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The Obama Nation
Barack Obama #2 Recipient of Campaign Cash from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
The collapse this week of Lehman Brothers’ is traced back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big mortgage banks that got a federal bailout a few weeks ago.
It turns out that the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs, and the #2 recipient of these funds was Barack Obama, according to Center for Responsive Politics.
It’s jaw-dropping that Obama has collected such a sum in his short four years in office, as this tally covers all of contributions to politicians over the past 20 years.
And if you forgot (it’s understandable - the mainstream media apparently forgot), one of the initial members of Obama’s team searching for a running mate for him was former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson.
Additionally, there is a post at the Wizbang Blog, “Obama One of Leading Recipients of Fannie/Freddie Political Contributions,” with a transcript from a segment on Fox News yesterday that provides further details into the role of Democrats in this financial mess.
Now remember, Obama’s ads and stump speeches attack McCain and Republican policies for the current financial turmoil.
It is demonstrably not Republican policy and worse, it appears the man attacking McCain, Senator Obama, was at the head of the line when the piggy’s lined up at the Fannie and Freddie trough for campaign bucks.
Senator Barack Obama, number two on the Fannie/Freddie list of favored politicians after just four short years in the senate. Next time you see that ad, you might notice he fails to mention that part of the Fannie and Freddie problem.
But still we see Obama on the stump as he tries to lay the blame of this mess on the Republicans. I’ve got to wonder - is Obama that duplicitous, or is he really that unaware of how it all happened?
Who is Responsible for the Foreclosure Mess?
We continually hear how the rise in foreclosures is the fault of President Bush and his administration, but that’s the version from the mainstream media.
The reality is that this real estate implosion dates back nearly a decade to the Clinton years, according to the New York Post.
Each of the political parties shares responsibility for the troubles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored organizations that needed to be bailed out this weekend by - who else? - the taxpayers.
The latest housing bubble started back in the Clinton administration, when Washington suddenly got the brilliant notion that all Americans should be able to buy houses.
No, let me change that.
Our elected officials concluded that everyone deserved to own a house regardless of whether they could actually afford one.
Democrats would have you believe that every ill in the U.S. rests squarely on the Republicans, when they are hugely responsible for this mess, too.
The real trouble began in 1999 when Franklin Delano Raines, former budget director for Bill Clinton, took over as chairman of Fannie.
Only Raines knows why he pushed so hard to expand the number of mortgages and the size of those loans that Fannie could hold.
But at the end of the Clinton administration and into the Bush presidency, Fannie Mae and its sister organization, Freddie Mac, ended up owning trillions of dollars of mortgages.
So, we can either play the blame game, as Obama has favored, or admit it’s a bi-partisan screw-up and go about fixing it.
Another mess born in the Clinton days (like the Clinton Recession) that Democrats pretend magically appeared when Bush took office.
Obama’s Countrywide Subprime Mortgage Connection
Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson is tight with Barack Obama. He was just tapped as one of three people on Obama’s vice presidential search team.
Johnson also has close ties to and loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a company hit by subprime mortgages and loan problems.
Additionally, the Countrywide lending practices and CEO compensation are under scrutiny.
James Johnson was part of an elite group known as “friends of Angelo” (Countrywide Financial co-founder Angelo Mozilo), and he got more than $7 million in “special loans” from Countrywide.
These loans were below market averages, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This is one of those companies that Obama has been railing against, at least in public.
Obama has blasted Countrywide’s executives as “the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis,” at a town hall meeting in Lancaster, PA this past March.
So it seems pretty disingenuous that Obama would engage in cronyism with Jim Johnson if Obama is going to bring change to politics.
More details in the New York Sun.
