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i can't believe how anyone can take him seriously after the "shutdown" debacle. His demaverickification is complete. He's just another politician now, and a pretty bad one at that.
He was for it, but now that it's been voted down will he be against it?
Ed Rollins: Failure Of Bailout Will Hurt McCain
Sam Stein
September 29, 2008 04:09 PM
HuffA prominent GOP strategist said on Monday that John McCain handled his role in the bailout process poorly and would ultimately be hurt politically by the failure of the House of Representatives to pass the measure.
"To a certain extent, I think John gets hurt by this," said Ed Rollins, a CNN contributor who worked on former Gov. Mike Huckabee's primary campaign earlier this cycle. "He obviously, at the end of the day, said he was for it. But more important than that, he said he was the one who would bring them to the table and to a certain extent he will be viewed now as not being able to do that."
Rollins added, "McCain is our nominee and {congressional Republicans} will do everything they can to help him, but they are not going to go over the cliff for him. They did that for Bush, and they thought that this measure was just too dramatic for their cons uencies."
The GOP strategist spoke to the Huffington Post just an hour after the House failed to pass the $250 billion bailout package by a margin of 205 to 228. Republicans in that body were quick to cast blame on Speaker Nancy Pelosi for giving a "partisan" speech earlier on Monday -- a doubtful assertion given the benign text of Pelosi's remarks. When it came to McCain's leadership qualities, however, Rollins argued that the last week has left much to be desired.
"I think the reality is, he made a big show coming in and at the end of the day it really wasn't realistic for him," he said.
McCain has, indeed, made several obvious missteps since the bailout became the central campaign issue. Calling for the firing of SEC Chairman Chris Cox, Rollins noted, did little to endear McCain to conservatives in the House, many of whom hold Cox in higher regard than the Arizona Senator. Perhaps more embarrassing were the claims made by Sen. McCain's aides the past two days taking credit for forging the bipartisan compromise that never came to fruition.
i can't believe how anyone can take him seriously after the "shutdown" debacle. His demaverickification is complete. He's just another politician now, and a pretty bad one at that.
Oh, it gets worse...
A) Did Obama vote? I haven't heard.
B) What the was Pelosi trying to do before the vote with that partisan tirade? Someone said she was building a concensus...
C) Who caused this mess in the first place -- and, yes, the truth will out. It's more and more looking like the CRA amendments of 95, the obstruction of Democrats, and the complicity of Obama -- and lawyers like him -- that forced banks to issued bad loans by lawsuit are at the root of this whole fiasco.
D) Who failed to recognize and take action in time to avert this crisis? Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Obama were accepting sweetheart mortgage deals from Countywide and money from Fannie and Freddie lobbyists -- more than anyone else in congress -- to cover their asses.
If the American voters don't recognize what the happened, they deserve what they get. Idiots.
The Republicans in complete control of the entire government for six years.Who failed to recognize and take action in time to avert this crisis?
Yoni, how's that Bush face on Rushmore coming along?
What the was Pelosi trying to do before the vote with that partisan tirade? Someone said she was building a concensus...
Cause Republicans always vote with Pelosi, right?
No. Neither has any other Senator.
Yeah, it was foolish of her to assume Republicans weren't over-sensitive pussies.B) What the was Pelosi trying to do before the vote with that partisan tirade? Someone said she was building a concensus...
The CRA didn't force wall street to securitize and AAA rate those bull loans, which is why this is now everyone's problem and not just the banks who made those loans.
We always do.
Funny how Yoni has such a 'carefully' crafted list of donation recipients...
Money and Votes Aligned in Congress's Last Debate Over Bank Regulation
LinkThe last time Congress seriously debated how to regulate the financial industry, the result was legislation that allowed the nation's largest banks to get even larger and take risks that had been prohibited since the Great Depression. A look back at that debate, which was over the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, reveals that campaign contributions may have influenced the votes of politicians who, a decade later, are now grappling with the implosion of the giant banks they helped to foster.
Looking back at the vote on the 1999 act, and the campaign contributions that led up to it, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found that those members of Congress who supported lifting Depression-era restrictions on commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies received more than twice as much money from those interests than did those lawmakers who opposed the measure.
-snip-
Nine years later, Congress is debating a proposal from the Treasury Secretary to assume the bad investments that are weighing down the nation's financial ins utions, at taxpayer expense. And lobbyists representing the financial services industry are trying to once again shape fast-moving legislation to their clients' benefit. Whether campaign contributions will again correlate to congressional votes remains to be seen.
The following chart summarizes the votes and money around Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999. Below it is a table of all current members of Congress, how much money their campaign committees have received from the financial sector in their congressional careers and how they voted on the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act. An "A" indicates they were absent for the 1999 vote, as McCain was. An empty vote column, as with Obama, indicate the lawmaker was not in office at the time.
-snip-
Financial sector contributions to Congress, 1989-2008
Office FirstLastPState GrandTotal Vote
S Hillary Clinton (D-NY) $31,040,714
S Barack Obama (D) $27,942,613
S John McCain (R) $26,593,411 A
S John Kerry (D-Mass) $19,094,828 Y
S Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn) $13,204,556 Y
S Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) $12,795,946 Y
S Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) $9,972,924 Y
S Arlen Specter (R-Pa) $5,652,910 Y
S Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) $4,678,993
S Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) $4,669,788 Y
S Max Baucus (D-Mont) $4,491,183 Y
S Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) $4,437,474 Y
S Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala) $4,360,242 N
H Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) $4,117,402 Y
S Evan Bayh (D-Ind) $3,974,396 Y
S John Cornyn (R-Texas) $3,957,686
S Robert Menendez (D-NJ) $3,898,822 Y
S Norm Coleman (R-Minn) $3,864,281
S Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del) $3,714,310 Y
S Jon L. Kyl (R-Ariz) $3,700,309 Y
H Spencer Bachus (R-Ala) $3,699,199 Y
S Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) $3,570,557 Y
S Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) $3,537,897 Y
S Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
Fannie and Freddie donations and McCain and Obama from the F.E.C....
I know, but the media is acting like this was hinging on a McCain vote or something. Where the was Obama all day?
96 Democrats stayed away too. The fact of the matter is, both sides made unsavory concessions to reach a deal and Pelosi shot a hole in it because she couldn't keep her ing pie-hole shut.
Barney can shut the up...He's a huge reason we're in this mess.
Powerline links to a video that answers this question with admirable clarity. I’ll link to the video below. First, here are a few data points from the video and other sources:
* According to Senator Chris Dodd (D. CT) the “root cause” of the problem is “the housing foreclosure crisis.”
Not 100% accurate, perhaps–it’s really a credit crisis–but close enough for government work, especially from someone who has just happens to chair the Senate Banking Committee and who, completely coincidentally, has been such a con uous beneficiary of preferential mortgages and who, also coincidentally, leads the list of those who have received campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Guess who comes in 2nd and 3rd?)
* But what caused the housing crisis to which Senator Dodd alludes? The housing “bubble.”
* And what caused the housing bubble? “Sub-prime,” i.e., risky, mortgages; that is, mortgages made to people who, in the normal course of things would have to pay a premium in order to obtain a mortgage (if they could obtain one at all) because
a) they had bad or non-existent credit
b) their income was insufficient or
c) both.
A home of your own. It’s part of the American dream. Work hard, save up for a down payment, pay your bills on time and, presto, you, too, can buy a home.
For decades the government has done things to help Americans to realize the dream, e.g., graciously allowing citizens to keep some of their own money to help pay for the interest on a mortgage (the official term for this is a “tax deduction,” but I prefer my locution since it emphasizes the fact that it is YOUR MONEY we are talking about).
But what about people who do not work hard (if they work at all)? What about people who have not saved up for a down payment? What about people who do not pay their bills on time (if they pay them at all)? Why shouldn’t they get to live the American dream?
That was the question that led to
”The Community Reinvestment Act” (see here for more).
* The original Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law in 1977 by Jimmy Carter. Its purpose, in a nuts , was to require banks to provide credit to “under-served populations,” i.e., those with poor credit.
The buzz word was “affordable mortgages,” e.g., mortgages with low teaser-rates, which required the borrower to put no money down, which required the borrower to pay only the interest for a set number of years, etc.
* In 1995, Bill Clinton’s administration made various changes to the CRA, increasing “access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities,” i.e., it provided for the securitization, i.e. public underwriting, of what everyone now calls “sub-prime mortgages.”
Bottom line? It forced banks to issue $1 trillion in sub-prime mortgages.
$1 trillion, i.e., a thousand billion dollars in sub-prime,i.e., risky, mortgages, in order to push this latest example of social engineering.
But wait: how did it force banks to do this? Easy. Introduce a federal requirement that banks make the loans or face penalties. As Howard Husock, writing in City Journal way back in 2000 observed: “Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race, to rate banks on performance. There would be no more A’s for effort. Only results—specific loans, specific levels of service—would count.” Way back in 1994, for example, Barack Obama sued Citibank on behalf of a client who charged that the bank “systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods.”
A little aside here about Obama's close relationship with ACORN and these worthless loans:
Funny this hasn't gotten more attention from the media.The movement's biggest victory, of course, came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up the riskier loans - providing fresh incentive for banks to make even more of them.
No need to recount where all that led.
Meanwhile, Obama was right there by ACORN's side all along.
"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career," he told the group last November.
Indeed, in the early '90s, Obama was recruited by Talbott herself to run training sessions for ACORN activists.
ACORN also got funding from two charities, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation, when Obama served on their boards, and from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - the radical "education reform" outfit Obama ran from '95 to '99.
* In 1997, Bear Stearns–O firm of blessed memory–was the first to get onto the sub-prime gravy train.
* Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac–were there near the beginning, too.
Anatomy of a bubble
Step 1. The intoxication: “My house is worth millions!” From 1995 - 2005, the number of sub-prime mortgages skyrocket. So did the house prices.
Step 2. The hangover: “Oh my God, my house isn’t selling. What went wrong?”
Why didn’t someone try to stop it?
Someone did: “The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago,” The New York Times, September 11, 2003.
But someone intervened to stymie the Bush administration. Who? The New York Times reports:
Why didn’t someone else ring the alarm?
Someone else did. In 2005, John McCain co-sponsored the “Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act,” which among other things provided for more oversight of Freddie & Fannie. The bill didn’t pass. Guess who blocked it?
The bill was reintroduced in 2007. But again, no luck. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had friends in the Senate:
* Chris Dodd, a recipient of “sweetheart” loans from a Freddie and Fannie backed company.
* The junior senator from Illinois, i.e., Barack Obama, who turned to Jim Johnson, former head (1991-1998) of Fannie Mae, to help advise him on whom to pick for the vice-presidential slot on his ticket. From 1985 to 1990, incidentally, Johnson was managing director of Lehman Brothers. Remember them?
* You might also want to check out one of Barack Obama’s other advisors: Franklin Raines, former CEO of Freddie Mac: see here , for example, or here , or here.
Towards the end of the video, we read this salutary observation: “Everyone deserves a home, not a house of cards.”
Who gave us the house of cards? Watch the whole thing here
Democrats caused the problem.
Democrats perpetuated the problem.
Democrats obstructed all efforts to fix the problem.
And, now, Democrats are trying to move blame to the only party that tried to do anything to fix this mess over the years.
ing Democrats...
Well, we may have screwed the pooch this time.
Sorry, McCain acted like the bailout was hinging on McCain's being there for all the negotiations until an agreement was finalized.
Then he didn't show up until the framework was agreed upon.
Then he left before an agreement was finalized.
Then he didn't go back and just talked on the phone with people who were actually in Washington.
Now he's taking off Rosh Hashanah along with everyone else.
No agreement.
No vote.
No crisis?
nobody forced the lenders to lend to, to predate on risky borrowers.
CRA doesn't even apply to the entire group of types of lenders. CRA is Repug slime to distract from THEIR deregulation and THEIR lax regulation of what few regs remained.
The calculus is pretty simple: Getting re-elected in my swing district > helping McCain get the Presidency. The GOP in Congress knows how this is going to play locally and nationally, and they're abandoning McCain to stem the amount of GOP hemorhaging in Congress.
Congratulations President-Elect Obama
McCain Cosponsored Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005; Reform of Fannie and Freddie
http://federalism.typepad.com/crime_...l-housing.html
Memo to Republicans: CRA Has Nothing To Do With the Current Problems
The first one alone should dismiss this claim as a farce. The CRA was signed into law in 1977 -- almost 30 years ago. So, what do you think the possibilities of a law passed 30 years ago causing the lending problems now? That's one heck of a law to have that kind of effect. But wait -- Clinton changed the law That was the real problem No it wasn't, regarding those changes:
In the mid-1990s, new CRA regulations and a wave of mergers led to a flurry of CRA activity, but, as noted by the New America Foundation's Ellen Seidman (and by Harvard's Joint Center), that activity largely came to an end by 2001.But here's the real kicker. The Community Reinvestment Act only applies to banks and thrifts:
The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, le VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law that requires banks and thrifts to offer credit throughout their entire market area and prohibits them from targeting only wealthier neighborhoods with their services, a practice known as redlining. The purpose of the CRA is to provide credit, including home ownership opportunities to underserved populations and commercial loans to small businesses.The vast majority of the subprime loans over the last 8 years did not originate from banks or thrifts:Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn't even apply to most of the loans that are behind it. As the University of Michigan's Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the ins utions fully governed by CRA.In other words, the CRA isn't even an issue. But that won't stop the the likes of Rush and his progeny from saying it over and over again until all sorts of people believe it.
While we're on the topic -- the CRA had nothing to do with the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac either:
Note, too, that Fannie and Freddie have nonpareil lobbying operations and formidable political strength, owing to their hefty donations and penchant for hiring former political operatives. Besides, the agencies claim they've landed in their current predicament through no fault of their own. As Freddie Mac Chairman and CEO Richard Syron recently put it, the GSEs have been hit by a 100-year storm in the housing market, accentuated by some higher-risk mortgages that they were forced to buy to meet government affordable-housing targets.A simple Google search with help from Wikipedia would have revealed how clueless the CRA caused this mess claim is. But that's not the point. The entire financial system is under tremendous stress on the Republican's watch. It's their policies that are under the microscope right now. And they just don't look that good. So now the political game is to shift the blame to Democrats. And who better then to blame then ... Jimmy Carter.
The latter contention is more than disingenuous. A substantial portion of Fannie's and Freddie's credit losses comes from $337 billion and $237 billion, respectively, of Alt-A mortgages that the agencies imprudently bought or guaranteed in recent years to boost their market share. These are mortgages for which little or no attempt was made to verify the borrowers' income or net worth. The principal balances were much higher than those of mortgages typically made to low-income borrowers. In short, Alt-A mortgages were a hallmark of real-estate speculation in the ex-urbs of Las Vegas or Los Angeles, not predatory lending to low-income folks in the inner cities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-s..._b_127599.html
So what is McCain doing now?
Democrats Resisted Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Reforms - In 2003
http://federalism.typepad.com/crime_...ats-resis.html
Republicans controlled Congress and the Executive in 2003 and 2005 and did nothing to pass the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Reforms
http://reality.com/getreal
link not working try again---
No, that video and your transcript of it didn't answer that question at all. How is the CRA responsible for the securitization and AAA rating of those bull loans? How come this crisis is still ongoing if it was all just Bear Sterns and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae?
This is McCain's statement to vote today. Looks like it's on again.
McCain Reacts To Bailout Failure
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09...y4487827.shtml
He's right in calling out Pelosi. But if there's anybody that politicized this whole thing was him suspending his campaign and heading to DC. How can you blame the failure of passing the bailout on the Democrats when 100+ of the Nay votes came from Republicans? And for the record, I'm completely disgusted with Pelosi and Dems sheep on this topic.
Barney ing Frank. Did someone seriously just post that video of him?
Who knows how this will affect McCain. It was obviously a political stunt.
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