Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were doling out campaign contributions out the wazoo to who? Democrats. At the top of the list, Christopher Dodd. Number two on the list, Barack Hussein Obama. This thing has been a little playground for Democrats in Congress for the express purpose of doling out money to their friends, fellow politicians, interest groups, and so forth. It got to the point where being involved in the mortgage industry was a side light to the real purpose of all this. In his nearly four years in the Senate, with a total of only 143 working days in the Senate, did Barack Obama propose anything, at all, to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? NO! Now, let's get beyond the fluff here, and let's put it to this to the brass tax. Did he lift a finger to address what so many others saw as a huge and looming problem? No! McCain saw it; McCain supported some legislation on it. What the heck did Obama do? He says he has experience, he says we should not put down his experience, to do so is racist. He says he's experienced in ways others. Okay, 143 working days in the Senate. What did he do about this? Zilch, zero, nada. He tells us what he's going to do now, and he's pointing a finger of blame at everybody but his circle of political hacks, the people who are responsible for this. I will tell you what Obama did during his 143 days in the Senate while all this was bubbling up and the house of cards was about to crumble, I'll tell you exactly what Obama did. He took money from Freddie Mac. He took contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He spent his entire time in the Senate planning his run for president, taking money out of these institutions. He is a do-nothing will have, left-wing, self-absorbed man-child passed off as some sort of savior, messiah, anointed one, and it's all a full-fledged crock.

The taxpayers are footing the bill to keep the doors of those financial institutions open; even allowing the fired CEO's to walk away with bonuses of tens of millions of dollars. In November, 2007, McCain was asked to explain what he would do about the subprime mortgage collapse and his response was it took him by surprise, economics wasn't his strong point and he was not prepared to answer that question. Just a few months ago, Phil Gramm was reminding everyone the economy was doing great and we were just a nation of whiners. For almost a full year, one established banking establishment after another has gone bankrupt, in the face of their competition going belly up. Yes, you can put some blame on the people who were foolish to buy a home they were not financially prepared to pay for. But, the buck literally does stop at the desk of the lender. They chose to overlook bad credit, or no credit, or not require adequate down payments on a home mortgage. Their greed went unsupervised, unchecked. They did not police themselves. They lied about their own financial stability to get investors to continue funding their unscrupulous lending practices. The Republican party is the party of deregulation and American taxpayers are hit with the biggest corporate welfare bill in our nation's history as a result.

The code words from Democrats - "Affordable Housing" is nothing more than government-paid housing, aka welfare state homes. What was Fannie Mae doing? Basically giving people houses that couldn't pay for the mortgages. Affordable housing is when liberal constituents get a house for nothing and don't have to pay it back when they can't. Taxpayers having to pay to keep constituent Democrats in their houses that they didn't have to pay for. That's affordable housing.

Actually Brock, the Republicans have always promoted deregulation, going all the way back to Reagan. If you've been reading the news lately about who pushed for the deregulation of the financial institutions, it points right to Gramm and the Republicans.

Actually Marilyn, it happened in 1999 with Clinton and Jamie Gorelick. Bush came in and wanted to tighten oversight with a new regulatory board for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government recipients for the express purpose of addressing bad loan practices — and Democrats blocked it. The New York Times reported this five years ago: "The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates." - - - Oh, and by the way, Obama failed to make the vote while in the Senate so he didn't want to do anything about it. :rolleyes: Democrats are dirty to the core with this one.

Actually, what brought about the demise of these financial institutions is the legislation Phil Gramm, Republican Senator from Texas, also McCain's chief financial advisor, sneaked through during a Christmas break in which all the regulatory provisions enacted after the 1920's were repealed. McCain, who has been one of the most outspoken on de-regulation, has had to change his position.

Hey Brock, Is your white sheet cleaned for the rally this weekend? I escaped from the panhandle and that kind of mentality 40 years ago thankfully. Maybe that's why your God has turned the water off out there. I hear he acts in mysterious ways.

It was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and created the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions. Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties. The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton brought back the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory." The Democrats have caused this mess!

I hope they auction off some of those houses that the gov. took the notes on when they took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I wish they'd auction off some of the stuff which was water-damaged during Hurricane Ike, and will be written off as insurance loss, and give everyday taxpayers a chance to buy - as it is us who are bailing out the insurance company AIG. I wish we could find the National Treasure that we saw in the two movies. Is there really such a treasure? What is America's true treasure? Is it our gold or our silver, or our platinum? I do hope we have plenty of that, and I hope we got some out of Iraq after trying to help them out - rather than just let looters take what they wanted from Saddam's house. We should have captured it to help pay down our war debt. We should take a portion of their oil profits also. They owe us big-time, but we'll never see a dime of it. We spend, but we don't know how to pay for our spending. They criticized Bill Clinton for renting out the Lincoln bedroom, but at least he had some kind of plan to make money for the govt. How much as Bush/Cheney made for the US govt? How much has it lost? How much has it doled out to those friendly to the admin.? They haven't been very good role models on how to balance your personal finances.

I wonder if they'll bail my A** out from bankruptcy?