. Wyden's bonus amendment that is the subject of this post. But the circumstantial evidence pointing to Obama's economic team is mounting.
UPDATE, 3-18, 6:35pm (EST):
Appearing on CNN today, Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said that officials at the Treasury Department had insisted that he modify a clause he had inserted into the stimulus bill that prohibited bonuses from being issued by bailed-out companies. This mirrors the legislative slaying of the similarly intended amendment co-sponsored by Sen. Wyden I write about below. The culprit behind the killing of the Wyden provision remains unsolved -- but Dodd fingering Treasury adds weight to Wyden's sense that members of Obama's economic team were behind the elimination of his amendment. And, in both cases, major decisions involving taxpayer money were carried out in a way that flies not in the face of fairness, but in the face of the administration's promises of transparency and accountability.
Original Post:
The mystery over who killed a provision in the stimulus package that would have curtailed bonuses at bailed out companies is a disturbing D.C. whodunit. But even more disturbing is what it reveals about how our government is run.
"It is the ultimate indictment of what Washington has become," Sen. Ron Wyden, co-sponsor of the eliminated provision, told me. "It's a place where, again and again, the public interest is deep-sixed behind closed doors and without any fingerprints."
For those of you who might have missed Sam Stein's original story, here it is in a nutshell:
Building on public outrage and presidential denunciations of executives at bailed out companies getting bonuses, Wyden and his Republican colleague, Sen. Olympia Snowe, crafted a provision in the stimulus bill that would have forced bailout recipients to cap their bonuses at $100,000 (any amount above that would be taxed at 35 percent).
According to Wyden, he "spent hours on the Senate floor," working to get the bipartisan amendment passed. He succeeded -- not a single Senator voted against the provision. "But," says Wyden, "it died in conference."
So who killed it? Wyden doesn't know.
Think about that for a second. We live in a country where one of the 100 most powerful people in government, the cosponsor of the amendment in question, has no clue how it got removed in the Senate-House conference committee -- or if it was taken out of the legislation even before it made it into conference.
And, so far, no one in the administration of a president who promised that transparency would be a "touchstone" of his presidency has demanded that whoever killed the provision step forward and own up to it.
It took Andrew Cuomo, using his authority as New York Attorney General, to get us at least some of the details about the AIG bonuses.
It's time for the White House to do the same, using its authority to uncover who removed the Wyden-Snowe provision from the stimulus bill.
"I pulled out all the stops," Wyden told me, "to convince the president's economic team that this amendment was vital to the White House for two reasons: 1) the president had spoken out against bonuses; 2) fury about bonuses would kneecap confidence in the president's entire economic policy."
But no one inside the president's economic team was in favor of it. As Wyden put it: "If the White House economic team had made it clear that this was important, this provision would never have been removed. I don't believe the president has been well-served on the bonus issue by his economic team."
So who asked for the amendment to be removed? Jason Furman? Peter Orszag? Tim Geithner? Larry Summers?
Such a move would certainly be consistent with the positions put forth by Summers who, as late as yesterday -- even contradicting the president -- continued to argue that attempting to stop the AIG bonuses would have "put the whole economy at risk."
Have you noticed how, whenever there is a serious effort to put an end to business-as-usual, we are warned by insiders like Paulson and Summers that the result will be the end of civilization?
"This lack of transparency -- and the lack of accountability that results -- is one of the most significant threats to our democracy," Wyden told me. "This is not at all how the civics books tell us the system is suppose to work. What we have here is a prime example of Washington deny, defer, delay."
He's right. We deserve better. Let's make this D.C. mystery the cause célèbre it deserves to be. Let's demand that the White House live up to its vows of transparency.
If you have any information about who killed the Wyden-Snowe bonus amendment, please let us know.
Sen. Wyden Points Finger at Administration Over Abandoned Bonus Provision
Though lawmakers are now trying to recoup some of the $165 million in bonuses through taxation, Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Olympia Snowe had included a provision to tax executive bonuses at 35 percent in the stimulus -- it was later stripped.
Sen. Dodd Admits Adding Bonus Provision to Stimulus Package
Sen. Chris Dodd says Treasury forced him to add language to the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill's passage.
In a dramatic reversal Wednesday, Sen. Chris Dodd confessed to adding language to a spending cap in the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill's passage.
Dodd, D-Conn., told FOX News that Treasury officials forced him to make the change.
"As many know, the administration was, among others, not happy with the language. They wanted some modifications to it," he said. "They came to us, our staff, and asked for changes, and the changes at the time did not seem that obnoxious or onerous."
But the provision has become a flash point for criticism amid the controversy over $165 million in bonuses given out by AIG after securing more than $170 billion in federal aid. The language in the stimulus bill wasn't specific to AIG, but some have expressed outrage that it appears to have created a loophole.
Dodd said the argument put forward by Treasury was that a "flood of lawsuits" would come forward if the change was not made.
Dodd said he was unaware of the AIG bonuses at the time the bill was being written back in early February. He also said he has no reason to believe Treasury officials making the argument knew about the AIG bonuses.
When asked how administration officials have this kind of leverage over members of Congress, Dodd said, "The administration has veto power. ... No one suggested a veto to me, I don't want to imply that to you. But certainly that's not an insignificant tool."
On Tuesday, Dodd told FOX News that he didn't add the exemption.
"When the language went to the conference and came back, there was different language," he said then. "I can tell you this much, when my language left the Senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did."
Dodd still thinks the Treasury can get the bonuses back, despite the inclusion of a date in the stimulus bill, and he said officials are, in fact, using his very language to claw back the money.
"There is language after that date that says explicitly that the Treasury has the right to modify, reaching back, those bonuses, compensations, if it's inconsistent with the TARP legislation or contrary to the public interest," he said.
"In fact, it's that phrase that the administration is relying on this evening as a means by which they can reach back and maybe get these bonuses back," he said.
Still, Dodd has his enemies. The Senate Republican re-election campaign quickly shot out a statement on the Dodd reversal, as he is a prime target in the 2010 midterm elections and is facing a Republican opponent who, in one poll, is in a statistical tie with him.
"Senator Dodd's reversal on this issue is both astonishing and alarming," the National Republican Senatorial Campaign said in a written statement. "Contrary to his statements and denials over the last 24 hours, Senator Dodd has now admitted that he and his staff did in fact change the language in the stimulus bill to include a loophole for AIG executive bonuses."
The group added that Dodd had "misled voters and equivocated on his statements ."
Professor Michael Hudson (CounterPunch, March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests.
Americans are angry that AIG executives are paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after having cost the taxpayers an exorbitant sum. Senator Charles Grassley put a proper face on the anger when he suggested that the AIG executives “follow the Japanese example and resign or go commit suicide.”
Yet, Obama’s White House economist, Larry Summers, on whose watch as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration financial deregulation got out of control, invoked the “sanctity of contracts” in defense of the AIG bonuses.
Pelosi Pins AIG Loophole on Senate, White House
Huffington Post - New York,NY,USA
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spoke with reporters Thursday to make what she sees as a crucial point regarding the stimulus language that ultimately ...See all stories on this topic
Big failures, big bonuses - Victor Kamber - POLITICO.com
By Victor Kamber
There should be bonuses for congressional Republicans who claim they tried to save taxpayers billions of dollars. When the smoke had cleared after debate over the $410 billion spending bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of ... E. B. Kagen Kanjorski Kaptur Kennedy Kildee Kilpatrick (MI) Kilroy Kind Kirkpatrick (AZ) Kissell Klein (FL) Kratovil Kucinich Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lee (CA) Levin Lewis (GA) Lipinski Loebsack Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Lynch Maffei ...
POLITICO.com: Ideas - http://www.politico.com/ideas/
10000 Join in Nationwide Protests at AIG and Major US Banks Today
Common Dreams (press release) - Portland,ME,USA
... Change to Win, Rock the Vote, MoveOn.org, United Students Against Sweatshops, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Partnership for Working Families, ...See all stories on this topic
Protest Outside Goldman Sachs
The Business Insider - New York,NY,USA
Various groups including ACORN, MoveOn.org, Rock The Vote, and Catholics United have planned a protest for 4:00 PM TODAY outside of Goldman Sachs' ...
See all stories on this topic
Bailout Bonus Rage Hits The Streets (VIDEO)
By The Huffington Post News Editors
The event, organized by the SEIU and others, including MoveOn.org and ACORN, was part of a nationwide effort to protest local AIG offices in 32 cities. (If you're attending one of the other demonstrations, report back and/or send us ...
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/
Pelosi: Don't Blame Us for AIG Mess
Washington Post - United States
By Ben Pershing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back strongly today at the suggestion that she or her fellow House Democrats might deserve any blame ...See all stories on this topic
House passes tax bill on AIG bonuses
Boston Globe - United States
"We want our money back and we want our money back now for the taxpayers," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said before the vote, according to the Associated ...See all stories on this topic
Citigroup May Spend $10 Million for Executive Suite
March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc.plans to spend about $10 million on new offices for Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit and his lieutenants, after the U.S. government injected $45 billion of cash into the bank.
Affidavits filed with New York’s Department of Buildings show Citigroupexpects to pay at least $3.2 million for basic construction such as wall removal, plumbing and fire safety. By the time architect’s fees and expenses such as furniture are added, the tally for the offices at the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters will be at least three times as high, according to a person familiar with the project who declined to be identified because he’s not authorized to comment. Citigroup said the project will help it save money over time.
Pandit, criticized by lawmakers over Citigroup’s use of U.S. bailout capital, canceled an order for a company jet in January and told Congress on Feb. 11 that, “I get the new reality and I’ll make sure Citi gets it as well.” Of the biggest U.S. banks that received federal aid, only Citigroup has turned to the government three times for rescue. The company, once the biggest U.S. bank by assets and market value, has agreed to limit perks and restrict executive pay.
“In this environment, it absolutely sends the wrong message,” said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, referring to the office renovations. “Timing in life is everything.”
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Centrist Democrats coalesce to 'find way forward'
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
... Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Warner of Virginia.
See all stories on this topic
On MSNBC, Tucker Carlson rewrote history to blame Frank for mortgage crisis
During the March 19 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, former MSNBC host Tucker Carlson claimed that the "crisis in mortgages ... emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," and then asserted: "[T]here are a lot of reasons this crisis began, but one of them was federal pressure to increase homeownership, and [Rep.] Barney Frank [D-MA] was in an oversight position during that process and didn't do a lot to stop it." In fact, Frank was not chairman of the House Financial Services Committee until 2007; prior to that, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and failed to pass oversight legislation. Indeed, it wasn't until Democrats gained a majority in Congress that legislation strengthening oversight of Fannie and Freddie passed.
As Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, in early 2007, as the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Franksponsored H.R. 1427, a bill to create the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), granting that agency "general supervisory and regulatory authority over" Fannie and Freddie and directing it to reform the companies' business practices and regulate their exposure to credit and market risk. The FHFA was eventually created after Congress incorporated provisions that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said were "similar" to those of H.R. 1427 into the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which former President Bush signed into law on July 30, 2008.
Moreover, before taking over as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank worked with then-committee chairman Michael Oxley (R-OH) on the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, which would have established the FHFA to replace the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight as overseer of the activities of Fannie and Freddie. After voting for the bill in committee, Frankvoted against final passage of the bill on the House floor, stating that he was doing so because an amendment added to the bill on the House floor imposed restrictions on the kinds of nonprofit organizations that could receive funding under the bill.
Frank himself wrote in a March 18 Huffington Post article: "In recent weeks, my friends across the aisle have expended a lot of breath proclaiming that the Democrats caused the present financial crisis by failing to pass legislation to regulate financial services companies in the years 1995 through 2006. There is only small one problem with this story -- throughout this entire period the Republicans were in complete charge of the House and for the most critical years they controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency." Frank continued:
In the House of Representatives, the majority party has almost unlimited power over the minority party. The majority party owns the committee chairmanships; it controls what bills come to a vote; and it is under no obligation to consider the ideas of the beleaguered minority. When the Republicans were in the majority they ruled with an iron first; it is no accident that Tom DeLay was known as "The Hammer."
That is why I find it particularly flattering the Republicans now claim that in the years 1995 to 2006 I personally possessed supernatural powers which enabled me to force mighty Republican leaders to do my bidding. Choose your comic book hero -- I was all of them.
I wish I had the power to force the Republican leadership to do my bidding! If I had had that power, I would have used it to block the impeachment of Bill Clinton, to stop the war in Iraq, to prevent large tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, and to stop government intervention into the private life of Terri Schiavo. Yet that power eluded me, and I was unable to stop those things.
According to the Republicans' misty memories of the period before 2007, I allegedly singlehandedly blocked their determined efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and my supposed intransigence literally caused the worldwide financial crisis.
Fortunately, we have tools to aid memory -- pencil and paper, word processing, transcripts, newspapers, and the Congressional record. And as described in the most reputable published sources, in 2005 I in fact worked together with my Republican colleague Michael Oxley, then Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, to write a bill to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We passed the bill out of committee with an overwhelming majority -- every Democrat voted in favor of the legislation. However, on the House floor the Republican leadership added a poison pill amendment, which would have prevented non-profit institutions with religious affiliations from receiving funds. I voted against the legislation in protest, though I continued to work with Mr. Oxley to encourage the Senate to pass a good bill. But these efforts were defeated because President Bush blocked further consideration of the legislation. In the words of Mr. Oxley, no flaming liberal, the Bush administration gave his efforts 'the one-finger salute.'
Moreover, Carlson's claim that the crisis "emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" is contradicted by experts, including economist Dean Baker, who has stated:
Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector. They lost market share in the years 2002-2007, as the volume of private issue mortgage backed securities exploded. In short, while Fannie and Freddie were completely irresponsible in their lending practices, the claim that they were responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face -- kind of like the claim that the earth is flat.
From the March 19 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:
CARLSON: This all began, or partly began, with the crisis in mortgages. And that emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, right here in what -- right near where I'm sitting right now. And those were overseen by the federal government. I mean, there are a lot of reasons this crisis began, but one of them was federal pressure to increase homeownership, and Barney Frank was in an oversight position during that process and didn't do a lot to stop it -- lending to -------
We’ve Not Heard The End Of This Mess, And We Have Not Heard The Whole Truth And Nothing But the Truth.
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