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I guess they'll be visiting the Obama campaign headquarters...where a few of the Freddie and Fannie execs now work.
FOXNEWS.CON
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial ins utions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, The Associated Press has learned.
Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurer American International Group Inc. Additionally, a senior law enforcement official said Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. also is under investigation.
The inquiries will focus on the financial ins utions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law enforcement official said.
The law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are ongoing and are in the very early stages.
Officials said the new inquiries bring to 26 the number of corporate lenders under investigation over the past year.
Spokesmen for AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not immediately return calls for comment Tuesday evening. A Lehman spokesman did not have an immediate comment.
Just last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller put the number of large financial firms under investigation at 24. He did not name any of the companies under investigation but said the FBI also was looking at whether any of them have misrepresented their assets.
Over the past year as the housing market cratered, the FBI has opened a wide-ranging probe of companies across the financial services industry, from mortgage lenders to investment banks that bundle home loans into securities sold to investors. Mueller has previously said the FBI's hunt for culprits in the nation's subprime mortgage crisis focused on accounting fraud, insider trading, and failure to disclose the value of mortgage-related securities and other investments.
The investigations revealed Tuesday come as lawmakers began considering whether to approve emergency legislation that would give the government broad power to buy up devalued assets from troubled financial firms.
The bailout proposed by the Bush administration is aimed at helping unlock credit and stabilize badly shaken markets in the United States and around the globe.
In the past two weeks, the government has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the country's two biggest mortgage companies, with a bailout plan that could require the Treasury Department to put up as much as $100 billion for each of them over time if needed to keep them afloat as mortgage losses mount.
Last week, the Federal Reserve provided an emergency $85 billion loan to AIG, which teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Lehman Brothers was forced to file for bankruptcy after attempts to engineer a private rescue fell apart. All the companies were laid low from bad bets on complex mortgage-related securities.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made the joint decision last week that the only way to stop the carnage was to deal with the root cause of all the troubles, billions of dollars of bad mortgage debt sitting on the books of major financial companies. This debt has triggered the worst credit crisis in decades, causing credit markets to essentially freeze up despite the fact that the Fed joined with major central banks around the world to pump billions of dollars of reserves into the financial system.
Additionally, the FBI is investigating failed bank IndyMac Bancorp Inc. for possible fraud. Countrywide Financial Corp., formerly the nation's largest mortgage lender and now owned by Bank of America Corp., is also under scrutiny.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,426783,00.html
I guess they'll be visiting the Obama campaign headquarters...where a few of the Freddie and Fannie execs now work.
You just love lying don't you? That isn't true in the slightest.
I wonder when the FBI is going to start looking at Goldman Sachs. You know, the company Paulson used to run?
Rules 'bent' to provide Obama advisers loans
Fannie Mae CEOs Raines, Johnson got exemptions from standard requirements
Slightest? I don't know, you decide.
Were Gaines and Johnson at Fannie Mae during a time when the crisis was brewing? Do they now, or did they at any time, advise the Obama campaign?
Yes, it's not like Franklin Raines ($90 million, Fannie Mae - Obama financial advisor), Jamie Gorelick ($25 million, Fannie - Obama financial advisor), and James Johnson ($21 million, Freddie, - Obama advisor and vetted Obama's VP candidates before advancing Biden for the pick) are involved in the Obama campaign in any way.
Dumbass.
Goldman should be on the list, but won't be because of Paulson. And that sucks.
I wouldn't go there. Read up the story I'm about to post, led: "McCain Aide’s Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac"
Yes, it's not like Franklin Raines ($90 million, Fannie Mae - Obama financial advisor), Jamie Gorelick ($25 million, Fannie - Obama financial advisor), and James Johnson ($21 million, Freddie, - Obama advisor and vetted Obama's VP candidates before advancing Biden for the pick) are involved in the Obama campaign in any way.
Dumbass.
McCain Aide's Firm was Paid by Freddie Mac? What does that mean?
Raines, Gorelick, and Johnson WORK for Obama.
Johnson stepped aside after the mortgage scandal.
And...
Rick Davis, William Timmons Sr and Mark Buse WORK for McCain.
Yes, it's not like Franklin Raines ($90 million, Fannie Mae - Obama financial advisor), Jamie Gorelick ($25 million, Fannie - Obama financial advisor), and James Johnson ($21 million, Freddie, - Obama advisor and vetted Obama's VP candidates before advancing Biden for the pick) are involved in the Obama campaign in any way.
Dumbass.Please show me where there is any proof Raines or Gorelick are part of the Obama campaign. The only one who WAS part of it was Johnson. He was on a committee to find a running mate (not exactly running the campaign you ) and was asked to step down shortly after. I would love to tell some aggie jokes but I fear we'd get off topic.The McCain campaign cited a July Washington Post profile of Raines as the source for his connection to Obama. In that profile, it was reported that he had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." In a statement issued by the Obama campaign late Thursday, Raines strongly denied having provided counsel to Obama, saying: "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters."
That was nice. Another Obama acquaintance thrown under the bus.
K Street is full of lobbyists who will work for money...imagine that. McCain called for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be reigned in something like 18 times in the past few years...(all efforts were obstructed by Democrats, including Obama)...If Davis, Timmons, et. al. were lobbying McCain on behalf of Freddie and Fannie, their efforts were falling on deaf ears.
Those deaf ears that continually voted to de-regulate the mortgage sector. Makes sense.
Deregulation isn't what caused the problem...Democrats and their inability to quick monkeying with free enterprise, in the name of equity and fairness, is what caused the problem.
The problem is that Rick Davis was getting a nice $15K monthly paycheck from Freddie until last month when the government took over. All this while he was campaigning with McCain.
I'm going to ask you the same question you posed earlier, with just a smaller change:
Were Davis and Timmons Sr at Freddie Mac during a time when the crisis was brewing? Do they now, or did they at any time, advise the McCain campaign?
Last edited by ElNono; 09-23-2008 at 08:18 PM.
Well that's all I needed to know about you.
What law forced all these private investment banks to pile up this ty debt in collateral? C'mon, Yoni, you're on a roll. I'm sure it will take you no time to find it.
Look at this . So partisan they can't admit their lovebuddies were in on it.
THEY ARE POLITICIANS. You owe no allegiance to them nor should you spend hours defending them!
The Democrats, under Clinton, "strengthened" a Jimmy Carter-created monster called the "Community Reinvestment Act." This law was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" to coerce lending ins utions to make these bad loans ... millions of them.
What law forced all these private investment banks to pile up this ty debt in collateral? C'mon, Yoni, you're on a roll. I'm sure it will take you no time to find it.
Democrat Barney Franks has spent the past few years thwarting Republican efforts to kill this beast and stop the madness.
Sure. Bankers making bad bets on rising home prices had nothing to do with it.
Again, the 'Community Reinvestment Act' mentions absolutely nothing about FORCING all these debts into the company's collateral. It only allows them to do it, but doesn't force them to. You see, all companies have taken bad debt at one point or another in American history. They just never did the cluster accounting they've done this time, moving all that debt into securities, etc.
Last edited by ElNono; 09-23-2008 at 09:07 PM.
Quit being such a partisan Yoni. Both sides are responsible for this mess. Both sides got paid off by financial lobbyists.
How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis: Kevin HassettSure. Bankers making bad bets on rising home prices had nothing to do with it.
Again, the 'Community Reinvestment Act' mentions absolutely nothing about moving all these debts into the company's collateral. You see, all companies have taken bad debt at one point or another in American history. They just never did the cluster accounting they've done this time, moving all that debt into securities, etc.
And, this was all instigated by ACORN-sponsored amendments to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 mandating lenders to relax qualifying criteria, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.
Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. ...
The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them. Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it's hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.
It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.
Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Ins ute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Commission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even "on the page" of allowable interpretations.
Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a "world-class regulator" that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.
The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie "continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road," he said. "We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."
What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable ins utions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000. ...
There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
The housing market wouldn't have exploded if this law hadn't created a bazillion new home owners. And, lenders wouldn't have resorted to financial s games in an effort to stay solvent.
Obviously Republican helped get the bill to Clinton's desk in the 90's but, Democrats and, Barney Franks in particular, are responsible for obstructing all efforts to address the problem in this century.
Paulson himself pointed to "inadequate" regulation as a major part of this entire financial collapse...oversight, protection, transparency- that's what is being called for now, finally- by all parties involved, Republican and Democrat. You are trying to lay this financial storm on Democrats? Gotdamn you are a bag.
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