FullPolitics.com

Enron got huge press when it failed, lots of money went “POOF” and the press and the Democrats had a great time “blaming Bush” for it until the investigations started and the realized that it was Democrats that worked in the Clinton administration that had set up their “accounting system” when those people worked in the private sector. It proved to be a bi-partisan scandal so it went away, just like that out of the press.Global Crossing was another huge one, it got even less press because just before they went belly up they gave $18 million to Democratic National Committee Chair Terre McAuliffe!

Halliburton just had a few accounting errors and the occasional overcharge, which is to be expected in an operation the size of a country. They were all caught by the inspectors and it was settled easily. The press pounded it and pounded it because Vice-President Cheney used to be the CEO of Halliburton. Of course when it was learned that Bill Clinton gave Halliburton no bid contracts and Al Gore had given Halliburton an award that press went away too!
The next big one was the UN Oil for Food Program. It was supposed to administer Iraq’s oil revenues so they could be used for food and medical supplies and infrastructure instead of weapons programs. The UN handlers managed to bilk up to $26 billion from the program. Until Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went belly up, this was the biggest financial scandal in world history.The media and politicians have had a cow over $30 billion in profits from oil companies. Of course they don’t tell you that they often pay more in taxes than they make in profit, but why would politicians who demagogued the issue and a leftist press want to tell you that? Now we have the current scams, which is approaching a $1Trillion and will go into the trillions of dollars more if these countless home mortgages do not get covered or sold in the future. This is the biggest financial scandal in the history of the world and is so big that it likely is bigger than most previous scandals combined. Before you get too concerned, provided that we keep our economy growing and have no more disasters like this in the next 20 years, the American economy should be just fine.

So now that you have the back ground, let’s start to look at how this all happened.Before the stock market crash of 1929 and before the great depression, commercial banks and investment banks either worked closely together or in many cases were one. A single bank would do bothroles. An investment bank did investments and securities and all those things associated with it. Commercial banks would do home loans, savings accounts, checking, CDs etc.One of the elements that led to the stock market crash and the depression is that the investment banks were counting the saving accounts, mortgages (good and bad) and all they had as assets that they could use for trading in the market. When the market gets out of control and people cook the books to ensure that on paper it looks like you have a growing quarterly profits so people could get paid more things get shakey. They ended up having a lot of “bad paper” mortgages and investments and eventually it all came crashing down.Laws were passed such as the Glass-Steagal Act. Among other things Glass-Steagal divided commercial banks and investment banks so that people’s savings would not be put at such investment risk. This law weakened the banks but disproportionately weakened the Morgan Bank which pleased the Rockefeller Bank (Yup influence peddling back then too).Over the years other countries unified banks had an advantage over American banks so Congress moved to even things up and re-unify the banks and set up a regulation and monitoring system to make sure that what happened to help lead up to the Crash of 1929 did not happen again. The first vote in the Senate went along party lines but after compromises with Democrats and the Clinton Administration it passed the Senate 90 votes to 8. The law is called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws

New York Times Published: November 13, 1999President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and to sell each other’s products.”This legislation is truly historic,” President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. ”We have done right by the American people.”The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.Analysts and industry leaders say the measure will probably fuel a wave of mergers as companies compete to build financial supermarkets offering all the services customers need under one roof.Financial stocks were winners on Wall Street today, with J. P. Morgan & Company, Citigroup, American Express and Merrill Lynch all posting big gains. That helped the Dow Jones industrial average end up 174.02 points, at 10,769.32.The Senate approved the final bill by 90 to 8 on Nov. 4 and the House followed suit by a vote of 362 to 57. Congress had previously made almost a dozen unsuccessful attempts over the last 25 years to revise the statutes, which had increasingly come to be viewed as anachronisms.

The Obama campaign and far left web sites are blaming this law for the current economic problems. They are pointing to the first vote which was mostly along party lines but ignore the second vote which was almost unanimous. If you examine the wikipedia entry on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act it tells how one of the compromises that Democrats insisted upon was a strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).The CRA was the first step to this crisis because even with unified banks, if sound and ethical financial practices were used all would have been fine. The Obama campaign says that re-unifying the banks and “deregulating” is what caused this and capitalism is what caused the economic problems of today, yet other countries have unified banks and don’t get these problems so what is the real problem? The Community Reinvestment Act, in the name of fighting “racism” and “redlining” forced banks to make riskier loans in areas less economically stable or viable. Banks said it was risk management, Democrats said it was racism. This increased the risk to the banks for these loans so in essence in some cases they were forced to make bad risk loans.This risk banks were subjected to was amplified greater because loan customers wanted fixed rates and depositors wanted a variable rate. The banks had to keep enough liquid assets to cover loans. This limited the number of loans that a bank. So how did they get around this?Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created as a partially private corporation backed by the US Government to buy loan bonds or buy the mortgages outright from banks. Congress created a regulation and monitoring agency called the OFHEO that reported to the Banking Committee’s in the Congress and exempted them from reporting to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).This was step two that led to this crisis. The CRAforced banks to make more loans available that carried more risk, so banks were eager to sell these higher risk loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Withthe housing boom the inflated value of the houses it had as collateral for the loans on paper made it look like Fannie and Freddie had more collateral assets than reality could bear. With the housing market inflating do to easy loans and low interest rates making it TOO EASY to get a loan for a new home, demand for loans went up. Fannie and Freddie started buying loans at a furious rate. The more loans they bought, the more income on paper they could claim, but more and more people were defaulting on the bad loans….Political appointees (not financial guru’s) were placed in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; people like Franklin Raines, Jeff Johnson and former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick.

It was the policy of the Clinton Administration and Congressional Democrats to lean on banks, and Freddie and Fannie to get loans to low income people so that “everyone could have a home” (besides all that loan money out there propped up and somewhat inflated the economy so it helped make the numbers look good).So let’s add up the cards we have now, the government and Fannie and Freddie, are encouraging banks to give bad loans and Freddie and Fannie would buy them up to help absolve the banks from the risk by buying the high risk loans up. Political appointees with political motivations, rather than sound financial motivations were in charge, and the people the regulators and Fannie and Freddie reported to, was not the SEC, which demands sound accounting practices, but the congressional committees that as policy wanted more loans given out as well, mostly Democrats. Here is step three.Corruption and influence peddling begin to infect the entire system. While the law made it clear that sound financial principles were to be practiced, political pressure caused people to look the other way. The political cronies running Fannie and Freddie realized that they could make themselves rich with tens of millions of dollars in bonuses by buying more loans to make it seem on paper that they had all this money coming in from people’s house payments as if the loans they owned were good, but they weren’t. Too many of the loans were high risk, they had bought “bad paper”.

The bonuses were spread around, but they wanted to keep the cash train flowing and help their fellow political friends so Fannie and Freddie gave $200 million away in political donations, to candidates and partisan organizations, a majority of those being Democrats.
Barack Obama and Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd were the two biggest recipients of this money in the Senate. Fannie and Freddie had become the money train for the corrupt. The regulators who reported to Congress warned what was going on but members of the banking committee who were getting paid didn’t want to hear it.And that was step four folks.President Bush tried to put an end to this in 2003 and John McCain tried to stop this in 2005-6. Congressional Banking leaders Chris Dodd and barney Frank said that everything was just fine and no reforms were needed.Before you accuse us of just trying to be partisan and making it all up here is some of the evidence. These attempts to fix the system were blocked by Democrats.
New York Times Excerpt:
September 11, 2003
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
By STEPHEN LABATON
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 current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,” Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ”We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,” the independent agency that now regulates the companies.”These irregularities, which have been going on for several years, should have been detected earlier by the regulator,” he added.”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

So you see, the seeds for this Debacle were sown by Jimmah Carter; fertilized and watered by Clinton; and picked clean for fruit, by Obama, Dodd, Barney Frank, and the rest of the Cronyism Democrats with one hand in Lobbyist’s Pockets, and the other holding a microphone saying, “But we Democrats are for YOU, the WORKING MAN! We are on YOUR side! Now bend over and grab hold of your ankles, because this may hurt a bit, Mr. John Q. Public.

Democrats: The Party of the Working Man! THEY will save you, from those Rich, evil Republicans! Haaaaaaaahahahahahaa

This is Your Nation on White Privilege

By Tim Wise

“For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.”

Read here.

A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote against the fundamental principle of America, the right of the individual to lead their life privately without the government interfering.

Obama’s Buddy, Bill Ayers Stomping the American Flag

The photo, from Chicago Magazine, is of Barack Obama’s unrepentant terrorist friend Bill Ayers stomping on the American Flag

All quoted excerpts. Please follow their respective links to learn more.
NY Times

By DINITIA SMITH
Published: September 11, 2001
”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.”

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ”I don’t want to discount the possibility,” he said.

Why is Obama Hiding the Truth About William Ayers? Follow the Money - No Quarter

[…]In the aftermath of the ABC debate, no one in the mainstream media has dared probe into this relationship. The most informative article to appear since then has been written by Steve Diamond, law professor on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, on his blog, on April 22. None of what he reports has appeared in any major media outlet.

Here are key excerpts from Diamond’s report:

So, who “sent” Obama? The key I think is his ties…to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well. Obama was a community organizer from about 1985 to 1988, when he left for Harvard Law School. . . .

Active in the local control-from-below side of this effort was Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as a professor of education at the University of Illinois’ Chicago Circle campus, after surfacing from the underground, as well as Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project (DCP). . . .

Thus, Bill Ayers was a vigorous advocate of local control along with a related concept called “small schools,” most likely because he believes it gives him the potential to build a political base from which to operate. He has discussed these ideas in speeches and writings on his blog. As he said in a speech he gave in front of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in late 2006: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!” . . . .

In the fall of 1988, however, Obama left the city to go off to law school. My best guess, though, is that it was in that 86-88 time frame that Obama likely met up with the Ayers family. I will explain why I believe that in a minute. Interestingly, after his first year in law school Obama returned in the summer of 1989 to work as a summer associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. This in and of itself is a bit unusual. Very few top-tier law students work for big law firms during their first summer. The big law firms discourage it because if you work for them in the first summer you are likely to work for a second firm the following year and then the firms have to compete to get you.

So, why or how did Obama — at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) — end up at Sidley?

Coincidentally, or not, Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was their key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (as well as Sidley partner Newton Minow). Coincidentally, or not, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also, hired there in the late 1980s, many contend, through the intervention of Tom Ayers, even though she is not a member of the bar (as far as I can tell) because of her past jail time for Weather Underground activities. . . .

It is highly unlikely that a 30-something second-year lawyer would have been plucked from relative obscurity out of a left wing law firm to head up something as visible and important in Chicago as the Annenberg Challenge by Bill Ayers — unless Ayers had not already known Obama very well. Obama likely proved himself to Ayers in the battle for local school control when at the DCP in the 80s.

One guess as to why Obama does not play up his educational experience more thoroughly now -– it certainly could be of use to him one would think in beefing up his “I have the experience to be President” argument -– is that it would lead to a renewed discussion of the Bill Ayers connection, which is clearly toxic for Obama. This likely explains why Obama tried a kind of head fake when asked about Ayers in the recent TV debate. Obama said Ayers was a “professor of english.” Yet, Obama chaired the Annenberg Challenge for three years and served on its board for another three years, working closely with Ayers on grants to Chicago schools. And he did not know that Ayers was a professor of education? That strains credulity.

One final curiosity:

Here’s yet another bizarre incident involving Ayers, reported in The New Yorker in 2001. Did Obama happen to be at this neighborhood event? We imagine he wouldn’t recall.

Dohrn teaches law at Northwestern University and is, at fifty-nine, still notably glamorous. Ayers, who is fifty-six, teaches education at the University of Illinois at Chicago; his business card reads “Distinguished Professor, University Scholar, Educator, Activist, Peacemaker, Flash-of-Lightning.” The night I got to Chicago, the couple was giving a party, timed to coincide with the booksellers’ convention, which was being held downtown… Ayers’s memoir, titled “Fugitive Days,” is coming out this fall, and he was handing his guests promotional stick-on tattoos of the Weatherman symbol–a three-colored rainbow crossed by a lightning bolt. He showed me a larger version of the symbol tattooed on his upper back.

It is of vital importance to clarify Barack’s relationship with Ayers. This is not a casual relationship. It is not a recent relationship. And, as reported in an earlier piece on this blog, Ayers has not changed his tune of political radicalism. I don’t challenge his right to believe such things, but Ayers certainly does not reflect the views of most Americans, both Democrats and Republicans. Why is Barack lying about this relationship? That is the question voters deserve to have asked and answered.

By the Numbers: Cable Nets Boost Biden, Trash Palin
By Matthew Sheffield (Bio | Archive)
September 3, 2008 - 00:08 ET

Now that the dust has settled on both parties’ vice presidential picks, it’s time to take a look at how the media treated Joe Biden and Sarah Palin in the crucial early hours after they were announced as running mates.

This analysis is the first of several “Quick Study” reports we’ll be running this election season to give a snapshot of press coverage, primarily through the lens of cable television.

Looking at the transcripts of CNN, FNC, and MSNBC during the two “primetime” hours of the day John McCain and Barack Obama announced their running mates, a trend becomes quite clear: The media were much more likely to report negative information about the Alaskan Palin than the Delawarean Biden.

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

Perhaps unsurprisingly given its decision to market itself as the network of the far left, MSNBC was the most unfair of the cable news channels. After Democrats learned Biden would be their vice presidential nominee August 23rd, MSNBC aired 47 positive statements about Obama’s running mate. The network aired just 4 about Sara Palin when she was announced August 29th, making it 12 times more likely to praise Biden than Palin.

MSNBC skewed leftward when it came to negative information about McCain’s running mate. It aired 20 negative statements about Palin and 14 about Biden.

Compared to CNN and MSNBC, Fox News was the fairest network. Biden was the recipient of more positive statements than Palin (25 versus 15) but he was also the recipient of more negative statements (31 versus 10).

As for CNN, while the first cable news channel was not as effusive in its praise of Biden as MSNBC (the network aired 29 positive statements about the Democrat versus 15 about Palin), it actually outstripped MSNBC in attacking Sarah Palin.

Particularly notable in the negativity department for CNN was Campbell Brown who repeatedly slammed Palin, making a point to question her experience as she did just after 8pm on August 29th:

Political insiders were pretty impressed when there was all this talk about who was on McCain’s short list of vp candidates. Most pretty well-known Republicans, but he didn’t choose any of them. Instead everybody now getting to know Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tonight. Some are calling this a pretty risky move by Senator McCain.

John McCain has said that he would pick a running mate who would be able to step into the president’s shoes on day one. I don’t have to tell you, Sarah Palin’s only been governor for less than two years. Of all the Republicans out there, is she really the most qualified person to be commander in chief in a crisis?

Brown also seemed to focus on how McCain’s pick of Palin somehow undermined his case against Barack Obama for being inexperienced (ignoring the fact that being ready to be president is quite different from being ready to be vice president).

“So much of your campaign’s case against Senator Obama has focused on how little time that he’s been in the Senate and how inexperienced he is on matters of international affairs, on military affairs. I mean, doesn’t naming Governor Palin as his running mate undermine your entire argument against Senator Obama?” she asked McCain strategist Michael Duhaime.

Brown continued her negativity this week, getting into a verbal spat with GOP strategist Tucker Bounds which was so notable, it caught the attention of McCain himself who canceled an interview with Brown’s CNN colleague Larry King over the incident. She hardly appears to be alone as a quick glance at the NewsBusters home page shows.

Palin News 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM 8/29/08

CNN Fox MSNBC
Positive 15 15 4
Negative 27 10 20
Neutral 26 37 13
Total 68 62 37

BIDEN News 7:00pm to 9:00pm 8/23/08

CNN Fox MSNBC
Positive 29 25 47
Negative 14 31 14
Neutral 65 51 61
Total 108 107 122

“I would rather listen to “Girlicious”, any day, than to some Liberal Seattle band, dressed like lumberjacks, crtyuing and whining, trying to convince me they’re suicidal adepressed, when they’re rich, young, famous, and getting all the pussy they want. Or the Dicks Chicks, or Barbara Streisand, telling us the world is all doomy and gloomy, and it’s Republicans fault that there are sick people. Hey, didn’t Ms. Streisand PROMISE she would move to Canadaif Pres. Bush beat Al Gore? And aAGAIN, if he beat John “Herman Munster” Kerry? When is she goin?”
The wisest rocker on the planetr., Haaaaaaaaaahahahahaha!