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Have a good one!:s4:
PolitiFact | McCain's 'warning' on Fannie & Freddie
McCain's 'warning' on Fannie & Freddie
By Adriel Bettelheim
Published on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 05:23 p.m.
SUMMARY: McCain spoke up after a widely read report drew attention to chicanery at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but it??s a huge stretch to suggest he could have somehow averted the current crisis.
The turmoil on Wall Street is prompting the presidential candidates to offer prescriptions for restoring order to U.S. financial markets. John McCain is using the opportunity to remind voters that he called on Congress to crack down on government-chartered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Appearing on CNN??s American Morning on Sept. 16, 2008, McCain sought to blame much of the crisis on Wall Street greed and inept or corrupt government regulators. ??Ask any American citizen who has been the victim of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy,? McCain said. ??I said two years ago that the Fannie and Freddie thing was a very serious problem and we had to work on it. And I have always opposed greed of Wall Street and I know how we can fix this.?
McCain echoed his remarks later in the day during a speech in Tampa, saying, ??Two years ago, I warned the administration and the Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed to be fixed. It turns out, the problem was even bigger. They waited too long, and now we have a housing crisis, three bailouts with taxpayers?? money, and a financial crisis.?
In both appearances, McCain was referring to his 2006 decision to sign on to a Republican-led regulatory overhaul of the mortgage-financing firms, which both went through multibillion-dollar accounting scandals earlier in the decade. The occasion that prompted McCain??s involvement was the release of a 340-page report from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight that concluded that Fannie Mae had manipulated earnings and violated basic accounting principles. It describes an ??arrogant and unethical corporate culture? in which executives were more concerned about their bonuses than meeting the company??s housing mission.
The findings, based on a 27-month investigation and resulting in a $400-million fine paid to the government, prompted McCain to join other critics and call for more scrutiny of Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac. ??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,? McCain declared in a May 26, 2006, news release.
So it??s true that McCain spoke out ?? after a widely read report drew attention to chicanery at the firms. But the implication in McCain's remarks is that his remarks in 2006 were in some way a warning about the financial markets disaster that struck in 2008. That strikes us as quite a stretch.
First of all, congressional efforts to increase oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac extend back to the early 1990s, making McCain a latecomer to the debate. The regulatory efforts proved unsuccessful because of Congress?? complicated relationship with the firms, whose dominance in the home financing market makes their stability critical to the economy.
Fannie and Freddie are government-sponsored enterprises ?? a type of private corporation created by Congress for an explicit purpose; in this case, to lower the cost of capital in the housing market. Though critics have long maintained that the firms were too large and didn??t have enough capital to guard against risk, many lawmakers worried that stricter regulation would interfere with the firms?? role in the housing market. (The now-defunct Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, known as OFHEO, oversaw Fannie and Freddie but had limited regulatory authority.)
In his appearances, McCain tries to connect the accounting scandals with the broader meltdown in the mortgage markets. But the current crisis arose because banks and mortgage companies made risky ??subprime? loans to people with poor credit histories that were then packaged into securities and sold to institutional investors. As interest rates rose and home prices began to fall, homeowners unable to refinance the loans or sell their properties began to default, unleashing a cascade effect through financial markets. That phenomenon had nothing to do with Fannie and Freddie??s internal problems; in fact, both firms were praised for cushioning the financial free fall and keeping the market afloat by spending billions of dollars to purchase subprime loans.
Even if the 2006 effort to strengthen oversight had succeeded, it??s debatable whether it would have averted the subprime crisis. The extent of the problems was not yet fully known, and it??s a leap of faith to suggest that regulators granted expanded power would have noticed a deterioration in Fannie and Freddie??s loan portfolios soon enough and would have sounded an alarm. Shaken by the extent of the subprime crisis, Congress and the Bush administration earlier this year completed a regulatory overhaul by combining OFHEO and the Federal Housing Finance Board into a new regulatory body, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Last weekend, the government took the additional step of placing the two firms into conservatorship ?? essentially a government takeover in which Treasury will extend up to $200-billion of support to the companies.
Barack Obama??s campaign responded to McCain??s remarks by labeling his desire for tougher oversight a myth. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor noted that McCain in 1992 voted against imposing stricter controls on Fannie and Freddie during Senate debate on a broader housing bill, and this year argued against providing big government bailouts in response to the crisis, whether for big lenders or homeowners.
We give McCain some credit for weighing in on problems surrounding Fannie Mae, even though he got involved after a comprehensive government report issued a loud alarm to anyone watching. However, his attempts to depict those efforts as some sort of early warning that could have lessened the current credit crisis just don't wash. All McCain was talking about then was the potential fallout of accounting troubles in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He didn't say anything about a freewheeling climate among creditors that had major financial institutions becoming badly leveraged on bad loans. We rule his claim Barely True.
white house press release, outlining george bush's plan to increase freddie and fannie share of the mortgages issued to low income minorities by $440 billion :
Fact Sheet: President Bush Calls for Expanding Opportunities to Homeownership
June 17, 2002
Fact Sheet: President Bush Calls for Expanding Opportunities to Homeownership
Today's Presidential Action
President Bush has a comprehensive agenda to help increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million before the end of the decade.
The President also believes that government alone can't close America's homeownership gap. It is critical that our government challenge the private sector to take concrete steps to tear down the barriers to homeownership that face minority families. The President is issuing "America's Homeownership Challenge" to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to join in his effort to increase the number of minority homeowners by 5.5 million families by the end of the decade. Many organizations have already responded to the President's challenge by committing to:
# Substantially increase by at least $440 billion, the financial commitment made by the government sponsored enterprises involved in the secondary mortgage market, specifically targeted toward the minority market
allan greenspan's role in the subprime crisis:
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Analysis - A global outlook
"This global analysis lies at the heart of his explanation of what caused the housing bubble that emerged during his watch as Fed chief. Mr Greenspan says the housing bubble was ??fundamentally engendered by the decline in real long-term interest rates? caused by a cascade of surplus savings from fast-growing emerging market economies such as China. The fall in long-term rates provided the initial gain in house prices that unleashed later speculative activity. He blames human nature ?? though he talks about ??euphoria? rather than ??greed?. To his critics, who argue that the Fed fuelled the bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long in the early 2000s, this is an exercise in passing the buck. "
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as late as 2005, greenspan was pimping subprime loans to the low income segment of the market...THANKS AL!
FRB: Speech, Greenspan--Consumer finance--April 8, 2005
*edited for brevity*
Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan
Consumer Finance
At the Federal Reserve System�s Fourth Annual Community Affairs Research Conference, Washington, D.C.
April 8, 2005
It is a pleasure to be here today as you conclude your discussions about our dynamic consumer finance market. Our nation's vibrant financial services industry is remarkable in many respects, with myriad providers offering consumers a broad range of transaction and credit options. The industry is central to the functioning of our robust consumer sector. Therefore, it is essential that policymakers, regulators, bankers, researchers, and consumer groups remain fully engaged in monitoring developments in the consumer finance market and continually seek to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the financial services industry, including how well it serves lower-income and underserved consumers.
A brief look back at the evolution of the consumer finance market reveals that the financial services industry has long been competitive, innovative, and resilient. Especially in the past decade, technological advances have resulted in increased efficiency and scale within the financial services industry. Innovation has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs for immigrants. Such developments are representative of the market responses that have driven the financial services industry throughout the history of our country.
The development of a broad-based secondary market for mortgage loans also greatly expanded consumer access to credit. By reducing the risk of making long-term, fixed-rate loans and ensuring liquidity for mortgage lenders, the secondary market helped stimulate widespread competition in the mortgage business. The mortgage-backed security helped create a national and even an international market for mortgages, and market support for a wider variety of home mortgage loan products became commonplace. This led to securitization of a variety of other consumer loan products, such as auto and credit card loans.
Deregulation and consolidation have also cultivated the expansion of the financial services marketplace, as evidenced by the proliferation of many nonbank entities that provide the credit and transaction services that were once mainly the province of depository institutions.
As has every segment of our economy, the financial services sector has been dramatically transformed by technology.
With these advances in technology, lenders have taken advantage of credit-scoring models and other techniques for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers. The widespread adoption of these models has reduced the costs of evaluating the creditworthiness of borrowers, and in competitive markets cost reductions tend to be passed through to borrowers. Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately. These improvements have led to rapid growth in subprime mortgage lending; indeed, today subprime mortgages account for roughly 10 percent of the number of all mortgages outstanding, up from just 1 or 2 percent in the early 1990s.
Improved access to credit for consumers, and especially these more-recent developments, has had significant benefits. Unquestionably, innovation and deregulation have vastly expanded credit availability to virtually all income classes. Access to credit has enabled families to purchase homes, deal with emergencies, and obtain goods and services. Home ownership is at a record high, and the number of home mortgage loans to low- and moderate-income and minority families has risen rapidly over the past five years. Credit cards and installment loans are also available to the vast majority of households.
As we reflect on the evolution of consumer credit in the United States, we must conclude that innovation and structural change in the financial services industry have been critical in providing expanded access to credit for the vast majority of consumers, including those of limited means. Without these forces, it would have been impossible for lower-income consumers to have the degree of access to credit markets that they now have.
Did Obama EVER say anything about Fannie and Freddy? I checked out the vote in "92" and found some interesting facts such as this bill was passed with every dem and most of the republicans. I wonder what was behind the no vote. Maybe a bunch of pork added? Who knows.Quote:
Originally Posted by maladroit
Since the date line of "92" is brought up there is another interesting fact. A Dem controlled Senate, Congress, and the year that B. Clinton was elected. Just so happens that B. Clinton was the one that deregulated this market.
Sorry but I couldn't find the line in the link that stated ANYTHING regarding Fannie and Freddie. ALL of these assholes knew what was going on, I just want to know who was in their back pocket.:mad:Quote:
Originally Posted by maladroit
Have a good one!:s4:
Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]: Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. 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.
I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.
GovTrack: Senate Record: FEDERAL HOUSING ENTERPRISE REGULATORY REFORM... (109-s20060525-16)
Sponsor: Sen. Charles Hagel [R-NE]
Cosponsors [as of 2007-01-08]
Sen. Elizabeth Dole [R-NC]
Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]
Sen. John Sununu [R-NH]
GovTrack: S. 190 [109th]: Text of Legislation, Introduced in Senate
Where is Obama's Bill regarding this $900 billion screw up? :wtf:
Have a good one!:s4:
"Clinton was the one that deregulated this market. "
- don't you mean "regulated"? according to fox news and right wing blogosphere, bill clinton is responsible for the economic crisis because he used regulation (the 'communisty' reinvestment act) to force banks to loan money to low income and minority families
"Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]: Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal."
- EXACTLY! it was an accounting scandal, not a subprime loan scandal...george bush and allan greenspan are responsible for the subprime loan scandal
"Sorry but I couldn't find the line in the [white house] link that stated ANYTHING regarding Fannie and Freddie."
- fannie may and freddie mac are government sponsored enterprises (the largest government sponsored enterprises in the world, i think)...the 2002 white house press release i linked and quoted referred to fannie and freddie in their action plan by saying:
"Substantially increase by at least $440 billion, the financial commitment made by the government sponsored enterprises involved in the secondary mortgage market, specifically targeted toward the minority market"
here is an explanation of government sponsored enterprise:
Government sponsored enterprise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clinton, Republicans agree to deregulation of US financial systemQuote:
Originally Posted by maladroit
By Martin McLaughlin
1 November 1999
An agreement between the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans, reached during all-night negotiations which concluded in the early hours of October 22, sets the stage for passage of the most sweeping banking deregulation bill in American history, lifting virtually all restraints on the operation of the giant monopolies which dominate the financial system.
Clinton, Republicans agree to deregulation of US financial system | Piggington's Econo-Almanac | San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis
Have a good one!:s4:
Again, as I'm no party's brainwashed bitch, you get the credit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Psycho4Bud
thanks very much for sharing this article. indeed informative and useful.
Independence rules :D
i blame deregulation too, and i look forward to seeing more regulation of the US financial market, hopefully expanding in the futures trading market as well...this crash has created a groundswell of bipartisan support for financial regulation
regulation *might* have prevented this crisis, but deregulation alone did not cause it...nobody put a gun to the bank managers heads and told them to issue risky loans...nobody forced them to package risky loans together and sell them to other banks and investment houses...subprime loans existed before the 1999 financial services act, otherwise known as the gramm-leach-bliley act (all three are republicans and john mccain supported the legislation)......government deregulation failed to protect the public interest, but banks and investment houses were still legally obligated to be prudent with other people's money and they failed spectacularly...we will see a lot more corporate heads on sticks than politicians heads
many liberals claim that gun control regulation like assault weapons bans will reduce murders and gun crime...many conservatives dispute that...a guy who plans to kill someone is probably going to do it anyway, even if he has to wait one week to pick up his new semi-automatic machine gun
imagine this crazy scenario:
bill clinton signs a republican bill to deregulate assault weapons in his second last year of office...in 2002, george bush issues a policy statement promoting assault weapon ownership to 5.5 million low income and minority people...george bush sends his appointee running the alcohol tobacco and firearms department to pressure gun stores regulated by the ATF to lower their standards and extend credit to risky customers to match the assault weapons sales in non-regulated gun stores...after the inevitable wave of assault weapon crime terrorizing american urban centers, post offices, and schools, george bush makes a speech to the nation suggesting that the cause of the crime wave started before he took office, and fox news supports his story with misleading journalism blaming bill clinton and the democrats for the crime wave
that is what happened here...george bush directly encouraged banks to engage in risky loan practices in 2002...he campaigned in 2004 on home ownership rates...he sent his appointee in charge of the housing and urban development department to pressure fannie and freddie (which are regulated by the HUD) to issue more subprime loans in 2005...the crap hits the fan and he pretends the problem has to do with foreign investors and something that happened over a decade ago
i'm not saying the dems are innocent (not by a long shot) but i don't accept that george bush or allan greenspan are minority players who tried to stop this...the bush administration and the financial industry promoted risky subprime loans for years leading up to the subprime crisis
"First, how did our economy reach this point? Well, most economists agree that the problems we are witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad, because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business. This large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions -- along with low interest rates -- made it easier for Americans to get credit."
- George W Bush, putting the cart before the horse, Sept/08
HUD Testimony - Statement of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, 4/13/05
Statement of The Honorable Alphonso Jackson, Secretary, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services
April 13, 2005
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
Chairman Oxley, Ranking Member Frank, Distinguished Members of the Committee:
I welcome the opportunity to join Secretary Snow in discussing the Administration's views on how best to improve and reform regulatory oversight of the housing government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.
The President has set an ambitious goal: to build an ownership society where everyone has a chance to own a home and a retirement account or health care plan, and to gain a permanent stake in the American Dream. Ownership brings stability to our neighborhoods and security to our families. To build an ownership society, the President is committed to helping even more Americans buy homes. That commitment is embodied in the President's challenge to the housing industry to join with us in creating 5.5 million new minority homeowners by the end of this decade. It is embodied in the Blueprint for the American Dream Partnership, through which HUD has brought together the private sector, not-for-profits, and government agencies to meet the President's challenge.
:
:
The (Bush) Administration strongly supports retaining a core element of oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - setting and enforcing the affordable housing goals - at HUD. Congress established the housing goals to ensure that these GSEs fulfill their mandate to provide leadership to the mortgage market. The goals direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to serve low- and moderate-income families and provide funding in underserved areas, such as central cities and rural areas. A third goal directs these GSEs to finance housing for very low and low-income families in low-income areas.
:
:
We also consider it important that fair housing requirements and enforcement that pertain to the housing GSEs remain at HUD, given HUD's expertise in fighting housing discrimination. HUD should have full enforcement power for those authorities, in the same way it enforces the Fair Housing Act. Secretary Snow testified about additional powers for the new regulator, and I would add one more - allowing the regulator to establish the conforming loan limits on a local basis each year, using the best available data, to more appropriately serve low- and moderate-income families.
:
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Let me stress that we believe such a comprehensive change to the regulatory structure will boost the confidence of all GSE stakeholders. Investors will be better protected under a regulatory system that empowers the regulator to do the job we expect of them? and Americans will ultimately benefit. At the same time, we will strengthen the GSEs' ability to serve low- and moderate-income families pursuing affordable homeownership.
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alphonzo jackson was appointed HUD secretary by george bush (his former neighbour)...jackson resigned under a corruption scandal in early 2008, after which President Bush said in a statement, Jackson "made significant progress in transforming public housing, revitalizing and modernizing the Federal Housing Administration, increasing affordable housing, rebuilding the Gulf Coast, decreasing homelessness, and increasing minority homeownership."
ya did a heckuva job, fonzi!
I am but a simple man but !
The US goverment proposes to bail out private financial institutions after the said businesses made incredibly stupid mistakes and lost untold amounts of money.
They then plan on employing the same money men to manage the money all over again ???????
WTF ????
Am I the only one who can see the fatal flaw in that plan.
By bailing out these businesses the goverment is saying "it's okay to fuck yourselves to the tune of billions of dollars because we will come to your rescue.
Do you think I could get them to back me for the next European Poker Tournament. :thumbsup:
NO SHIT!:thumbsup: Probably one of the big reasons why this bill didn't pass....at least I hope so.Quote:
Originally Posted by psychocat
Have a good one!:s4:
Hold up...:smokebong:Quote:
Originally Posted by maladroit
Fan and Fred failed due to unethical, and unprofessional lending practices that really have very little to do with them. One could say they fed the housing bubble, but they were doing business like they always did, only in much higher volume. Could a better practice of risk management been implemented? Possibly, but that is not the underwriter's job to evaluate potential homeowners, that is the issuing banks department. Underwriters evaluate writers (lending banks), when things got bad i guarantee money began to flow at a slower rate. The Federal Reserve then lowered interest rates in an attempt to push lending, which was a horrible idea.
The truth of the matter is, Fan and Fred should not have been allowed to grow to a "to big to fail" size. Whatever happened to antitrust laws? Whatever happened to competition? You are now expected to believe Washington has your back, when the one thing they could have done to prove it gets mulled down due to political pandering....
who allowed and encouraged fannie and freddie to grow too big to fail?
president bush october 2002, talking about his plan to create 5.5 million homeowners among minority groups, using government sponsored enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac
YouTube - economic crisis president bush mortgage speech
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Bush Administration Convenes Summit to Expand Minority Homeownership
White House conference on minority homeownership brings public and private sectors together
RISMEDIA, Oct. 15, 2002
President Bush today hosted a White House conference in
Washington, bringing together hundreds of public and private sector housing-related experts in a comprehensive partnership to close the nation??s ??homeownership gap.? This gap shows minority families continue to own homes at significantly lower rates than the rest of the nation.
In his State of the Union address last January, President Bush pledged to help more families, especially minority families, to become home owners. In June, President Bush issued the ??Homeownership Challenge? to increase minority homeownership by 5.5 million by the end of the decade.
??President Bush understands that when we open the doors of the American Dream to more families, we all win,? said Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez. ??Homeownership inspires civic responsibility, offers children a stable living environment and generates economic benefits for families and communities.?
The White House Conference on Minority Homeownership featured solutions to the obstacles minority families face as they pursue the ??American Dream? as well as the considerable social and economic benefits of expanding homeownership opportunities to would-be first time homeowners.
During the conference, Martinez released a report entitled Economic Benefits of Increasing Minority Homeownership?this report concludes that adding 5.5 million minority home owners will stimulate an additional $256 billion in benefits to the housing sector of the U.S. economy.
Numerous private and nonprofit organizations joined the Administration in forming The Blueprint for the American Dream Partnership, a collaborative effort to advance the President??s goal. This partnership developed a strategy that identifies four areas that must be addressed in order to meet the President??s goal including:
* Educating more people in the home buying process;
* Increasing the supply of affordable homes;
* Providing more downpayment and closing cost assistance; and,
* Offering more home financing options for lower income Americans.
The Blueprint for the American Dream outlines each organization??s plan to help meet the Administration??s challenge.
HUD, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Treasury, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) and the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) represented the Bush Administration. The following private and nonprofit organizations also make up the Blueprint for the American Dream Partnership:
The Enterprise Foundation
Fannie Mae
Federal Home Loan Banks
Freddie Mac
Habitat for Humanity International
Local Initiatives Support Corporation
Mortgage Bankers Association of America
National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals
National Association of Home Builders
National Association of Mortgage Brokers
National Association of Real Estate Brokers
National Association of Realtors
Neighborhood Housing Services of America
Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation
Sears, Roebuck and Co.
To read Economic Benefits of Increasing Minority Homeownership or Blueprint for the American Dream visit Homes and Communities - U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)