Crush Liberalism

Democrats in 2004: Nothing wrong with Fannie/Freddie, regulation of them is “racist”

Hot Air and Powerline are doing the jobs that the MSM refuses to do, especially during an election year.  Excerpts (with video clip):

Highlights of this eight-minute video:

Maxine Waters: Through nearly a dozen hearings, we were frankly trying to fix something that wasn’t broke.  Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin Raines.  [Raines would barely avoid prosecution for fraud.]

Gregory Meeks: … I’m just pissed off at OFHEO [the regulators trying to warn Congress of insolvency at the GSEs], because if it wasn’t for you, I don’t think we’d be here in the first place.  … There’s been nothing that indicated that’s wrong with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac has come up on its own … The question that then comes up is the competence that your agency has with reference to deciding and regulating these GSEs.

Lacy Clay: This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines.

Barney Frank: I don’t see anything in this report that raises safety and soundness problems.

Take a good look through this video in 2004, and ask yourself who on this panel wanted more regulatory oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and which members spent their time attacking the regulators.  When Barack Obama talks at debates about how the past eight years of regulatory laissez-faire created the problem, he may want to review the transcripts of these hearings and note that Democrats repeatedly undermined regulators and called them everything from incompetent to bigoted in their rush to keep the status quo at Fannie and Freddie.
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The Democrats attacking the regulator here didn’t do so out of some deep conviction against government regulation.  They wanted to keep the gravy train rolling on questionable mortgages in order to endear themselves to the working class, and didn’t mind smearing the OFHEO regulator as a racist in order to succeed.  The Republicans who wanted more oversight didn’t demand it as socialists looking for a government takeover of the financial sector, either, but because they saw the impending disaster looming for Fannie Mae.

Democrats distorted the market through the CRA and through Fannie and Freddie’s massive securitizing of bad debt, and then blocked regulators from doing their jobs.  That’s the real story of this collapse.

Naturally, you aren’t seeing this all over the network news dinosaurs’ shows, are you?  But no…no liberal media bias!

September 29, 2008 - Posted by crushliberalism | corruption, economic ignorance, hypocrisy, media bias